[Illustration: AMATEUR THEATRICALS BACK OF THE LINE] It was rather a squeeze getting the company stowed away that night, but we managed somehow, and then turned into the kitchen. Here we were entertained with a graphic description by an old hag of how she had been wounded. It seemed that in some of the preliminary fighting she had run across a field between our troops and the Germans and received three bullets. She was quite cheerful about it and showed us two wounds, and when A---- casually asked about the third she collapsed in a chair and went into spasms of laughter. All the rest of the evening she would point her finger at him and start again to tee-hee. A---- was much annoyed. We stayed in that vicinity another day, as it was not certain whether we would be thrown into support in the attacks on the Aubers Ridge at Fromelles or the Bois de Biez, but it was eventually decided that the artillery preparation had been inadequate, and the following night we continued our march southward. Near Locon we passed some of the Indian Cavalry, gigantic-looking men with their turbanned heads. They surveyed us gravely as we passed, one or two flashing brilliant smiles in response to some friendly greeting. Then shortly afterwards we crossed the canal, and without further incident reached the outskirts of Bethune, where we went into bivouac in an open field, being favoured, most fortunately, with fine weather. Our long trek had ended. CHAPTER XIV FESTUBERT, 1915 While the 4th Army Corps were trying to gain a footing on the northern end of the Aubers Ridge near Fromelles the 1st Army was making an equally desperate attempt to the south in front of Festubert, a village already in our hands. But here, as at Neuve Chapelle, we found that the enemy front line, once penetrated, brought us in front of a series of strong points bristling with machine-guns, with dug-outs of almost incredible strength, some of them twenty and thirty feet under ground and safe against anything but the heaviest of field-guns, weapons that we were lamentably short of. We could batter their front line to bits, for, like our own, it was situated on lower ground, and consisted of breastwork parapets owing to the water-soaked state of the whole plain; but their infantry would retire to these deep dug-outs, only emerging when their sentries warned them of the lifting of our fire to permit the attack. We could, and did, drive the enemy from his front line, and once there we held on, but that was as far as we could go, for each of these strong points presented a new and entirely different problem to attack, and required a separate bombardment. Our offensive had started on May 9th and reached its height about the 16th, by which time we had won ground to an average depth of six hundred yards on a front of four miles.