ld a grand sports day and had a band playing. The
men looked splendidly fit and well after their month's rest, and they
displayed a wonderful spirit, talking eagerly of their part in the
coming attack. Alas and alas! At times I could have wept to see these
splendid bronzed men go marching by, the very flower of our English
race. For I knew that very soon I should see few of them again, or few
indeed of their like.

XIV

MAMETZ WOOD

On Sunday September 10, the Brigade left Henencourt, and B.H.Q. went
to the deep dugouts in Mametz Wood. I travelled there with Sergts.
Moffat and Hogg, and we were lucky enough to get good lifts, first in
a Canadian Staff car and then on a motor-lorry. Capt. Bloomer (5th
D.L.I. and attached to B.H.Q.) shared a deep dugout with me, and we
had meals together.

It was the first deep dugout I had entered, and of course it was the
work of the Germans. There were about twenty steps down at either end,
the wooden sides of the stairway scarred with bullet holes and
splinters. Inside there were just two narrow apartments, one for our
bedroom and the other for meals. Though rather draughty it was
comfortable enough and practically shell-proof. Capt. Bloomer had an
unpleasant job, which kept him out late at nights, and I did not envy
him. In order to make the attack, it was decided to dig a forward
trench some way in front of Clark's Trench. The digging was done at
night and cost us a number of casualties from shell and rifle fire.
Capt. Bloomer used to go up every night to see the work done.

The second morning at Mametz Wood I was greatly shocked to hear that
our Brigadier had been killed by a sniper from High Wood, as he was
going out to inspect the forward trench just after dawn. It was nearly
two days before his body could be brought in, owing to the shelling
that went on at night. He was buried at Albert. A few days later
Brigadier-General Ovens, an Irishman, came to take command of the
149th Infantry Brigade.

My job was now to prepare the Brigade bomb stores and to see that the
grenades were properly packed into sandbag carriers for taking up the
line. A special dugout had been prepared as a bomb store near the
Chalk Quarry at Bazentin-le-Petit, but almost at the last moment the
R.A.M.C. commandeered the place for their forward dressing-station. So
the boxes of grenades had to lie in the open in large shell-holes,
covered with German greatcoats, mackintosh sheets, or anything e