IT was all apt to be desperately confusing—the smoke, the shapeless shell-cratered ground, the deafening unceasing tempest of noise—but out of all this confusion and the turmoil of their attack there were one or two things that remained clear in the mind of Corporal; and after all they were the things that counted. One was that he was in charge for the moment of the remains of the company, that when their last officer was knocked out he, Corporal Ackroyd, had taken the officer’s wrist watch and brief instructions to “Carry on—you know what to do”; and the other that they had, just before the officer was casualtied, reached the “pink-line objective.” * * * * * Without going too closely into the detailed methods of the attack—the normal methods of this particular period—it is enough to say that three objective lines had been marked up on the maps of the ground to be taken, a pink, a purple, and a “final objective” blue-black line. Between the moment of occupying the pink line and the move to attack the purple there were some twelve minutes allowed to bring supports into position, to pour further destructive artillery fire on the next objective, and so on. Corporal Ackroyd, in common with the rest of the battalion, had been very fully instructed in the map position, and rehearsed over carefully-measured-out ground in practice attack, and knew fairly well the time-table laid down. Before the officer was carried back by the bearers he gave one or two further simple guiding rules. “Send back a runner to report. If nobody comes up to take over in ten minutes, push on to the purple line. It’s the sunk road; you can’t mistake it. Keep close on the barrage, and you can’t go wrong”; and finally, “Take my watch; it’s synchronised time.” Ackroyd sent back his runner, and was moving to a position where he could best keep control of the remains of the company, when there came an interruption. “Some blighter out there flappin’ a white flag, Corporal,” reported a look-out, and pointed to where an arm and hand waved from a shell-hole a hundred yards to their front. The Corporal was wary. He had seen too much of the “white-flag trick” to give himself or his men away, but at the same time was keenly sensible of the advantage of getting a bunch of Germans on their immediate front to surrender, rather than have to advance in face of their fire. There was not much time to spare before the laid-down moment for the advance.