when pleasure boats could be taken out. This amphibious warfare was
extremely unpleasant, and it further delayed the work on the new
defensive positions. Captain Jimmy Baker and Lt. Jack Morten, whilst on
a midnight prowl in No Man's Land almost met with disaster, and the
performance came to an undignified close after they had extricated one
another from deep muddy water to make their way back to dock minus gum
boots. We knew that the Huns must be in a similar predicament, for their
ground was equally low, and we could only laugh when on one occasion
dawn revealed one or two of them jumping about in the open in attempts
to dry their clothes and to restore life to their numbed bodies. It
hardly seemed the game to fire upon them.

Kindness to a German is often misplaced, as we found when his
"travelling Circus" of heavy trench mortars arrived. Having
unobtrusively got these weapons into concentrated positions near his
support line he suddenly loosed them all off one afternoon at an
extremely annoying and rapid rate of fire, peppering all the trenches
that we had spent such time in getting into habitable condition. It was
a nerve-racking experience while it lasted but the 7th stuck to their
posts ready to meet any Hun attack should it develop. What the enemy had
really intended was never quite understood, but a small party of Boche
got across No Man's Land that night. One of "B" company's posts saw
them, however, and attacked them. One German got into our trench and
Pte. Saunderson chased him but failed to get him. Jerry, in his hurried
departure, left behind him his cap and one or two other articles and
these, together with a collection of battered trenches and a few slight
casualties, were the only souvenirs we got out of this "stunt," with the
exception of the M.M. awarded to Pte. Saunderson, for his plucky
conduct. The divisional commander was in the battalion area at the time,
and he afterwards sent us a congratulatory message on the steadiness of
the men, a compliment of which we were justly proud.

On January 22nd we moved out to Le Preol into brigade reserve. The 7th
were particularly fortunate in coming out of the line at this time, for
we did not go in again before the whole division was relieved. After our
allotted period at Le Preol it was the brigade's turn for divisional
reserve, and this was accompanied by another move back to Hingette, near
Locon. One of our functions in this position was to back up the