The only chance of life in these battles is to keep close to the barrage, risking the shorts, for if it once passes and leaves any enemy there with a machine-gun, there is certain death for many men. The New Zealand boys nearly lost that wall of shells because of the mud, but somehow or other managed to scramble on over 800 yards in time enough to catch it up. Many blockhouses yielded up their batches of prisoners, who were told to get back and give no trouble. The first fight for a blockhouse took place at Van Meulen Farm, just outside the New-Zealanders' first objective. The barrage went ahead and sat down--as one of the officers put it, though the sitting down of a barrage is a queer simile for that monstrous eruption of explosive force. From Van Meulen Farm came the swish of machine-gun bullets, and New Zealand boys began to drop. They were held up for half an hour until the "leap-frog" battalions--that is to say, the men who were to pass through the first waves to the next objective--came up to help. It was a New Zealand captain, beloved by all his men for his gallantry and generous-hearted ways, who led the rush of Lewis-gunners and bombers and riflemen. He fell dead with a machine-gun bullet in his heart, but with a cry of rage because of this great loss the other men ran on each side of the blockhouse and stormed it. On the left of the New-Zealanders' line, one of their battalions could see Germans firing from concrete houses on the slopes of the Gravenstafel, and although they had to lose the barrage, which was sweeping ahead again, they covered that ground and went straight for those places under sharp fire. Some of them worked round the concrete walls and hauled out more prisoners. "Get back, there," they shouted, but there was hardly a New-Zealander who would go back with them to act as escort. So it happened that a brigadier, getting out of his dug-out to see what was happening to his men away there over the slopes, received the first news of success from batches of Germans who came marching in company formation under the command of their own officers, and without escort. That was how I saw many of them coming back on another part of the field. From the Abraham Heights there was a steady stream of machine-gun fire until the New-Zealanders had climbed them and routed out the enemy from their dug-outs, which were not screened by our barrage so that they were able to fire. Only the great gallantry of high-spirited young men could have done that, and it is an episode which proved the quality of New Zealand troops on that morning of the battle, so keen to do well, so reckless of the cost. On Abraham Heights a lot of prisoners were taken and joined the long trail that hurried back through miles of scattered shell-fire from their own guns.