It was a record night's work of twelve hundred Lancashire lads who went out into the dead strip between their trenches and the enemy's, and dug like demons. When at dawn they crept back to their own lines they left behind them a trench four-feet-six deep and 1050 yards long for a jump-out line on the day of battle. The enemy officers saw it, and must have sickened at the sight. They marked it on their maps, which were captured afterwards. It was frightful ground in front of these troops of ours, as I have seen it partly for myself from ground about the mine-craters looking over Hell Wood. The first part of our men's advance after the moment of attack was hardly checked, and they went forward in open order as steadily as though in the practice fields, through buttercups and daisies. Their trouble came later, when they found themselves under machine-gun fire from Hell Wood, on the left of their advance line, and from Hell Farm in front of them. It was a body of Cheshires who side-slipped to the left to deal with that fire from the wood. They made a dash for those scarred tree-trunks, from which a stream of bullets poured, and fought their way through to the German machine-gun emplacements, though a number of them fell. As they closed upon the enemy the German gunners ceased fire in a hurry. Many of them stopped abruptly, with bullets in their brains, and fifty men surrendered with fourteen machine-guns. Hell Farm was gained and held, and at the top of Hell Wood the Cheshires routed out another machine-gun, so that all was clear in this part of the field. Meanwhile the main body of assaulting troops--Lancashire Fusiliers, North Lanes, Irish Rifles, and Worcesters--had passed on to another system of defences known as October Trench, which was a barrier straight across their way. Here, as they drew close, they came to a dead halt against a broad belt of wire uncut by our gun-fire, and hideously tangled in coils with sharp barbs. Behind, as some of the officers knew, the enemy had brought up twenty-six machine-guns, enough to sweep down a whole battalion held by wire like this. Even now the men don't know how they went over that wire. They knew instantly that they must get across or die. From October Support Trench, farther back, with another belt of uncut wire in front of it, heavy fire was coming from Germans who had their heads up. "Over you go, men," shouted the officers. The men flung themselves over, scrambled over, rolled over, tearing hands and faces and bits of flesh on those rusty prongs, but getting over or through somehow and anyhow. Parties of them raced on to October Support Trench, flung themselves against that wire and got, bleeding and scratched, to the other side, unless they were killed first. Some of them fell. It was the most deadly episode of the day, but the Germans paid a ghastly price for this resistance, and 300 German dead lie on that ground round the old ruins of Middle Farm behind the wire.