The show was scheduled to come off the next morning at 4.30. That night we gathered at Brigade Headquarters and made the final plans. Each tank had its objective allotted to it, and marked out on the Tank Commander's course. Each tank was to go just so far and no farther. Talbot and Darwin were detailed to go forward as far as possible on foot when the battle was in progress, and send back messages as to how the show was progressing. Talbot also was given the task of going out that night to make the marks in No Man's Land which would guide the tanks in the morning. At eleven o'clock, in the bright moonlight, Talbot, with Johnson and a couple of orderlies, started out. They climbed over the front line, which was at present a railway embankment, crawled into No Man's Land, and set to work. Immediately the Boche snipers spotted them and bullets began to whistle over their heads. Luckily, no one was hit, but a couple of "whizz bangs" dropped uncomfortably close. The men dropped for cover. Only Johnson stood still, his figure black against the white snow gleaming in the moonlight. The shells continued to fall about them as they wriggled back when the work was done. As they reached N---- the tanks were being led up toward the line, so that later, under cover of the darkness, they might be taken farther forward to their starting-points. VI THE FIRST BATTLE At dawn the next morning, the tanks were already lined up, sullen and menacing in the cold half-light. The men shivered in the biting air. One by one the crews entered the machines, and one by one the little steel doors closed behind them. The engines throbbed, and they moved off sluggishly. Darwin and Talbot, with their orderlies, waited impatiently. The moments just before an attack are always the hardest. A few batteries were keeping up a desultory fire. They glanced at their watches. "Only a minute to go," said Darwin. "I bet the show's put off or something. Isn't this snow damnably cold, though!" Suddenly a sixty-pounder in our rear crashed out. Then from all sides a deafening roar burst forth and the barrage began. As we became accustomed to the intensity and ear-splittingness of the sound, the bark of the eighteen-pounders could be faintly distinguished above the dull roar of the eight-inches. The sky-line was lit up with thousands of flashes, large and small, each one showing, for a second, trenches or trees or houses, and during this tornado we knew that the "Willies" must have started forward on their errand. As the barrage lifted and the noise died down a little, the first streaks of light began to show in the sky, although we could distinguish nothing. No sign of the infantry or of the tanks could be seen. But the ominous sound of machine guns and heavy rifle-fire told us that the Boche was prepared.