ard area are to be struck before dawn."

It was an order that breathed an understanding fear of the inquisitive
eyes of enemy aerial observers. But if the G.S.O. who issued the order
really knew----

* * * * *

Under cover of the darkness the Brigade moved up 6000 yards to secret
positions for the morrow's battle. We were behind our own infantry once
again, and it was to be a big advance. We had come over forty miles
since August 8 in a series of three-to eight-mile leaps; for the third
time the battalions had been brought up to something like strength, and
they were full of fight. In the mud and slime of the Somme and
Flanders in 1916 and 1917, when each advance was on a narrow front and
ceased after a one-day effort, I always marvelled at the patient,
fatalistic heroism of the infantry. A man went "over the top"
understanding that, however brilliant the attack, the exultant glory of
continuous chase of a fleeing, broken enemy would not be his; and that,
should he escape wounds or death, it would not be long before he went
"over the top" again, and yet again. But this open fighting had changed
all that. It showed results for his grit and endurance to the humblest
"infanteer." And remember, it was the civilian soldier--unversed in
war, save actual war--who accepted and pushed home the glorious
opportunities of achievement that these wondrous days offered.

The colonel and I mounted our horses at eight o'clock, saw C and D
Batteries begin their march, and called upon the new C.R.A. in his
hut-headquarters at Lieramont. He was genuinely pleased at being
congratulated upon his appointment, and, I remember, produced for me a
Havana, come straight from London. Both the General and the
brigade-major had good things to say of the dog, who was now definitely
known as "Ernest"--chiefly because I had said "Hullo" to call him so
many times that inevitably one recalled Mr Frank Tinney and his mode of
addressing his stage assistant.

From Lieramont the colonel and myself rode eastwards two miles and a
half. The road was crowded with waggons and horses, returning in
orderly fashion from delivering ammunition. In the distance guns
boomed. When we got to the _pave_ the colonel said we would walk across
country the rest of the way. Our horses had only been gone a couple of
minutes when the colonel suddenly halted and exclaimed, "I've let
Laneridge go back with my steel helmet."

"Should we wait a fe