he prisoner sat there that we heard about the raid. They
clearly considered it something of a failure. They had to get through a
ditch full of water to their necks, then some trip-wire, then a
knee-deep entanglement, then a ditch full of rusty wire, then some
"French" coils of barbed wire, then more wire knee-deep, with trip-wire
after that. Moreover, the enemy's artillery fire was heavy. They simply
went on over the parapet into the enemy's trench for a few minutes and
killed with their bombs about a dozen Germans, and brought in as
prisoners those who were left wounded. Every man of their own who was
wounded they carried carefully back through the tempest in No Man's
Land. The Germans had spent at least as much artillery ammunition as we
had, and in spite of all the noise they had done wonderfully little
damage. We put a dozen of them out of action till the end of the war--a
dozen that our men saw and know of; and they may have put out of action
five of ours.

As we took a tired prisoner to the hospital through the grey light of
morning, I thought I would give, for a change, an account of a
"failure."

[It was almost immediately after this that the Australians were brought
down to the Somme battle. From this time on they left the neighbourhood
of green fields and farmhouses and plunged into the brown, ploughed-up
nightmare battlefield where the rain of shells has practically never
since ceased. They came into the battle in its second stage, exactly
three weeks after the British.]

CHAPTER XV

POZIERES

_France, July 26th._

I have been watching the units of a certain famous Australian force come
out of action. They have fought such a fight that the famous division of
British regular troops on their flank sent them a message to say that
they were proud to fight by the side of them.

Conditions alter in a battle like this from day to day. But at the time
when the British attack upon the second German line in Longueval and
Bazentin ended, the farther village of Pozieres was left as the hub of
the battle for the time being. This point is the summit of the hill on
which the German second line ran. And, probably for that reason, the new
line which the Germans had dug across from their second line to their
third line--so as to have a line still barring our way when we had
broken through their second line--branched off near Pozieres to meet the
third line near Flers. The map of the situation at this stage of