llside, and by four o'clock
battalions returned from the battle were digging themselves sheltering
holes higher up the hillside. Boche prisoners in slow marching twenties
and thirties kept coming along also; some of them used as
stretcher-bearers to carry their own and our wounded; others were
turned on to the odd jobs that the Army call fatigues. I found one
long-haired, red-eyed fellow chopping wood for our cook; my appearance
caused a signaller, noted for his Hyde Park Corner method of oratory,
to cease abruptly a turgid denunciation of the Hun and all his works.

The talk was all of a counter-attack by which a battalion of Prussian
Guards had won back the eastern corner of Trones Wood, one of the day's
objectives. One of the Infantry brigadiers, a tall, tireless, fighting
soldier, who started the war as a captain, had come round to discuss
with the colonel artillery support for the fresh attack his Brigade
were to make at 5.45 P.M. This brigadier was rather apt to regard
18-pounders as machine-guns; and it was sometimes instructive to note
the cool good-humoured way in which the colonel guided his enthusiasm
into other channels. "You're giving me one forward section of
18-pounders there," began the brigadier, marking the map.
"Now,"--placing a long lean forefinger on a point 150 yards behind our
most advanced infantry post,--"couldn't I have another little fellow
there?--that would tickle him up."

The colonel smiled through his glasses. "I don't think we should be
helping you more, sir, by doing that.... I can shoot on that point with
observed fire as well from where the batteries are as from up there;
and think of the difficulty of getting ammunition up."

"Right!" responded the General, and turned immediately to the subject
of the 4.5 how. targets.

I went outside, and saw Judd at the head of the two guns of B Battery,
that were to be the forward section in the attack, going by at the
trot. As he passed he gave me an "I'm for it" grin. I knew that he was
trotting his teams because the corner of the valley was still under
enemy observation, and had been shelled all day. Bob Pottinger was
following in rear.

Five minutes after the two guns passed, the Boche began a hellish
strafe upon a battery that had perched itself under the crest of the
hill. A couple of hundred 5.9's came over, and we had a view of rapid
awe-inspiring bursts, and of men rushing for cover. "Good shooting
that," remarked the colonel, who h