"At 5.15 we had breakfast, cooked in the travelling cook-waggons. We had to keep going up and down the line most of the time, explaining the scheme to the section commanders. Then Colonel Best-Dunkley went along the line asking questions. The first section commander he dropped on was poor Topping, who had only been put on the particular job last night; he had been somewhere else yesterday when it was all explained. The Colonel asked him what was the interval between his section and the section on his right; he did not know! 'You see, your section commanders don't know their orders,' blinked the Colonel. "7th and 8th platoons were merged into one under Giffin. I commanded the left wing, consisting of the sections of Lance-Corporal Topping and Lance-Corporal Heap. We were the fourth wave, supporting the two platoons of Gratton and Allen who were in the third wave. The idea was that another brigade had taken all the strong points, and our brigade had to push forward past them and penetrate the enemy's lines to a certain distance, consolidate, and repel counter-attacks. The other brigades were supposed to have gone over the top at dawn. So we went over at 7 a.m. We went forward very nicely, under cover of a 'creeping barrage' which was represented by drums rumbling and flags waving. At the little village of (Noir Carme) Giffin went to the right, and I took Topping's and Heap's sections through the village and round to a field the other side where I turned half-left and awaited Giffin's arrival on the right. When he came up we all advanced to our final objective which was in advance of the Battalion's objective. We have to go to the outpost line. Then we sent off flares to signal to the aircraft that we had reached our objective; and then we were supposed to be digging in and putting out wire, patrolling, and resisting counter-attacks! As a matter of fact we sat there for a an hour or two. My two sections were on the extreme left of the whole Brigade.