[Illustration: HAUTMONT, CAPTURED BY 126TH BRIGADE ON NOV. 8, 1918. THE BRIDGES WERE ERECTED BY THE DIVISIONAL ENGINEERS.] At 6.30 a.m. on the 6th—about three hours after the completion of the relief—the advance was resumed, with the 5th E. Lancs. on the right and the 8th Manchesters on the left. There could be little artillery support as the difficulties of movement through the vast expanse of forest had increased with the continuous rain and the heavy traffic over the soft tracks, and though officers and men of the artillery brigades worked like heroes they could not accomplish the impossible. The 5th E. Lancs. gained their objective—the road running south from Les 5 Chemins and Hoisies Farm—after severe fighting and numerous casualties, inflicted mainly by the enemy machine-guns strongly posted in the neighbourhood of Hoisies Farm and, further south, in the orchards and gardens between Petit Bayay and the River Sambre. On the left the progress of the 8th Manchesters was slower. Their left flank was entirely exposed to intense machine-gun fire, particularly from Hargnies to the north-east and Coutant to the north, and their casualties were serious, one company losing all officers but one. They had to make a way through numerous thick hedges, every gap of which was under direct machine-gun fire, and despite gallant attempts to go forward the battalion was held up on a line between one hundred and two hundred yards east of the forest boundary. Fighting continued until darkness supervened, when the troops lay on the roadside, in ditches, or under hedges, in the cold and rain. The 10th Manchesters, in close support, experienced the same trying conditions. As the nearest point to which ambulances could be brought was two and a half miles in rear of the fighting, the evacuation of the wounded was a matter of much difficulty. The badness of the roads and tracks and the persistence of enemy shelling and machine-gun fire on all forward roads gave a heavy and dangerous task to the stretcher-bearers. It was largely due to the energy of Lieut.-Colonel Callam, D.S.O., commanding the 1st Field Ambulance, in rearranging and supervising the system of evacuation, that the wounded were successfully cleared. The R.E. and the Pioneer Battalion worked day and night on the road craters and blown culverts in the Mormal Forest, and gradually the routes were opened up.