Some of them had rum served out to them. They were the lucky ones, for it gave them a little warmth. But others could not get a drop. One man, who was shaking with an ague when I met him this morning, had a pitiful tragedy happen to him. "I had a jar of rum in my pack," he said, "and the boys said to me, 'Keep it for us till we get over to the first objective. We'll want it most then.' But when I went over I dropped my pack. 'Oh, Christ!' I said, 'I've lost the rum!'" They went over to the attack, these troops who were cold and hungry and exhausted after a dreadful night, and they gained their objective and routed the enemy, and sent back many prisoners. I marvel at them, and will salute them if ever I meet them in the world when the war is done. There were a number of German blockhouses in front of them, beyond Abraham Heights and the Gravenstafel. These were Yetta House and Augustus House and Heine House on the way to Tober Copse and Friesland Copse just outside their line of assault. On their left there was a blockhouse called Peter Pan, though no little mother Wendy would tell stories to her boys there, and instead of Peter Pan's cockcrow there was the wail of a wounded man. Beyond that little house of death were Wolfe Copse and Wolfe Farm, from which the fire of German machine-guns came swishing in streams of bullets. There was no yard of ground without a shell-hole. They were linked together like the holes in a honeycomb, and the German troops, very thick because of their new method of defence--very dense in the support lines though the front line was more lightly held--were scattered about in these craters. Large numbers were killed and wounded when our barrage stormed over them, but numbers crouching in old craters were left alive, and as the barrage passed they rose and came streaming over in small batches, with their hands high--came to meet our men, hoping for mercy. Many prisoners were made before the first objective was reached, and after that by harder fighting. Some of the men in shell-holes, wet like our men and cold like our men, decided to keep fighting, and fired their rifles as our lads struggled forward. The boy who lost his rum-jar met three of these men in a shell-hole, and he threw a bomb at them, and said, "This is to pay back for the gas you gave me a month ago." A little farther on there was another German in a shell-hole. He was a boy of sixteen or so, and he raised his rifle at the lad of the rum-jar, who flung the bayonet on one side by a sudden blow, but not quick enough to escape a wound in the arm. "I couldn't kill him," said the Lancashire lad; "he looked such a kid, like my young brother, so I took him prisoner and sent him down."