And yet a man who was in the midst of it from beginning to end, came out without a scratch. He was a tall chap named Hunter. For twenty-four hours, without interruption, he threw German “egg-shell” bombs from a position at the center of our barricade. He never stopped except to light a cigarette or yell for some one to bring him more bombs from Fritz’s captured storehouse. He projected a regular curtain of fire of his own. I’ve no doubt the Germans reported he was a couple of platoons, working in alternate reliefs. He was awarded the D. C. M. for his services in that fight, and though, as I said, he was unwounded, half the men around him were killed, and his nerves were in such condition at the end that he had to be sent back to England. One of the great tragedies of the war resulted from a bit of carelessness when, a couple of days later, the effort was made to extend our grip beyond the spot which we took in that first fight. Plans had been made for the Forty-fourth Battalion of the Tenth Canadian Brigade to take by assault the trench section extending to the right from the point where we had established the “block” on our flank. The hour for the attack had been fixed. Then headquarters sent out countermanding orders. Something wasn’t quite ready. The orders were sent by runners, as all confidential orders must be. Telephones are of little use, now, as both our people and the Germans have an apparatus which needs only to be attached to a metal spike in the ground to “pick up” every telephone message within a radius of three miles. When telephones are used now, messages are ordinarily sent in code. But, for any vitally important communication which might cost serious losses, if misunderstood, old style runners are used, just as they were in the days when the field telephone was unheard of. It is the rule to dispatch two or three runners by different routes so that one, at least, will be certain to arrive. In the case of the countermanding of the order for the Forty-fourth Battalion to assault the German position on our flank, some officer at headquarters thought that one messenger to the Lieut.-Colonel commanding the Forty-fourth would be sufficient. The messenger was killed by a chance shot and his message was undelivered. The Forty-fourth, in ignorance of change of plan, “went over.” There was no barrage fire to protect the force and their valiant effort was simply a wholesale suicide. Six hundred out of eight hundred men were on the ground in two and one-half minutes. The battalion was simply wiped out. Several officers were court-martialed as a result of this terrible blunder.