ll and with a fierce
contempt of death, until he was killed by an answering shot. The
N.C.O.'s took up the command and the men "carried on" until they held
all the chain of craters, crouching and panting above mangled men.

They were hours of anguish for many Germans, who lay wounded and
half buried, or quite buried, in the chaos, of earth made by those
mine-craters now doubly upheaved. Their screams and moans sounding above
the guns, the frantic cries of men maddened under tons of earth, which
kept them prisoners in deep pits below the crater lips, and awful
inarticulate noises of human pain coming out of that lower darkness
beyond the light of the rockets, made up a chorus of agony more than our
men could endure, even in the heat of battle. They shouted across to the
German grenadiers:

"We will cease fire if you will, and let you get in your wounded...
Cease fire for the wounded!"

The shout was repeated, and our bombers held their hands, still waiting
for an answer. But the answer was a new storm of bombs, and the fighting
went on, and the moaning of the men who were helpless and unhelped.

Working-parties followed up the assault to "consolidate" the position.
They did amazing things, toiling in the darkness under abominable
shell-fire, and by daylight had built communication trenches with
head-cover from the crater lips to our front-line trenches.

But now it was the enemy's turn--the turn of his guns, which poured
explosive fire into those pits, churning up the earth again, mixing it
with new flesh and blood, and carving up his own dead; and it was the
turn of his bombers, who followed this fire in strong assaults upon the
Lancashire lads, who, lying among their killed and wounded, had to repel
those fierce attacks.

On May 17th I went to see General Doran of the 25th Division, an
optimistic old gentleman who took a bright view of things, and Colonel
Crosby, who was acting--brigadier of the 74th Brigade, which had made
the attack. He, too, was enthusiastic about the situation, though his
brigade had suffered eight hundred casualties in a month of routine
warfare.

In my simple way I asked him a direct question:

"Do you think your men can hold on to the craters, sir?"

Colonel Crosby stared at me sternly.

"Certainly. The position cannot be retaken overground. We hold it
strongly."

As he spoke an orderly came into his billet (a small farmhouse),
saluted, and handed him a pink slip, which was a telep