news came that the enemy was being held.

By tea-time we ourselves had been ordered forward to relieve a brigade
that had suffered considerably in the opening stages of the assault.
And, after all, we didn't occupy the "Garden City" headquarters I had
been at such pains to build. We handed it over to the brigade we were
relieving, and their colonel congratulated our colonel on his
forethought.

The colonel decided that only the doctor, the signalling officer, and
myself should go forward. The adjutant could settle at the waggon lines
and occupy himself with reinforcements, clothing, and salvage returns,
Army Form B 213, watering and forage arrangements, and suchlike
administrative duties. My task would be the "Forward" or "G"
branch--_i.e._, assisting the colonel with the details of his fighting
programmes.

The colonel and I lay down that night in a hole scooped out of a chalk
bank. The corrugated iron above our heads admitted a draught at only
one corner; as our sleeping-bags were spread out on a couple of spring
mattresses, moved by some one at some time from some neighbouring
homestead, we could not complain of lack of comfort.

April 24 was the last day on which our Brigade awaited and prepared to
meet a Boche attack of the first magnitude. But it was not until the
month of July that any of us conceived, or dared to believe in, the
possibility of his mighty armies being forced upon the defensive again.

During May and June we accepted it that our role would be to stick it
out until the Americans came along _en masse_ in 1919. The swift and
glorious reversal of things from August onwards surprised no one more
than the actual fighting units of the British armies.

II. THE RED-ROOFED HOUSE

"We're doing an attack to-morrow morning," said the colonel, returning
about tea-time from a visit to the C.R.A. "We are under the --th
Divisional Artillery while we're up here, and we shall get the orders
from them. You'd better let the batteries know. Don't say anything over
the wire, of course.... Any papers for me to see?" he added, pulling
out his leather cigarette case.

I handed him the gun and personnel returns, showing how many men and
guns the Brigade had in action; and the daily ammunition reports that
in collated form find their way from Divisional Artillery to Corps, and
from Corps to Army, and play their part in informing the strategic
minds at the back of the Front of the ebb and flow of fighting act