ted and felt quite fresh. "Our
casualties came just after we got the guns in," he told me. "They
dropped two whizz-bangs between No. 1 gun and No. 2."

Major Simpson was up and eating hot sizzling bacon in a trench, with a
cable drum for a seat and an ammunition-box as table. Two of his
subalterns--Overbury, who won the M.C. on March 21st, and Bob
Pottinger, all smiles and appetite, at any rate this morning--had also
fallen to, and wanted Major Veasey and myself to drink tea. "We're
taking a short rest," remarked Major Simpson cheerfully. "I'm glad I
moved the battery away from the track over there. No shell has come
within three hundred yards of us.... We have had a difficulty about the
wires. Wilde said he laid wires from Brigade to all the new positions
before we came in last night, but my signallers haven't found their
wire yet; so we laid a line to A and got through that way."

Infantry Brigade Headquarters was in a ravine four hundred yards away.
A batch of prisoners had just arrived and were being questioned by an
Intelligence officer: youngish men most of them, sallow-skinned, with
any arrogance they may have possessed knocked out of them by now. They
were the first Huns I remember seeing with steel helmets daubed with
staring colours by way of camouflage. "They say we were not expected to
attack to-day," I heard the Intelligence officer mention to the G.S.O.
II. of the Division, who had just come up.

"Is that one of your batteries?" asked the Infantry Brigade signalling
officer, an old friend of mine, pointing to our D Battery, a hundred
yards from Brigade Headquarters. "What a noise they made. We haven't
had a wink of sleep. How many thousand rounds have they fired?"

"Oh, it'll be about 1500 by midday, I expect," I answered. "Any news?"

"It's going all right now, I believe. Bit sticky at the start--my
communications have gone perfectly, so far--touch wood."

More prisoners kept coming in; limping, bandaged men passed on their
way down; infantry runners in khaki shorts, and motor-cycle
despatch-riders hurried up and buzzed around the Brigade Headquarters;
inside when the telephone bell wasn't ringing the brigade-major could
be heard demanding reports from battalions, or issuing fresh
instructions. There was so little fuss that numbers of quiet
self-contained men seemed to be standing about doing nothing.
Occasional high-velocity shells whizzed over our heads.

Major Veasey suddenly emerged from the br