At half past three o'clock that afternoon the Fifth Brigade received its orders and instructions and immediately passed them on and elaborated them to the battalions concerned. By five o'clock the three battalions that were to make the attack were on their way across the open country, advancing in waves. German guns battered them but did not break their alignment. They reached our new trenches and, with the barrage of our own guns now moving before them, passed through and over the victorious survivors of the morning's battle. The French Canadians and the Nova Scotians went first in two waves. Dick Starkley and his platoon were on the right of the front line of the 26th, which was the third wave of attack. "Mopping up" was the battalion's particular job on this occasion. "Mopping up," like most military terms, means considerably more than it suggests to the ear. The mops are rifles, bombs and bayonets; the things to be mopped are machine-gun posts still in active operation, bays and sections of trenches still occupied by aggressive Germans, mined cellars and garrisoned dugouts. Everything of a menacing nature that the assaulting waves have passed over or outflanked without demolishing must be dealt with by the "moppers-up." The two lines of the 26th advanced at an easy walk; there was about five yards between man and man. Each man carried water and rations for forty-eight hours and five empty sandbags, over and above his arms and kit. The men kept their alignment all the way up to the edge of the village. Now and again they closed on the center or extended to right or left to fill a gap. Wounded men crawled into shell holes or were picked up and carried forward. Dead men lay sprawled beneath their equipment, with their rifles and bayonets out thrust toward Courcelette even in death. The "walking wounded" continued to go forward, some unconscious or unmindful of their injuries and others trying to bandage themselves as they walked. Col. MacKenzie led them, and beside him walked a company commander. The two shouted to each other above the din of battle, and sometimes they turned and shouted back to their men. Other officers walked a few paces in front of their men. A bursting shell threw Dick backward into a small crater that had been made earlier in the day and knocked the breath out of him for a few seconds. Frank Sacobie picked him up. The colonel gave the signal to double, and the right flank of the 26th broke from a walk into a slow and heavy jog. Sacobie jogged beside Dick. "Just a year since we came into the line!" shouted Dick. "We were pa'tridge shootin' two years ago to-day!" bawled Sacobie. The colonel turned with his back to Courcelette and his face to his men and yelled at them to come on. "Speed up on the right!" he shouted. "The left is ahead. The 25th is in already. Shake a leg, boys. If they don't move quick enough in front, blow right through 'em."