However, I went back, left some fresh men in the post and brought my fellows out, leaving orders for the dead to be brought down during the day if possible. As we went back past Brigade I dropped in to report. The General had apparently been up all night and looked very worried. He insisted on seeing the men. They were lying in the mud outside, bleeding and swearing—an awful but a sublime picture. He was deeply moved, and several times under his breath I heard him say, “Marvellous, marvellous, wonderful.” Afterwards, I was told that there were tears in his eyes when he went back into the dug-out. He has had an awful time, poor beggar. _Aug. 12._ Had my face dressed and slept like a baby during the day. At night Brigade reported once more that we held a line of connected posts, and again we went out to try to strengthen them. My party started to wire the Merryway post and barricade the road, and Day went forward with a party on the right. When he got forward to where our wire should have been he found a German party well dug-in—fully 100 yards more forward than they were expected to be. They turned a gun on Day’s party and threw about a dozen bombs at them but he got all his fellows back with only two casualties, and these were brought in later. On my side the covering party were so nervous as to be absolutely useless, so I sent them back, and after that my own revolver was the only cover which the men had. I was crawling about some 50 yards in front of the party when a light went up and I spotted three Huns crouching in a shell-hole with a machine-gun. I had no bombs, so I went back and told the infantry officer, but he wouldn’t do anything. We ceased work about 25 yards away from them. We found the mutilated body of an infantry officer who was killed on the 11th and brought it in. On calling at H.Q. on the way back we were informed, as we now knew to our cost, that our posts were all much farther back than was at first thought, and in some places the Huns were even on the near side of our wire. But for our great good luck in getting bombed we should probably have gone out and wired between the German outposts and their main line. I have seldom known the line to be in a more chaotic state, and I think one more attack would just about put us beyond the count. Every one is nervous, and no one knows where anybody else is.