as heat and flies would permit. In that period of
slackness a number of men swarmed up the wall. Instead of sitting where
we had done, they sat on the crest, against the sky-line. Hitherto the
shrapnel had not come nearer than a ridge four hundred yards away,
which had been often and well peppered. But now came the hateful
whistle, and the ridge was swept from end to end with both H.E. and
shrapnel. In our trenches we were spattered with pebbles. Thorpe, next
to me, got a piece of H.E. in his coat. But we escaped a direct hit.
One shell passing overhead skimmed the ridge and burst on the other
side, scattering Colonel Knatchbull's kit and smashing his fishing-rod.
It killed a groom and wounded three other men, and wounded three
horses so badly that they all had to be killed. It is always men on
duty, holding horses or otherwise unable to escape, who pay for the
curiosity of the idle.

Firing continued very heavy till dusk. In the evening I buried the man
killed by the shell, and then went back to find the clearing-station.
Part of a padre's recognized function is to cull and purvey news. And I
had many friends engaged. A couple of miles back I found the 7th
British Field Ambulance, to which my own chief, A.E. Knott, was
attached. The sight here was far more nerve-racking than a battlefield.
It was an open human shambles, with miserable men lying about, some
waiting on tables to be operated on. Knott was about to help in
amputating a leg. In the few words I had with him I learnt that Suffolk
was killed. I think I am right when I say that he was the only man
killed among our 7th Division gunners. (We had other artillery with us,
and they lost heavily.) It seemed strangely mediaeval, as from the days
of Agincourt or Creci, that Death, scarring so many, but forbearing to
exact their uttermost, should strike down so great a name and one that
is written on so many pages of our history. I knew well how many would
mourn the man. I asked Knott the question of questions, 'What are our
casualties?' These, one knew, must be heavy; but I was appalled by his
reply, 'Sixteen hundred to one o'clock.'

I left the wretched scene and went back. Part of the way McLeod, of the
Seaforths, his right arm in a sling, wandered with me, talking dazedly
of the day and its fortunes. I found an officer with whom I had
travelled on a river-boat not long before, when his mind held the
presentiment of death in his first action. He, like McLeod, went o