, and following the usual practice both flanks were
pushing on, leaving the town itself in a salient. On the 1st of October
we moved forward again, crossing the St. Quentin canal and going into a
line in support of the front line. Our transport lines were established
at Cantaing, beside the field-guns. This shows the change that had taken
place in our dispositions; it was now approaching a war of movement.
While it was handy to have transport lines close up, it was costly in
horse-flesh, the gunners having heavy losses, mostly from high velocity
shells. "C" Company Headquarters, which was merely an uncovered cut in a
trench, got a shell into it and four officers were wounded and C.S.M.
Jones, who had acted as R.S.M. for some time, was killed. He was a very
brave soldier and had been with us since early in 1916. Our area in
front of Cambrai was constantly being shelled; probably the enemy was
getting rid of his ammunition dumps in this way, preferring to send his
shells over at us to blowing them up later on. Whatever the reason was,
it was a lively spot, the bridges on the St. Quentin canal among the
woods and his old ammunition dumps in these woods being favourite
targets, the sound of the bursting shells and exploding dumps being
intensified by the trees and hollows.

On the night 4/5th October we took over the line from the 5th Royal
Scots Fusiliers and elements of the 4th K.O.S.B. They had been in action
in an attack against a suburb of Cambrai called the Fauberg de Paris. We
were informed that the line consisted of posts and a redoubt and that
these could not be visited by day, as no communication trenches led up
to them and the ground was under direct machine-gun fire from the enemy.
"D" Company was sent to take over the redoubt; Headquarters was
established in a pill box on a road leading towards Cambrai. This became
a popular rendezvous for tourists in the disguise of gunners and others,
and resulted in some brisk shelling from the enemy, but these pill boxes
were well made and no damage was done. At night we nearly lost our
Quartermaster and rations, as speeding up the road he passed the pill
box, and was only stopped by a forward post from going over to the
enemy by mistake. These discoveries cannot be pleasant and one can
imagine the rations came back even quicker than they went up. "D"
Company found the redoubt they were supposed to be taking over to be a
myth. There was no redoubt, only a maze of trenches a