rrages one's impressions become routine
impressions, so to speak; but the night, and the hundreds and hundreds
of vivid jumping flashes, made this 1 A.M. barrage seem the most
tremendous, most violently terrible of my experience. The doctor,
looking a bit chilled, gazed long and solemnly at the spectacle, and
for once his national gift of expressing his feelings failed him.

When news of the results of the operation came to us it was of a
surprising character. The infantry had moved forward under cover of the
barrage, had reached their first objective, and continued their advance
two miles without encountering opposition. The Boche had stolen away
before our guns loosed off their fury. I only saw three prisoners
brought in, and some one tried to calculate the thousands of pounds
worth of ammunition wasted on the "barrage." A message came that we
were to hold ourselves in readiness to rejoin our own Divisional
Artillery; our companion Field Artillery Brigade, the --rd, would march
also. At 6.30 P.M. the orders arrived. We were to trek northwards,
about four thousand yards as the crow flies, and be in touch with our
C.R.A. early next morning.

That night rain fell in torrents. When we had dined, and all the kit
had been packed up, we sheltered in the gun-pit, awaiting our horses
and the baggage-waggons. As the rain found fresh ways of coming through
the leaky roof, we shifted the boxes on which we sat; all of us except
the colonel, who, allowing his chin to sink upon his breast, slept
peacefully for three-quarters of an hour. It was pitch-dark outside,
and the trench had become a glissade of slimy mud. It was certain that
the drivers would miss their way, and two of the signallers who had
gone out to guide them along the greasy track from the railway crossing
had come back after an hour's wait. After a time we ceased trying to
stem the rivulets that poured into the gun-pit; we ceased talking also,
and gave ourselves up to settled gloom, all except the colonel, who had
picked upon the one dry spot and still slept.

But things mostly come right in the end. The rain stopped, a misty moon
appeared; the vehicles came along, and by 10.30 P.M. the colonel was on
his mare, picking a way for our little column around shell-holes,
across water-logged country, until we struck a track leading direct to
Meaulte, where the Brigade had been billeted during 1915. It was a
strangely silent march. There was a rumbling of guns a long way t