The General took me with him to one of his Brigadiers, and on the way in a few vigorous words put renewed heart into two brisk-looking batteries that lay on our road. The soldier who took me forward had the day before got a skin wound on the face from shrapnel, while carrying a message to the staff; it had not prevented him from returning to the front. The General jocularly told him that to-day he would probably get one on the other cheek. As we came out of the wood, we saw a man dodge past us, and the next minute came the explanation in the shape of a shell. The railway ran straight forward up the bare slope; and the enemy was shelling all along this line. A few hundred yards on, behind the lightest of shelters, was a hole in the ground with a telephone, which served during action for the staff of the regiment. I asked for the Colonel, and they pointed to a splendidly built man lying stretched out on the ground. I thought for a moment that he was dead, but he was only lying fast asleep under the shrapnel, after the ceaseless and arduous work of the attack. He stood up and shook himself like some noble animal, standing in the open, much against the wish of his officers. We sat and talked for some hours. The ground where we were had all been won in the night. Our present positions, temporary and little developed, were about five hundred yards further up. Our men were only six hundred yards from the Germans and had orders to advance by short stages. Some of them had already crept forward two hundred yards and were throwing up head cover on the ridge of the slope. Other parts of the ridge were still in the hands of the Germans; their trenches were plainly visible, and they were firing down on us, aiming at anything which stood upright. A soldier was sent by the railway ditch up to the front, so I went with him. The best plan after all was to walk forward, stepping out but without hurry. A little beyond the level of our lines I found some breast-high shelters on the edge of the railway ditch. Here we posted the bearers, who would wait to attend to the wounded. One got a near view of all our front. A group of some twenty men had gone forward together and were entrenching themselves; others at intervals crept forward on their own initiative on different sides; it was rather like men at a Salvation meeting, coming in, one by one, for conversions. As one was halfway up to his comrades, a shrapnel burst with a flare just above him; he lay still for a few minutes and then crawled slowly back, evidently wounded. The twenty had hardly established themselves when three shrapnels and a shell burst at intervals all along their little line. However, the slow process went on, and the line was being gradually levelled up to those who were furthest forward.