It was where gaps existed and gallantry went blindly forward, unable in the fog of shell-smoke to see whether the units on the right or the left were up, that these sacrifices of heroism were made; but where command was held over the line and the opposition was not of a variable kind counsel was taken of the impossible and retreat was ordered. That is, the units turned back toward their own trenches under direction. They had to pass through the same curtain of shell fire in returning as in charging, and ahead of them through the blasts they drove their prisoners. "Never mind. It's from your own side!" said one Briton to a German who had been knocked over by a German "krump" when he picked himself up; and the German answered that this did not make him like it any better. Scattered with British wounded taking cover in new and old shell-craters was No Man's Land as the living passed. A Briton and his prisoner would take cover together. An explosion and the prisoner might be blown to bits, or if the captor were, another Briton took charge of the prisoner. Persistently stubborn were the captors in holding on to prisoners who were trophies out of that inferno, and when a Briton was back in the first-line trench with his German his delight was greater in delivering his man alive than in his own safety. Out in No Man's Land the wounded hugged their shell-craters until the fire slackened or night fell, when they crawled back. Where early in the morning it had appeared as if the attack were succeeding reserve battalions were sent in to the support of those in front, and as unhesitatingly and steadily as at drill they entered the blanket of shell-smoke with its vivid flashes and hissing of shrapnel bullets and shell-fragments. Commanders, I found, stood in awe of the steadfast courage of their troops. Whether officers or men, those who came out of hell were still true to their heritage of English phlegm. Covered with chalk dust from crawling, their bandages blood-soaked, bespattered with the blood of comrades as they lay on litters or hobbled down a communication trench, they looked blank when they mentioned the scenes that they had witnessed; but they gave no impression of despair. It did not occur to them that they had been beaten; they had been roughly handled in one round of a many-round fight. Had a German counter-attack developed they would have settled down, rifle in hand, to stall through the next round. And that young officer barely twenty, smiling though weak from loss of blood from two wounds, refusing assistance as he pulled himself along among the "walking wounded," showed a bravery in his stoicism equal to any on the field when he said, "It did not go well this time," in a way that indicated that, of course, it would in the end.