The first tour of duty in the Reutel Sector was not a specially eventful one. On February 25th the enemy heavily shelled the front line near the well, blowing in the parapet, causing several casualties, and burying the garrison of a machine gun post. C.S.M. W. Brooke was among the wounded. On this occasion Cpl. H. Kane, M.M., of D Company, behaved with the greatest gallantry. Going to the assistance of the buried men, he quietly set to work to dig them out, and succeeded in doing this, in spite of the heavy bombardment which continued round him, and the fact that he was in full view of an enemy pill-box only about a hundred yards away. For this gallant act he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Early on the morning of February 28th a heavy counter-preparation was put down in front of the line, the higher commands fearing an enemy attack from the direction of Polderhoek Chateau. Except for a certain amount of enemy retaliation, nothing happened. Much attention was paid to the enemy pill-box in front of the Right Company, which has already been mentioned. The Battalion had been detailed to carry out a raid during its next tour, and this pill-box had been selected as the objective. On March 2nd the Battalion was relieved by the 1/5th Battalion York and Lancs. Regt., and moved to Maida Camp. Here training was carried on as well as possible, but was much hampered by lack of suitable ground. The platoon which had been selected to carry out the raid was sent to the 147th Infantry Brigade School to train, as it was to be left out of the line until the night before the raid. When the Battalion returned to the line, after its six days’ rest, preparations for the raid were completed. The plan was as follows:-- 1. The objective was the enemy pill-box already described, which lay rather more than a hundred yards from the line. To the right of it lay an old British tank, stranded and abandoned in one of the attacks of the previous autumn, and known to be occupied by the enemy sometimes. 2. The raiding party was to consist of Sec.-Lieut. L. Gumby and 31 other ranks (one complete platoon) of D Company. Two men of the 147th Light Trench Mortar Battery accompanied the party, carrying with them short-fused Stokes mortar shells, to damage the pill-box. 3. At zero hour (7-0 a.m.) the party was to advance in four sections, one on each flank of the pill-box, one towards it, and one towards the tank. 4. A creeping barrage was to cover the advance, while enemy positions in the vicinity were to be engaged by artillery and trench mortars. Zero hour had been fixed after dawn as the broken nature of the ground made an advance in the dark extremely difficult. [Illustration: _Raid near Reutel._ 13.3.18.]