billeted near by in a hamlet called Blanc Pignon, where the next six weeks
were spent. The troops were well housed in this place, which was very
clean in comparison with the other villages in which the Battalion
sojourned from time to time. Each man was given a new suit, deficiencies
in kit were made up, and the companies soon began to resume their normal
appearance. Leave opened, and it was possible for those who wished to have
day trips to Calais, and one or two of the more fortunate managed to get
seaside leave at Paris Plage or Wimereux. The time spent at Blanc Pignon
passed without special incident, except that one night there was a bombing
raid by which the Germans obviously hoped to blow up the ammunition dump
which was in close proximity to the billets. Fortunately, although many
were dropped, not one of the bombs was effective enough to explode the
ammunition. During the raid a large Gotha aeroplane was caught in the beam
of one of the searchlights, and this was the first occasion the men saw
this particular type of machine.

Despite the training the men had undergone before the battle, there was a
good deal of time devoted to field work, as in view of the experience
gained and the lessons learned in the recent attack new tactics had to be
evolved. Until the Third Battle of Ypres, the chief obstacles to the
advance of the British had been the German wire entanglements. The fuses
on the British shells had always permitted the shells to bury themselves
to some extent before exploding. This meant that a crater was formed, and
though the enemy wire in the immediate vicinity of the crater would be
destroyed, the obstacle effect of the whole entanglement remained almost
in its entirety. A new fuse which was known as No. 106 was introduced in
1917, by means of which the shells would explode instantaneously on
impact, and the splinters would destroy the wire over a much bigger area
than had formerly been the case. The artillery could now ensure the proper
cutting of the enemy wire entanglements, and it had been anticipated that