The point we were to attack had been selected long before by our scouts. It was not, as you might suppose, the weakest point in the German line. It was on the contrary, the strongest. It was considered that the moral effect of cleaning up a weak point would be comparatively small, whereas to break in at the strongest point would be something really worth while. And, if we were to take chances, it really wouldn’t pay to hesitate about degrees. The section we were to raid had a frontage of one hundred and fifty yards and a depth of two hundred yards. It had been explained to us that we were to be supported by a “box barrage,” or curtain fire from our artillery, to last exactly twenty-six minutes. That is, for twenty-six minutes from the time when we started “over the top,” our artillery, several miles back, would drop a “curtain” of shells all around the edges of that one hundred and fifty yard by two hundred yard section. We were to have fifteen minutes in which to do our work. Any man not out at the end of the fifteen minutes would necessarily be caught in our own fire as our artillery would then change from a “box” to pour a straight curtain fire, covering all of the spot of our operations. Our officers set their watches very carefully with those of the artillery officers, before we went forward to the front trenches. We reached the front at 11 P.M., and not until our arrival there were we informed of the “zero hour”--the time when the attack was to be made. The hour of twelve-ten had been selected. The waiting from eleven o’clock until that time was simply an agony. Some of our men sat stupid and inert. Others kept talking constantly about the most inconsequential matters. One man undertook to tell a funny story. No one listened to it, and the laugh at the end was emaciated and ghastly. The inaction was driving us all into a state of funk. I could actually feel my nerve oozing out at my finger tips, and, if we had had to wait fifteen minutes longer, I shouldn’t have been able to climb out of the trench. About half an hour before we were to go over, every man had his eye up the trench for we knew “the rummies” were coming that way. The rum gang serves out a stiff shot of Jamaica just before an attack, and it would be a real exhibition of temperance to see a man refuse. There were no prohibitionists in our set. Whether or not we got our full ration depended on whether the sergeant in charge was drunk or sober. After the shot began to work, one man next to me pounded my leg and hollered in my ear: “I say. Why all this red tape? Let’s go over now.” That noggin’ of rum is a life saver.