one wires on both sides are broken, and the
Staff signal officer goes out to repair them under fire. At last,
precisely at the moment appointed, five minutes past six, in the rainy
autumn dawn, our own guns--an enormous concentration of them--open a
tremendous fire, and the earth-shaking noise "helps men to forget
themselves, and go blind for the enemy." Then steadily the artillery
barrage goes forward, one hundred yards every four minutes, and the
infantry advance behind it, past the German front trench, to a ravine
about three hundred yards further, which is known to be strongly held.
The final objective is a strong German position protecting a village
in the valley of the Ancre.

Meanwhile, in the headquarters' dug-out, messages come pouring in "by
telephone, by lamp-signal, by wireless, by pigeon, by runners, and
reports dropped from aeroplanes." The progress of the battle is marked
on the maps spread out on a table in the dug-out, and the Brigadier
has to decide when his reserve battalion must be sent forward to
assist. Information is scanty and contradictory, but "at half-hourly
intervals the situation, as we believed it to be, was telephoned to
our Divisional Headquarters and to the brigades on either flank."
Reports come in of success at certain places and a check at others;
also of a German counter-attack. All reports agree that casualties
have been heavy. The ravine, indeed, has been taken with seven hundred
prisoners, but the situation is still so obscure that "the Brigadier
sent me out to find out the real situation."

"So I started out with an orderly." The direct route to be taken was
under fire and had to be circumvented. "I was making for an old
dug-out in a small ravine, where some men of our left attacking
battalion had suffered heavily whilst assembling prior to the attack.
The area was still being shelled, and we made a bolt for the dug-out,
which we reached safely." In the dug-out is the commander of the
support battalion, who reports that the commanders of the attacking
battalions have gone forward to the big ravine. "I found out all I
could from him, and then went forward with him to the ravine." On the
way the Staff officer notices that the wire entanglements in front of
the German trenches are still formidable and have not been properly
cut by our artillery. "When we reached the big ravine we crawled down
the steep bank to the bottom of it, and the first sight that we saw
was the entrance to a