twenty." I said, "What a glorious thing it is to be out here at
twenty." "Yes," he said, looking towards the valley, "it is a glorious
thing to be out here at twenty, but I should like to know what is
holding them up." He had hardly spoken when there was a sharp crack of
a machine-gun bullet and he dropped at my side. The bullet had pierced
his steel helmet and entered his brain. He never recovered
consciousness, and died on the way to the aid post.

The 2nd Brigade was now moving forward, so I went down the hill past a
dugout which had been used as a German dressing station. There I
secured a bottle of morphine tablets, and spoke to our wounded waiting
to be carried off. Just before I reached the Arras-Cambrai road, I
came to the trench where the C.O. of the 3rd Battalion had established
himself. The chaplain and I were talking when an officer of the 2nd
Battalion came back with a bad wound in the throat. He could not
speak, but made signs that he wanted to write a message. We got him
some paper and he wrote, "The situation on our right is very bad." The
4th Division were on our right, and they had been tied up in Bourlon
Wood. So now our advancing 2nd Brigade had their right flank in the
air. As a matter of fact their left flank was also exposed, because
the British Division there had also been checked in their advance. I
crossed the road into the field, where I found the 5th and 10th
Battalions resting for a moment before going on to their objective. In
front of us, looking very peaceful among its trees, was the village of
Haynecourt which the 5th Battalion had to take. The 10th Battalion was
to pass it on the left and go still further forward. We all started
off, and as we were nearing the village I looked over to the fields on
the right, and there, to my dismay, I saw in the distance numbers of
little figures in grey which I knew must be Germans. I pointed them
out to a sergeant, but he said he thought they were French troops who
were in the line with us. The 5th Battalion went through Haynecourt
and found the village absolutely deserted and the houses stripped of
everything that might be of any value. Their C.O. made his headquarters
in a trench to the north of the village, and the 10th disappeared (p. 312)
going forward to the Douai-Cambrai road.

It was now quite late in the afternoon. The sun was setting, and I feared
that if I did not go back in time I might find myself stuck out there for
the night without