The morning of the 2nd was a beautiful summer's day; nature was in perfect repose; the birds sang gayly, the humming of bees and fragrance of flowers filled the air. We were busily engaged making our morning ablutions in some shell holes when, like a bolt from the blue, hell broke loose in the form of the most violent bombardment I had experienced up to that time, lasting twenty minutes, missiles of every kind raining down on us on all sides. "Stand to!"--and we waited. At the end of twenty minutes our men started jumping out of their trenches ahead of us and charging across. They were met by the enemy in mass formation and overwhelmed. They died to a man. The Germans pressed the attack home and came on, yelling like fiends incarnate, drunk with the joy of their apparent success and promised victory. On they came, apparently irresistible. We commenced firing, and I had the satisfaction of seeing gaps blown in their ranks and many of them biting the dust. Our poor little battery, however, feazed them but little. And I want to say right at this time that the idea that seems to be prevalent in the minds of many that the German is not a good fighting man is a lamentable mistake; he is a good fighter. He has not perhaps the initiative of the British, or the avalanche-like ardor in a charge of the French soldier, but with his officers pressing him behind and in mass formation, he is as formidable a foe as can be imagined. Our ammunition was exhausted, not a shell remaining, and we grabbed our rifles, retreating with the rest, and sniping and dropping as we fell back. We took parts of the guns with us to prevent Fritz making use of it, and threw them into a shell hole filled with water, as they were too heavy to carry and manipulate our rifles at the same time, and that ability was much more precious to us at that particular time than the gun-parts. One of my chums had been wounded in the pit before we retired, and was later taken prisoner, and two of my other chums were killed in the general retreat. My pals with the other guns, forty feet to our right, did not get all of their ammunition off before the Boches were upon them, and they, too, died there; they were incinerated alive in their little pit by smoke shells that started everything ablaze as they exploded. The retreat ended in Maple Copse Woods, where we established ourselves and held the Germans, they resting at the edge of Sanctuary Woods. Under orders, I and my partner started for Zillebeke, about 400 yards back from Maple Copse, where we established an observation station, with the necessary telephonic communication to headquarters, which, when done, was taken in charge by a relief party from another battery, and I returned to Belgian Gardens at 11:30 A.M., where I was put in charge of another gun crew.