A hundred yards further on I came upon a scene which afforded some relief to the tragedies of the day. A short bantam-like British Tommy was cursing and swearing volubly at a burly German sitting on the ground rubbing his head and groaning like a bull. Tommy, with a souvenir cigar in his mouth, was telling him in his best cockney English to get a move on. "What's the matter?" I said. "Well, sir, it's like this. This 'ere cove is my own prisoner and 'e's been giving me no end of trouble, tried to pinch my gun, sir, 'e did, so I 'it 'im on 'is head, but 'e ain't 'urt, sir, not a bit, are yer, Fritz? Come on." And Fritz, thinking discretion the better part of valour, got up, and Tommy strutted off with his big charge as happy as a peacock. CHAPTER XXIV FIGHTING IN A SEA OF MUD Inspecting a Tank that was _Hors de Combat_--All that was Left of Mouquet Farm--A German Underground Fortress--A Trip in the Bowels of the Earth--A Weird and Wonderful Experience. After our successful attack and capture of Lesboeufs and Morval on September 25th, 1916, beyond consolidating our gains there was comparatively little done in the way of big offensives until the capture of Mouquet Farm and Thiepval and the capture of Beaumont Hamel--that fortress of fortresses--on November 13th, and I devoted the interval to recording the ground won. One interesting incident occurred when I filmed Mouquet Farm situate between Pozières and Thiepval. Looking at the Farm from the strategical point of view, I feel quite confident in saying that only British troops could have taken it. It was one of the most wonderful defensive points that could possibly be conceived, and chosen by men who made a special study of such positions. The whole place was thickly planted with machine-guns, so cunningly concealed that it was impossible to observe them until one was practically at the gun's mouth. To get here it was necessary to go down a long steep glacis, then up another to the farm. The Germans, with their network of underground passages and dug-outs, were able to concentrate at any threatened point with their machine-guns in such a manner that they would have our troops under a continual stream of lead for quite one thousand yards without a vestige of cover. The farm had been shelled by our artillery time after time, until the whole ground for miles round was one huge mass of shell-craters, but the Germans, in their dug-outs forty and fifty feet underground, could not be reached by shell-fire. I will not go into details of how the place was eventually taken by the Midlanders--it will remain an epic of the war.