bbing stray Germans who were trying to retreat to a redoubt on the
reverse side of the hill.

For a time there was a kind of Bank Holiday crowd on Hill 70. The German
gunners, knowing that the redoubt on the crest was still held by their
men, dared not fire; and many German batteries were on the move, out of
Lens and from their secret lairs in the country thereabouts, in a state
of panic. On our right the French were fighting desperately at Souchez
and Neuville St.-Vaast and up the lower slopes of Vimy, suffering
horrible casualties and failing to gain the heights in spite of the
reckless valor of their men, but alarming the German staffs, who for
a time had lost touch with the situation--their telephones had been
destroyed by gun-fire--and were filled with gloomy apprehensions.
So Hill 70 was quiet, except for spasms of machine-gun fire from the
redoubt on the German side of the slope and the bombing of German
dugouts, or the bayoneting of single men routed out from holes in the
earth.

One of our men came face to face with four Germans, two of whom were
armed with rifles and two with bombs. They were standing in the wreckage
of a trench, pallid, and with the fear of death in their eyes. The
rifles clattered to the earth, the bombs fell at their feet, and their
hands went up when the young Scot appeared before them with his bayonet
down. He was alone, and they could have killed him, but surrendered,
and were glad of the life he granted them. As more men came up the slope
there were greetings between comrades, of:

"Hullo, Jock!"

"Is that you, Alf?"

They were rummaging about for souvenirs in half-destroyed dugouts
where dead bodies lay. They were "swapping" souvenirs--taken from
prisoners--silver watches, tobacco-boxes, revolvers, compasses. Many
of them put on German field-caps, like schoolboys with paper caps from
Christmas crackers, shouting with laughter because of their German
look. They thought the battle was won. After the first wild rush the
shell-fire, the killing, the sight of dead comrades, the smell of blood,
the nightmare of that hour after dawn, they were beginning to get normal
again, to be conscious of themselves, to rejoice in their luck at having
got so far with whole skins. It had been a fine victory. The enemy was
nowhere. He had "mizzled off."

Some of the Scots, with the hunter's instinct still strong, decided to
go on still farther to a new objective. They straggled away in batches
to on