tered the not unpleasant smell of lachrymatory
gas. The Infantry Battalion headquarters' staff were already moving out
of the quarry to their forward station. By 4.40 A.M. our colonel had
talked over the telephone with two of the battery commanders. Their
reports were quite optimistic. "A Battery were wise in shifting from
their old position three days ago," he remarked cheerfully. "The old
position is getting a lot of shelling; there's nothing falling where
they are now. Lots of gas-shelling apparently. It's lucky the batteries
had that daily drill serving the guns with gas-masks on."

The doctor and the acting signal officer came into the mess from their
quarters farther along the quarry. "If this gas-shelling goes on, I
guess we shall all have to have lessons in the deaf-and-dumb talk,"
puffed the doctor, pulling off his gas helmet. "Keep that door closed!"

"D Battery's line gone, sir," rang up the sergeant-signaller.
"M'Quillan and Black have gone out on it."

"Keep Corporal Mann and Sapper Winter on the telephone board to-day," I
advised Bliss, the youngster who had come to headquarters the day
before to do signal officer. "The colonel will be doing a lot of
telephoning, and they know his methods. Be sure to keep all the
Scotsmen off the board. The colonel says Scotsmen ought never to be
allowed to be telephonists. Impossible to understand what they say."

By 5 A.M. one of the two officers who overnight had manned the forward
O.P.'s had spoken to us. He was 2000 yards in front of the most forward
battery, but a still small voice sounded confident and cheery, "A few
shells have dropped to the right of the O.P., but there's no sign of
any infantry attack," was his message. We heard nothing more of him
until six weeks afterwards, when his uncle wrote and told the colonel
he was safe, but a prisoner in Germany.

5.15 A.M.: The cook was handing round early morning tea. D Battery were
through again, and we learned that a sergeant had been killed and one
gunner wounded by a 4.2 that had pitched on the edge of the gun-pit.
Two other batteries were cut off from headquarters; however, we
gathered from the battery connected by the buried cable--that a week
before had kept 500 men busy digging for three days--that, as far as
they could see, all our batteries were shooting merrily and according
to programme.

By 6 A.M. the Brigadier-General, C.R.A., had told the colonel that the
situation to left and right was the same a