nemy well
provided with machine-guns.

A genuine excitement possessed the battalion. This, so it was felt, was
very like the real thing. Just so, some day in France, would an
advance be made and great glory won. McMahon alone remained cheerfully
indifferent to the energetic fussiness which prevailed.

The day dawned cloudless with promise of intense heat. Very early, after
a hurried and insufficient breakfast, B Company marched out It was the
business of B Company to take up a position south of the enemy's hill,
to harass the foe with flanking fire and at the proper moment to rush
certain machine-gun posts. B Company had some ten miles to march before
reaching its appointed place. McMahon gave it as his opinion that B
Company would be incapable of rushing anything when it had marched
ten miles in blistering heat and had lain flat for an hour or two in a
shadeless field. A party of cooks, with a travelling kitchen, followed
B Company. McMahon said that if the cooks were sensible men they would
lose their way and come to a halt in a wood, not far from a stream. He
added that he was himself very sensible and had already fixed on the
wood, about a mile from the scene of the attack, where he intended to
spend the day, with a novel.

The other three companies, the Lewis gunners, and a battery of Stokes
gun men, attached to the battalion for the attack, marched out later,
under the command of the Colonel himself. Cyclist scouts scoured the
roads ahead of the advance. McMahon, accompanied by an orderly, marched
in the rear and complained greatly of the dust. A Brigadier appeared in
a motor and cast a critical eye on the men. Two officers in staff caps,
understood to be umpires, rode by.

At noon, the heat being then very great, a motor cyclist dashed up, his
machine snorting horribly, the man himself plastered with dust, sweat
and oil. He announced that the battalion was under heavy fire from the
enemy artillery and that men were falling fast The Brigadier had sent
an urgent message to that effect. The Colonel, who rather expected that
something of the sort would occur, gave the orders necessary in such a
situation. The men opened out into artillery formation and advanced, by
a series of short rushes, to take cover in some trenches, supposed to
have been abandoned, very conveniently, by the enemy the day before.
The Brigadier, seated in his motor-car in a wood on a neighbouring hill,
watched the operation through his field