immediately after the airman's visit, and I could see the heavy
shells bursting in the village at the cross-roads behind us. They
were throwing the big shells there to prevent reinforcements from
coming up. They evidently did not know, any more than we did, that
there were none to come, the artillery having been withdrawn the
night before.

Some of the big shells threw the dirt as high as the highest trees.
When the shells began to fall in our part of the trench, I crouched
as low as I could in the soggy earth, to escape the shrapnel bullets.
Soon I got to know the sound of the battery that was dropping the
shells on us, and so knew when to take cover. One of our boys to my
left was hit by a pebble on the cheek, and, thinking he was wounded,
he fell on the ground and called for a stretcher-bearer. When the
stretcher-bearer came, he could find nothing but a scratch on his
cheek, and all of us who were not too scared had a laugh, including
the boy himself.

I think it was about one o'clock in the afternoon that the Germans
broke through the trench on our right, where Major Bing-Hall was in
command; and some of the survivors from that trench came over to
ours. One of them ran right to where I was, and pushed through the
hole I had made in the hedge, to get a shot at the enemy. I called
to him to be careful, but some sniper evidently saw him, for in less
than half a minute he was shot dead, and fell at my side.

An order to "retreat if necessary" had been received before this, but
for some reason, which I have never been able to understand, was not
put into effect until quite a while after being received. When the
order came, we began to move down the trench as fast as we could, but