with Germany, both in their training at home and in France and then in their fighting in the Ypres salient, they enhanced their reputation. When I went over the field of the action of the 27th, I was struck with amazement at the results expected of them, and with awe as I visualized their effort, which like Pickett's charge owes its place in history not to the wisdom of generals but to valor--and that the valor of intelligence. While the British were to advance on the right of the 30th, they were not to succeed in advancing on the left of the 27th, where the canal, emerging from the tunnel's northern end, bends to the west, against the direction of the attack, across the Macquincourt valley, whose wall opposite the tunnel entrance has ravines and hillocks for cover. This area, covered with big shell-craters, sometimes half-filled in by other shell-bursts, included sections of communication trenches, machine-gun emplacements, dugouts, snarls of barbed wire, all in a chaotic disorder which had no system to the casual glance, except that every square yard of it was suited to desperate resistance by skilful soldiers. The 27th's left was to sweep across this valley over the ridge, and then throw out forces of exploitation for protection of its flank in face of the well-intrenched unfordable canal and the high ground behind it; after the canal tunnel had been taken, other forces were to swing north, while the British Third Corps, which had not been sent in a frontal attack against the open canal positions--over ground infinitely more difficult than at the other end of the tunnel,--was, with the aid of this support, to "join up." It could hardly be said of that plan, as of many others for swinging open the double doors against trench systems, that it even looked well on paper; but it was the plan adopted after thorough consideration by practical soldiers. The Germans, of course, had information that an offensive was in preparation on this front, and that it would include the ridge over the canal tunnel. With their reserves in the tunnel ready, they would wait on its development before sending them to the point where they would do the most service. Anticipating their prevision, our command gave instructions that as we reached the openings in the tunnel they were to be guarded, thus preventing the egress of the Germans except as prisoners from their great dugout, in the same manner that trench dugouts were breached in an attack. That this could not be done in face of the numbers of the enemy emerging after our first wave had passed is not a criticism of the men who fought all day to do it.