ere out at St Saveur? That's the one.... And
the old Boche was peppering the valley all the time."

"Did the Boche shell much during the attack?" I asked.

"Well," continued Pottinger, "he gave the guns most of the shelling
----. I was shooting the battery and Judd was doing F.O.O. with the
infantry,--and where Judd was it was mostly machine-guns."

"Yes," said Judd, "I got the wind-up with those machine-guns. I
couldn't find the battalion headquarters at first, and it was 150 yards
from the wood. The first lot of machine-gun bullets went in front of
me; one plopped into a bank just past my foot. It was dam funny. I spun
right round.... But the infantry colonel, the colonel of the ----s, was
a brave man. We only had a tiny dug-out, and every time you got out the
machine-gun started. But he didn't mind; he got out and saw for himself
everything that was going on. Didn't seem to worry him at all.... And I
shall never forget the way the heavies lammed it into the wood. They
had half an hour, six batteries of 6-inch howitzers, before the
18-pounders put in a five minutes' burst of shrapnel.... They say the
wood is choked with German dead."

It was this self-same colonel who wrote to his brigadier commending the
fine work of Judd and Pottinger on that day. Before October was out
each was wearing the M.C. ribbon.

Battery positions being selected, the colonel, Major Mallaby-Kelby, and
myself cast round for a headquarters. Some machine-gunners had taken
possession of the only possible dug-outs. However, there were numerous
huts, abandoned by the Hun, and I was chalking our claim on a neat
building with a latched door and glass windows, and a garden-seat
outside, when the colonel, who was gazing through his binoculars at the
long, dense, hillside wood that marked the eastern edge of the valley,
said in his decisive way, "What's that Swiss chalet at the top of the
gully in the centre of wood?... Looks a proper sort of place for
headquarters!... Let's go and inspect it."

The view through the binoculars was not deceptive; indeed, when we
plunged into the wood and made the steep climb up to the chalet, we
passed five or six beautifully built huts hidden among the trees. The
chalet was equipped with a most attractive verandah; a hundred feet
below stood a larger wooden building, covered with black felt and lined
with match-boarding. The main room possessed tables obviously made by
expert carpenters, and a roomy bench, with a