btedly it had
done well, and the following message was received from the Brigade
Commander:--

To Officer Commanding,
9th King's Liverpool Regt.

Will you please congratulate all ranks of your Battalion on
the great gallantry they displayed during the recent
operations? They not only captured all their objectives, but
also helped other troops to capture theirs. The magnificent
way in which they captured the position and held it against
all counter-attacks makes me very proud to have such a
Battalion in my Brigade.

L. BOYD MOSS,
Brigadier General,
165th Brigade.
4th August, 1917.

On the 6th August the Battalion was taken by train to Audruicq, and
billeted near by in a hamlet called Blanc Pignon, where the next six weeks
were spent. The troops were well housed in this place, which was very
clean in comparison with the other villages in which the Battalion
sojourned from time to time. Each man was given a new suit, deficiencies
in kit were made up, and the companies soon began to resume their normal
appearance. Leave opened, and it was possible for those who wished to have
day trips to Calais, and one or two of the more fortunate managed to get
seaside leave at Paris Plage or Wimereux. The time spent at Blanc Pignon
passed without special incident, except that one night there was a bombing
raid by which the Germans obviously hoped to blow up the ammunition dump
which was in close proximity to the billets. Fortunately, although many
were dropped, not one of the bombs was effective enough to explode the
ammunition. During the raid a large Gotha aeroplane was caught in the beam
of one of the searchlights, and this was the first occasion the men saw
this particular type of machine.

Despite the training the men had undergone before the battle, there was a
good deal of time devoted to field work, as in view of the experience
gained and the lessons learned in the recent attack new tactics had to be
evolved. Until the Third Battle of Ypres, the chief obstacles to the
advance of the British had been the German wire entanglements. The fuses
on the British shells had always permitted the shells to bury themselves
to some extent before exploding. This meant that a crater was formed, and