officers told me later what happened to himself. It had been agreed to advance by platoon rushes with supporting fire. When his platoon had run about twenty yards he signalled them to lie down and open covering fire. The din was tremendous. He saw the platoon on the left flopping down too, so he whistled the advance again. Nobody seemed to hear. He jumped up from his shell-hole and waved and signalled ‘Forward.’ Nobody stirred. He shouted: ‘You bloody cowards, are you leaving me to go alone?’ His platoon sergeant, groaning with a broken shoulder, gasped out: ‘Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they’re all f——ing dead.’ A machine-gun traversing had caught them as they rose to the whistle. ♦ “the the” replaced with “the” Our company too had become separated by the shelling. The Surrey-man got a touch of gas and went coughing back. The Actor said he was skrim-shanking and didn’t want the battle. This was unfair. The Surrey-man looked properly sick. I do not know what happened to him, but I heard that the gas was not much and that he managed, a few months later, to get back to his own regiment in France. I found myself with The Actor in a narrow trench between the front and support lines. This trench had not been built wide enough for a stretcher to pass the bends. We came on The Boy lying on his stretcher wounded in the lungs and the stomach. Jamaica was standing over him in tears, blubbering: ‘Poor old Boy, poor old Boy, he’s going to die; I’m sure he is. He’s the only one who was decent to me.’ The Actor found we could not get by. He said to Jamaica: ‘Take that poor sod out of the way, will you? I’ve got to get my company up. Put him into a dug-out or somewhere.’ Jamaica made no answer; he seemed paralysed by the horror of the occasion. He could only repeat: ‘Poor old Boy, poor I old Boy.’ ‘Look here,’ said The Actor, ‘if you can’t shift him into a dug-out we’ll have to lift him on top of the trench. He can’t live now and we’re late getting up.’ ‘No, no,’ Jamaica shouted wildly. The Actor lost his temper and shook Jamaica roughly by the shoulders. ‘You’re the bloody trench-mortar wallah, aren’t you?’ he asked fiercely. Jamaica nodded miserably. ‘Well, your battery is a hundred yards from here. Why the hell aren’t you using your gas-pipes on that machine-gun in the Pope’s Nose? Buzz off back to them.’ And he kicked him down the trench. Then he called over his shoulder: ‘Sergeant Rose and Corporal Jennings, lift this stretcher up across the top of the trench. We’ve got to pass.’ Jamaica leaned against a traverse. ‘I do think you’re the most heartless beast I’ve ever met,’ he said weakly.