My chief effort during those few hurried days was to get into touch with the various units so that I could be of some definite service to them when they went into action. Unfortunately, almost every time I arranged for a service and appeared to hold it the "outfit" would already be on the move. The best service I held was at the village of Buire, where about forty boys gathered together under the trees among the ruined houses. They were a deeply devotional group, told me about their holyday services conducted by a British army chaplain at Doulens, about their fallen comrades for whom they wanted to repeat the memorial prayers, and about their own narrow escapes for which they were eager to offer thanks. They had the deep spiritual consciousness which comes to most men in moments of great peril. I managed to reach most of the infantry regiments, however, by hiking down from the woods and sometimes catching a ride. Everywhere was action. It was the breathing space between our two great battles of the war. Every unit was hoping and expecting a long rest. But that hope could not be fulfilled. The intensity of the drive against the entire German line was beginning to tell and every possible unit was needed in the line to push ahead. So the rest of the Twenty-Seventh Division was brief indeed. Every regiment was starting for the front with no replacements after the terrific slaughter of two weeks before, with very little new equipment and practically no rest. And the front was now further away than it had been. The success of the allied forces meant longer marches for our tired troops. All the villages were devastated in this area. It was the section between Peronne and the old Hindenburg Line. Not until we came to the German side of the Hindenburg Line did we find the villages in any sort of repair. The men lived in cellars without roofs, in rooms without walls or sometimes in barracks which were constructed by either of the opposing armies during the long years of the struggle. Of course, many shelters existed such as our "elephant huts" in the woods or the perfect honeycomb of dugouts in the sides of the quarry at Templeux le Gerard.