heir left was held by the
London Rifle Brigade. The Rangers and the Queen Victoria Rifles--the
old "Vics "--formed their center. Their right was made up by the London
Scottish, and behind came the Queen's Westminsters and the Kensingtons,
who were to advance through their comrades to a farther objective.
Across a wide No Man's Land they suffered from the bursting of heavy
crumps, and many fell. But they escaped annihilation by machine-gun fire
and stormed through the upheaved earth into Gommecourt Park, killing
many Germans and sending back batches of prisoners. They had done what
they had been asked to do, and started building up barricades of earth
and sand-bags, and then found they were in a death-trap. There were no
troops on their right or left. They had thrust out into a salient, which
presently the enemy saw. The German gunners, with deadly skill, boxed it
round with shell-fire, so that the Londoners were inclosed by explosive
walls, and then very slowly and carefully drew a line of bursting shells
up and down, up and down that captured ground, ravaging its earth anew
and smashing the life that crouched there--London life.

I have written elsewhere (in The Battles of the Somme) how young
officers and small bodies of these London men held the barricades
against German attacks while others tried to break a way back through
that murderous shell-fire, and how groups of lads who set out on that
adventure to their old lines were shattered so that only a few from each
group crawled back alive, wounded or unwounded.

At the end of the day the Germans acted with chivalry, which I was not
allowed to tell at the time. The general of the London Division (Philip
Howell) told me that the enemy sent over a message by a low-flying
airplane, proposing a truce while the stretcher-bearers worked, and
offering the service of their own men in that work of mercy. This offer
was accepted without reference to G.H.Q., and German stretcher-bearers
helped to carry our wounded to a point where they could be reached.

Many, in spite of that, remained lying out in No Man's Land, some for
three or four days and nights. I met one man who lay out there wounded,
with a group of comrades more badly hurt than he was, until July 6th.
At night he crawled over to the bodies of the dead and took their
water-bottles and "iron" rations, and so brought drink and food to his
stricken friends. Then at last he made his way through roving shells
to our line