I leaped up out of the dugout and ran. There was no shell with my name on it that morning. The ground went up a yard away from me half a dozen times but I reached the guns and dived under the camouflage into the trench almost on top of poor old B. who was lying motionless, one arm almost smashed off, blood everywhere. It was he who had said “She’s off!” and lit the candle with a laugh. A man was endeavouring to tie him up. Behind him knelt a sergeant with his face in his hands. As I jumped down into the trench he raised it. “I’m blind, sir,” he said. His right eye was shot away. The others were all right. I went from gun to gun and found them firing steadily. Somehow or other we tied up the subaltern and carried him along the narrow trench. Mercifully he was unconscious. We got him out at last on to a stretcher. Four men went away with it, the sergeant stumbling after. The subaltern was dead before they reached a dressing station. He left a wife and child. There were only the junior subaltern and myself left to fight the battery. He was twenty last birthday and young at that. If I stopped anything there was only that boy between King and country and the Hun. Is _any_ reward big enough for these babes of ours? Perhaps God will give it. King and country won’t. * * * * * Vague forms of moving groups of men could be seen through my glasses in the neighbourhood of Essigny impossible to say whether British or German. The sun was struggling to pierce the mist. The distance was about a thousand yards. We were still firing on the S.O.S. range, as ordered. I became aware of a strange subaltern grinning up at me out of the trench. “Where the devil do you spring from?” said I. He climbed out and joined me on the top, hatless, minus box respirator, cheery. Another babe. “I’m from the six-inch section straight in front, sir,” he said. “They’ve captured my guns. Do you think you could take ’em on?” They _were_ Germans, then, those moving forms! I swept the glasses round once more anxiously. There were six, seven, ten, creeping up the railway embankment on the left flank _behind_ the battery. Where the hell were our infantry reinforcements? My Babe sent the news back to Brigade while I got a gun on top and fired at the six-inch battery in front over open sights at a thousand yards with fuse 4. The Hun was there all right. He ran at the third round. Then we switched and took on individual groups as they appeared.