ection from the great British attack--the first light of
day glowed angrily on the lower edges of the leaden clouds. You could
faintly distinguish objects a hundred yards away. Our field guns, from
behind the hills, broke suddenly into a tempest of fire, which tore a
curtain of dust from the red shell craters carpeting the ridge. A few
minutes later the bombardment lengthened, and the line of Queenslanders,
Tasmanians and Western Australians rushed for the trenches ahead of
them.

On the left, well down the shoulder of the hill towards Thiepval, was
the dust-heap of craters and ashes, with odd ends of some shattered
timber sticking out of it, which goes by the name of Mouquet Farm. It
was a big, important homestead some months ago. To-day it is the
wreckage of a log roof, waterlogged in a boundless tawny sea of craters.
There is no sign of a trench left in it--the entrances of the dug-outs
may be found here and there like rat-holes, about half a dozen of them,
behind dishevelled heaps of rubbish. They open into craters now--no
doubt each opening has been scratched clear of debris a dozen times. You
have to get into some of them by crawling on hands and knees.

The first charge took the Western Australians far beyond the farm. They
reached a position two hundred yards farther and started to dig in
there. Within an hour or two they had a fairly good trench out amongst
the craters well in front of the farm. The farm behind them ought to be
solidly ours with such a line in front of it. A separate body of men,
some of them Tasmanians, came like a whirlwind on their heels into the
farm. The part of the garrison which was lying out in front in a rough
line of shell craters found them on top of the craters before they knew
that there were British troops anywhere about. They were captured and
sent back. The Australians tumbled over the debris into the farm itself.

The fight that raged for two days on this ridge was not one of those in
which the enemy put up his hands as soon as our men came on to him. Far
on the top of the hill to the right, and in the maze of trenches
between, and in the dug-outs of the farm on the left, he was fighting
stiffly over the whole front. In the dim light, as the party which was
to take the farm rushed into it, a machine-gun was barking at them from
somewhere inside that rubbish yard itself. They could hear the bark
obviously very close to them, but it was impossible to say where it came
from, whe