The day after the attack we spent carrying the dead down to burial and cleaning the trench up as well as we could. That night the Middlesex held the line while the Royal Welch carried all the unbroken gas-cylinders along to a position on the left flank of the brigade, where they were to be used on the following night, September 27th. This was worse than carrying the dead; the cylinders were cast-iron and very heavy and we hated them. The men cursed and sulked, but got the carrying done. Orders came that we were to attack again. Only the officers knew; the men were only to be told just beforehand. It was difficult for me to keep up appearances with the men; I felt like screaming. It was still raining, harder than ever. We knew definitely this time that ours was only a subsidiary night attack, a diversion to help a division on our right to make the real attack. The scheme was the same as before. At four p.m.the gas was to be discharged again for forty minutes, then came a quartet of an hour’s bombardment, and then the attack. I broke the news to the men about three o’clock. They took it very well. The relations of officers and men, and of senior and junior officers, had been very different in the excitement of the attack. There had been no insubordination, but a greater freedom, as if everyone was drunk together. I found myself calling the adjutant Charley on one occasion; he appeared not to mind it in the least. For the next ten days my relations with my men were like those I had with the Welsh Regiment; later discipline reasserted itself and it was only occasionally that I found them intimate. At four p.m., then, the gas went off again. There was a strong wind and it went over well; the gas-men had brought enough spanners this time. The Germans were absolutely silent. Flares went up from the reserve lines and it seemed as though all the men in the front line were dead. The brigadier decided not to take too much for granted; after the bombardment he sent out twenty-five men and an officer of the Cameronians as a feeling-patrol. The patrol reached the German wire; there was a burst of machine-gun and rifle fire and only two wounded men regained the trench. We: waited on the fire-step from four to nine o’clock, with fixed; bayonets, for the order to go over. My mind was a blank except for the recurrence of ‘S’nice smince spie, s’nice smince spie.... I don’t like ham, lamb or jam and I don’t like roley-poley....’ The men laughed at my singing. The sergeant who was acting company sergeant-major said to me: ‘It’s murder, sir.’ ‘Of course it’s murder, you bloody fool,’ I agreed. ‘But there’s nothing else for it, is there?’ It was still raining. ‘But when I see’s a s’nice smince spie, I asks for a helping twice....’ At nine o’clock we were told that the attack was put off; we were told to hold ourselves in readiness to attack at dawn.