“At this moment we caught our first sight of the Germans. They were in a trench of sorts, which ran in and out among the ruins. Some of them had their hands up. Others were kneeling and holding their arms out to us. Still others were running up and down the trench distractedly as if they didn’t know which way to go, but as we got close they went down on their knees, too. To the everlasting good name of the Irish soldiery, not one of these Germans, some of whom had been engaged in slaughtering our men up to the very last moment, was killed. I did not see a single instance of a prisoner being shot or bayoneted. When you remember that our men were now worked up to a frenzy of excitement, this crowning act of mercy to their foes is surely to their eternal credit. They could feel pity even in their rage. ONLY TWO OFFICERS LEFT “By this time we had penetrated the German front line, and were on the flat ground where the village once stood, surrounded by a wood of fairly high trees. There was no holding the men back. They rushed through Ginchy, driving the Germans before them. The German dead were lying everywhere, some of them having been frightfully mangled by our shell-fire. As I was clambering out of the front trench, I felt a sudden stab in my right thigh. I thought I had got a ‘blighty’ [a wound serious enough to send him back to Britain], but found it was only a graze from a bullet, and so went on. [Illustration: _Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._ Captain Douglass Campbell _Pilot, Air Service_ On May 19, 1918, Captain Campbell shot down an enemy biplane east of Flirey. On May 27th, at Montsec, he shot down one German machine and drove two others behind their lines. On May 28th he brought down a German Albatros and drove five others back. On May 31st, over Lironville, he shot down an enemy plane and routed another. On June 5th, though shot through the back, he destroyed another German machine over Eply.] “I managed to find my men without difficulty. They had rushed through the ruins of the village and were almost a hundred yards beyond the wood, where the ground dips down slightly into a shallow valley and mounts up gradually to a ridge about half a mile away. We were facing south here, having Delville Wood away to our left and Leuze Wood on our right. —— and I were the only two officers left in the company, so it was up to us to take charge. There were not more than half a dozen officers in this part of the line, and so we had a great deal of work to do. We could see the Germans hopping over the distant ridge like rabbits, and we had some difficulty in preventing our men from chasing them, for we had orders not to go too far. “We got them—Irish Fusiliers, Inniskillings, and Dublins—to dig in by linking up the shell craters, and though the men were tired (some wanted to smoke and others to make tea), they worked with a will, and before long we had got a pretty decent trench outlined. SCENES AMONG PRISONERS