Teutonic preparations went ahead. The Allies took little stock of these preparations, not believing that the enemy had much kick left in him. Instead of organising our defence we planned a new attack upon the Germans, and to the astonishment and chagrin of the latter the Byng Boys carried off the laurels of the Battle of Cambrai. Fritz was taken by surprise in late November, and we nearly went all the way to Cambrai. Fleet Street wished to have joy-bells rung in London, but the Church wisely bade us wait, while wrathful Germany averred that we had gone into a trap in which we should presently be terribly caught. Then in the break-through of Gouzeaucourt we learned the lesson that a new and more dangerous enemy was in front of us. As you walk now along the Byng Boys way on a November afternoon and the sun goes down in greyness and gloom you can feel the mystery of the battle as if it had occurred hundreds of years ago. Reality has become remote, remote as the last songs and shouts of the men who went through. Sadness has covered the earth. It is all incredibly empty and desolate. On a post on the road you discern through the evening mist ICI BOURSIES and then after much plodding you pass the grey empty Canal du Nord with its crumpled rusty bridges, and skirt the naked bones of Bourlon Wood. Then by the side of the road all the dead of Anneux are lined up to see you pass. You go on, but _they_ remain. It seems as if when you have passed some spectral sergeant must say to all those pallid ranks "Fall out!" and the order is broken up, and the dead mingle and commingle till another comes past upon the broad highway. Night settles like a curtain shutting off Cambrai from the view, and no light on any hand tells of a return to home or of happiness restored. Suddenly the silence is broken by three blundering lorries--old lorries of the war tearing past you back on the road to Bapaume--ghostly lorries laden with doors, doors only, to be dumped at some wilderness somewhere which was once a town. They pass, and the night-silence resumes its sway, and there are no stars but it is utter peace. Again a spectral post--ICI FONTAINE, ICI FONTAINE NOTRE DAME, and you have reached the end of the fight, and the bridge where life met death and both stood at last immobile, unyielding.