mmunication with our Divisional Artillery
Headquarters," he began. "Bring the telephone cart back to the wood at
once, and put a couple of telephonists into the dug-out. They'll be
safe there until the last possible moment. It's uncertain yet whether
we're going to hold the enemy up there or not."

I galloped back and brought the telephone cart along at a trot. The two
wheelers, particularly "the doctor's mare," stepped out in most
refreshing style. "The old cart's never had such a day since it's been
to France," grinned the signalling-sergeant when we pulled up. Odd
5.9's were falling in the wood; our batteries had shifted in the early
morning from the eastern side of the wood to positions more north-west,
and two Horse Artillery batteries were moving up behind the rise that
protected our right flank. But what was this? Coming up at a steady
march, bayonets glinting, a long column of blue-grey wound into view.
French infantry! The thin line of khaki was at last to receive support!

7 A.M.: The Infantry battle was now developing sharply two thousand
yards in front of us. Shells crashed persistently into the wood; the
"putt-puttr-putt" of machine-guns rattled out ceaselessly....
Whimsically I recalled quieter days on the Somme, when our
machine-gunners used to loose off seven rounds in such a way as to give
a very passable imitation of that popular comic-song tag,
"Umtiddy-om-pom--Pom-pom!" After three attempts we had given up trying
to keep telephone touch with the batteries, and I had detailed mounted
orderlies to be in readiness. One line I kept going, though, between
the hut where the infantry brigadier and his brigade-major and the
colonel received messages describing the progress of the fighting, and
the telephone dug-out, whence the colonel could be switched on to the
artillery brigadier. There was bad news of the battery just out from
England that had come under the colonel's command the evening before.
Three of their guns had been smashed by direct hits, and they had lost
horses as well. The Boche were swarming over the canal now, and our A
and C and B Batteries were firing over open sights and cutting up
Germans as they surged towards our trenches.

11 A.M.: Orders from our own brigadier to pull out the guns and retire
to a crest behind Villequier Aumont. I heard the news come along the
telephone wire, and went through the wood to seek further directions
from the colonel. It was evident now that the wood coul