‘A’ Company worked from seven in the evening until midnight. We must have put thousands of sandbags into position, and fifty yards of front trench were beginning to look presentable. About half-past ten there was rifle-fire on the right and the sentries passed down the news ‘officer hit.’ Richardson at once went along to see who it was. He came back to say: ‘It’s young Thomas. He got a bullet through the neck, but I think he’s all right; it can’t have hit his spine or an artery because he’s walking down to the dressing-station.’ I was pleased at this news. I thought that David would be out of it long enough perhaps to escape the coming offensive and perhaps even the rest of the war. At twelve o’clock we had finished for the night. Richardson said to me: ‘Von Ranke’ (only he pronounced it Von Runicke—it was my regimental nickname), ‘take the company down for their rum and tea, will you? They’ve certainly deserved it to-night. I’ll be along in a few minutes. I’m going out with Corporal Chamberlen to see what work the wiring-party’s been doing all this time.’ So I took the men back. When we were well started I heard a couple of shells come over somewhere behind us. I noticed them because they were the only shells fired that night; five-nines they seemed by the noise. We were nearly back at Maple Redoubt, which was the name of the support line on the reverse side of the hill, when we heard the cry ‘Stretcher-bearers!’ and after a while a man came running to say: ‘Captain Graves is hit.’ There was a general laugh and we went on; but a stretcher-party went up anyhow to see what was wrong. It was Richardson; the shells had caught him and the corporal among the wire. The corporal had his leg blown off, and died of wounds a day or two later. Richardson had been blown into a shell-hole full of water and had lain there stunned for some minutes before the sentries heard the corporal’s cries and realized what had happened. He was brought down semi-conscious; he recognized us, told us he wouldn’t be long away from the company, and gave us instructions about it. The doctor said that he had no wound in any vital spot, though the skin of his left side was riddled, as we had seen, with the chalky soil blown up against him. We felt a relief in his case, as in David’s, that he would be out of it for a while.