The German is a good fighter as long as he can rub shoulders with his comrades. But when he gets to close quarters and is opposed to our men with the bayonet he seems to wilt. Our boys have no difficulty in putting him out of business then. I had a Russian in my platoon whose boast was that he personally accounted for one dozen Germans and he had notched his rifle, much against orders, twelve times. His ambition was to get another dozen in this fight. He was in the next shell hole to mine and was eagerly watching for me to give the signal to advance. When I did give it, he went along, and I had little doubt, from the look on his face, that he would get another dozen. I had lost quite a number of men, my platoon was very much diminished, and the platoon sergeant had been killed. As our barrage lifted we advanced and made a dash into the German front line trench, to find nothing there except the mangled German bodies. We ran along the trenches, but could not find anything. By this time our moppers-up were in the trenches, so we left them to look after the dugouts and immediately clambered out and made for the German second line. On the second line we encountered a number of Saxons. They all appeared to be terrified and put up a very feeble resistance. I afterwards learned through a prisoner that these Saxons were sent out in front to resist our advance, and that the Prussian Guards had threatened to shoot them from the rear if they showed any hesitation in going forward. They were made to act as a buffer between us and the Guards. They seemed to be quite young and boyish looking, and did not appear to have any heart for the fight. During this time we were very much annoyed by the Hun aeroplanes which were dropping bombs and firing their machine guns upon us from above. I was glad to see two German aeroplanes brought down, for our aviators were getting busy and there were numerous battles in the air. It was not long until our boys had the air supremacy, and we were left in peace from that quarter. As we advanced with our barrage, a German barrage of machine gun bullets played around us as well as their shells. We got into Cite St. Laurent and followed a German trench for some distance, then out again until we reached what I took to be the church, now in ruins. We now got into a former German communication trench, called "commotion trench" for obvious reasons. There was certainly some commotion here. We had to fight our way up this trench, dodging German stick bombs and rifle grenades, walking over dead German bodies, until we reached our objective, a trench called Nun's Alley. At a certain point I established my Lewis gun section so that they could fire up a certain sector of a trench running at right angles to Nun's Alley, which was originally part of the Hun's strong line of resistance. The battalion was so much reduced in strength that what was left of the whole battalion was required to hold the front line.