After a bombardment of several days, a mine was exploded under the front line and then immediately afterward, at 3:20 A. M. on the morning of the 29th of July and without the slightest warning, the front line troops were enveloped in flames. Where the flames came from could not be seen. All that the men knew was that they seemed surrounded by fierce curling flames which were accompanied by a loud roaring noise and dense clouds of black smoke. Here and there a big blob of burning oil would fall into a trench or a saphead. Shouts and yells rent the air as individual men, rising up in the trenches or attempting to move in the open, felt the force of the flames. The only way to safety appeared to be to the rear. This direction the men that were left took. For a short space the flames pursued them, and the local retirement became a local rout. Then the flames stopped and machine guns began to take toll of the fugitives. Only one man from the front trenches is known to have returned. German infantry following up, poured into the breach in the line, widened it, took our positions as far back as Sanctuary Wood, and then consolidated. Ten days afterward we counter attacked and won back the whole of the line concerned but at very considerable cost. Incidentally, we captured two of the German flame projectors, one of them complete, and they proved to be of the greatest possible use to us subsequently for educating the army in the new warfare, and for inspection by our own experts with a view to their duplication for retaliation. Any one attempting to blame the troops attacked for their retirement can hardly appreciate the circumstances, and, I am convinced, over-estimates his own capacity for resistance. This attack was an utter surprise--the kind of warfare was unknown and unheard of. Imagine being faced by a spread of flame exactly similar to that used for the oil burners under the biggest boilers, but with a jet nearly sixty feet in length and capable of being sprayed round as one might spray water with a fire hose. Personally, I am pretty sure, had I been there, that I should have hopped it if I had not been fried by the heat or frozen with terror. Later, when we knew the limitations of these things it was different, though even then it is a pretty good test of a man’s nerve. The flame projectors taken by the 14th Division in the counter attack were simple but very interesting in construction. The main part was a cylindrical vessel of steel about two feet in height and fifteen inches in diameter provided with straps so that it could be carried on a man’s back. At one side about two-thirds of the way up was a filling hole for oil, closed by a screw cap. Near the top was a pressure gauge attachment and toward the base was a lock closed by a lever handle and to which could be attached a long length of flexible hose ending in a peculiar shaped nozzle.