On September 5th, to the great delight of the overworked remnant of officers, a draft of thirteen fresh ones arrived--Carr, Eupen, Harper, T. W. Jones, Lever, Novelle, Profit, Broad, Roberts, Robinson, Rycroft, Upward, and T. L. Williams. This was a great accession of power, as in the matter of men the battalion was already up to a good fighting strength. But there was still much to be done. Specialists had to be trained, N.C.Os. to be selected, and the general process of amalgamating and consolidating the new material so recently come together to be perfected. A new Quartermaster, Lieutenant Jackson, also reported for duty at this time. The tour in the line ended on September 10th, when the 2/7th K.L.R. once more took over from us, and one platoon per company took charge of the four strong points in the subsidiary line. The only incident in the latter part of the tour was the attempt of a strong patrol of the enemy to round up a patrol of four men from our battalion. The effort was made with determination, and eventually our patrol had to scatter. All reached our line safely, but three of them were wounded in the fight. On September 11th Colonel Fletcher returned from hospital, and the work of organizing and training the battalion was renewed with the greatest energy. Specialist classes both for officers and N.C.Os. were soon hard at work; while for the companies, now so very much changed in their personnel, general training, inspections, close order drill, and all other approved methods for increasing knowledge and morale were in full swing. Meanwhile rumours of a move to a rest area had long been rife. The Division had now been doing trench duty continuously for seven months, and it was quite time that it was taken away for a general overhaul. During all those months we had been kept more or less continuously in the trenches, with no opportunity to improve on the lessons learnt, and nothing to inspire our men to increase their efficiency, beyond the regular round of eight days in reserve and eight days in the line. Already the ordinary wastage of trench warfare, not to mention the disaster of Armentières, had deprived us of many of our best N.C.Os. and men. We had, in fact, lost as many men as if we had been in a battle, but there was not that feeling of satisfaction, such as results from a successful push, to animate the remainder. However that may be, the theory that we were going out to rest grew steadily, and for once proved correct. The idea of a "rest" was not in itself particularly attractive, except that it meant freedom from shell fire, permission to give up wearing the box-respirator, and other little relaxations of that description. As a "rest" in the ordinarily accepted sense of the word, it had long since been discovered to be a fraud, being, in fact, a period of intense activity. Still, it was a change, and possibly meant that the Division would thereafter be required for work a little more stimulating than trench warfare.