A transport limber had been smashed by a shell. The wounded horses had dragged it along and fallen outside the cellar entrance. One man had both legs cut short at the knees. He was still alive, but evidently dying. They left him, lifted down the other man and carried him into the cellar. A large shell splinter had smashed his right knee. He was conscious, but weak. They got out his field-dressing and iodine and dripped iodine on the wound. At the pain of burning disinfectant the man turned deadly pale and nearly fainted. Winterbourne found that his hands and clothes were smeared with blood. Then came the problem of getting the man away to a dressing station. The Corporal and the four men refused to budge. The shells were crashing continuously outside. Winterbourne started out to get a stretcher and the new stretcher-bearer, groping his way through the darkness. Outside their billet he tripped and fell into a deep shell hole, just as a heavy exploded with terrific force at his side. But for the fall he must have been blown to pieces. He scrambled to his feet, breathless and shaken, and tumbled down the cellar stairs. He noticed scared faces looking at him in the candle-light. He explained what had happened. The stretcher-bearer jumped up, got his stretcher and satchel of dressings, and they started back. Every shell which exploded near seemed to shake Winterbourne’s flesh from his bones. He was dazed and half-frantic with the physical shock of concussion after concussion. When he got back in the cellar he collapsed into a kind of stupor. The stretcher-bearer dressed the man’s wound, and then looked at Winterbourne, felt his pulse, gave him a sip of rum and told him to lie still. He tried to explain that he must help carry the wounded man, and struggled to get to his feet. The stretcher-bearer pushed him back: “You lie still, mate, you’ve done enough for to-day.” [ XI ] The battle on their part of the Front died down into long snarling artillery duels, gas bombardments, fierce local attacks and counter-attacks. Farther south it flamed up again with intense preludes of drum-fire. What was left of the Pioneer Company returned to more normal occupations. So far as they were concerned, one great advantage of the battle was that the Germans had been driven from the long slag-hill, and from a large portion of Hill 91. By fierce counter-attacks the Germans regained much of the lost ground on Hill 91, but they never came anywhere near recovering the slag-hill. The ground they had lost farther south made that impossible. Consequently, some of the worst features of the salient were at last obliterated, and they were no longer under such close observation or enfiladed by machine-guns.