On the left, well down the shoulder of the hill towards Thiepval, was the dust-heap of craters and ashes, with odd ends of some shattered timber sticking out of it, which goes by the name of Mouquet Farm. It was a big, important homestead some months ago. To-day it is the wreckage of a log roof, waterlogged in a boundless tawny sea of craters. There is no sign of a trench left in it--the entrances of the dug-outs may be found here and there like rat-holes, about half a dozen of them, behind dishevelled heaps of rubbish. They open into craters now--no doubt each opening has been scratched clear of debris a dozen times. You have to get into some of them by crawling on hands and knees. The first charge took the Western Australians far beyond the farm. They reached a position two hundred yards farther and started to dig in there. Within an hour or two they had a fairly good trench out amongst the craters well in front of the farm. The farm behind them ought to be solidly ours with such a line in front of it. A separate body of men, some of them Tasmanians, came like a whirlwind on their heels into the farm. The part of the garrison which was lying out in front in a rough line of shell craters found them on top of the craters before they knew that there were British troops anywhere about. They were captured and sent back. The Australians tumbled over the debris into the farm itself. The fight that raged for two days on this ridge was not one of those in which the enemy put up his hands as soon as our men came on to him. Far on the top of the hill to the right, and in the maze of trenches between, and in the dug-outs of the farm on the left, he was fighting stiffly over the whole front. In the dim light, as the party which was to take the farm rushed into it, a machine-gun was barking at them from somewhere inside that rubbish yard itself. They could hear the bark obviously very close to them, but it was impossible to say where it came from, whether thirty yards away or fifty. They knew it must be firing from behind one of the heaps of rubbish where the entrances of the dug-outs probably were, firing obliquely and to its rear at the men who rushed past it. They chose the heap which seemed most probable, and fired six rifle grenades all at once into it. There was a clatter and dust; the machine-gun went out like a candle. Later they found it lying smashed at the mouth of a shaft there. [Illustration: THE TUMBLED HEAP OF BRICKS AND TIMBER WHICH THE WORLD KNOWS AS MOUQUET FARM] [Illustration: "PAST THE MUD-HEAPS SCRAPED BY THE ROAD GANGS" (_See p. 192_).]