At intervals in the night I had sent back messages to our lines describing how imperative reinforcements were, but for hours no reply came to us and I could not but think that in bullet-and-shrapnel-swept No Man’s Land every one of these messengers had fallen. As a matter of fact, two were killed. But two others made our base, and one of these came staggering back to me before dawn, his forehead gashed by shrapnel, but with cheering words that help was soon to come. I bandaged the plucky man’s wound, thanked him warmly for his good service and then--my turn came. Right over us a shell burst. I was whirled around, thrown, staggered to my feet, only to be helplessly tossed again to the ground. This time I got up more slowly, crawled to my knees and stood swaying when two of my men gave me quick support. There was a stinging and burning sensation in my right shoulder, with every second or two swift pangs of pain. My coat had been half ripped off my back. I sat down, leaning against three dead men, while Foster of the Anzacs and a sergeant bared my wounds and examined them under electric trench torches. Partly imbedded in the torn flesh they found a shoulder buckle of my coat and removed it. And then and there also they managed to extract the largest of the pieces of shrapnel that had struck me--the nose of an explosive shell cap and a slug of steel that was found, on subsequent examination, to be one and a half inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. This had scraped my shoulder blade and was protruding from the fleshy portion of the arm. Afterward five smaller pieces of shrapnel were to be removed from the wound. But Foster and the sergeant made a wonderful job of treating the wound with iodine and binding it so that within fifteen minutes such weakness as had seized me passed away, and although the wound hurt and my arm hung numb and useless at my side, I could continue my duties and was able to hang on for many hours more, able to carry the fight back to the sky-line trench when reinforcements came and have the satisfaction of knowing that we were firmly established there and that an expedition of considerable strength was on its way to give battle to the Moquet Farm position. It was a week later while I was in a hospital I got news that the Farm was in our hands. A sharp, overwhelming attack had been delivered in which a battery of French seventy-fives, brought up and concealed in a quarry, aided the infantry with a big band of English and French aviators as well, who swooped right down over the Germans, delivering tornados of machine-gun fire and scared them into complete flight and to the desertion of some of their heaviest guns.