When you are out wiring you forget all about being in No Man’s Land, unless the Germans are sniping across. The work is one that absorbs all your interest, and your one concern is to get the job done quickly and well. I really cannot remember whether the enemy had been sniping or not (I use the word “sniping” to denote firing occasional shots across with fixed rifles sited by day). I remember that I forgot all about Captain Wetherell and his Lewis-gun positions, as soon as I was outside the bombing post at 80A. There were about fifteen yards between this post and the crater-edge, where I had a couple of “A” Company bombers out as a covering party. But in this fifteen yards were several huge shell-holes, and we were concealing the wire in these as much as possible. It was fascinating work, and I felt we could not get on fast enough with it. After a time I went along to Owen, whose party was working on my left. Here Corporal Dyson and four men were doing well also. All this strip of land between the trench and the crater edge was an extraordinary tangle of shell-holes, old beams and planks, and scraps of old wire. Every square yard of it had been churned and pounded to bits at different times by canisters and “sausages” and such-like. Months ago there had been a trench along the crater edges; but new mines had altered these, and until we had dug the deep, narrow trench between 80A and 81A about a fortnight ago, there had been no trench there for at least five months. The result was a chaotic jumble, and this jumble we were converting into an obstacle by judiciously placed concertina wiring. I repeat that I cannot remember if there had been much sniping across. I had just looked at my luminous watch, which reported ten past one, when I noticed that the sky in the east began to show up a little paler than the German parapet across the crater. “Dawn,” I thought, “already. There is no night at all, really. We must knock off in a quarter of an hour. The light will not be behind us, but half-past one will be time to stop.” I was lying out by the bombers, gazing into the black of the crater. It was a warm night, and jolly lying out like this, though a bit damp and muddy round the shell-holes. Then I got up, told Corporal Evans to come in after fixing the coil he was putting up, and was walking towards 80A post, when “Bang” I heard from across the crater, and I felt a big sting in my left elbow, and a jar that numbed my whole arm. “Ow,” I cried out involuntarily, and doubled the remaining few yards, and scrambled down into the trench. Corporal Dyson was there. “Are you hit, sir?” “Yes. Nothing much--here in the arm. Get the wirers in. It’ll be light soon.”