ut when we reached the Boche front trenches
a strange thing happened. There was no fight worth mentioning. The
tanks stopped over the trenches and blazed away right and left with
their all-around traverse.

A few Boches ran out and threw silly little bombs at the monsters.
The tanks, noses in air, moved slowly on. And then the Graybacks
swarmed up out of shelters and dug-outs, literally in hundreds, and
held up their hands, whining "Mercy, kamarad."

We took prisoners by platoons. Blofeld grabbed me and turned over a
gang of thirty to me. We searched them rapidly, cut their
suspenders and belts, and I started to the rear with them. They
seemed glad to go. So was I.

As we hurried back over the five hundred yards that had been No
Man's Land and was now British ground, I looked back and saw the
irresistible tanks smashing their way through the tree stumps of
High Wood, still spitting death and destruction in three
directions.

Going back we were under almost as heavy fire as we had been coming
up. When we were about half-way across, shrapnel burst directly
over our party and seven of the prisoners were killed and half a
dozen wounded. I myself was unscratched. I stuck my hand inside my
tunic and patted Dinky on the back, sent up a prayer for some more
luck like that, and carried on.

After getting my prisoners back to the rear, I came up again but
couldn't find my battalion. I threw in with a battalion of
Australians and was with them for twenty-four hours.

When I found my chaps again, the battle of High Wood was pretty
well over. Our company for some reason had suffered very few
casualties, less than twenty-nine. Company B, however, had been
practically wiped out, losing all but thirteen men out of two
hundred. The other two companies had less than one hundred
casualties. We had lost about a third of our strength. It is a
living wonder to me that any of us came through.

I don't believe any of us would have if it hadn't been for the
tanks.

The net result of the battle of High Wood was that our troops
carried on for nearly two miles beyond the position to be taken.
They had to fall back but held the wood and the heights. Three of
the tanks were stalled in the farther edge of the woods--out of
fuel--and remained there for three days unharmed under the fire of
the German guns.

Eventually some one ventured out and got some juice into them, and
they returned to our lines. The tanks had proved themselves, not