On the evening of the 27th, at the usual short notice, the battalion was ordered forward to the reserve trenches. As has already been remarked, these sudden moves are very trying, and this one proved to be particularly so. The battalion was now leaving the last limits of what in such an area might be called civilization. Consequently rations, equipment, and ammunition had to be completed for the whole period in the desolate country into which we were now to penetrate. The scene that followed will not easily be forgotten. The march to Eagle Trench, which brought us into close proximity with the trench area, was made under considerable difficulties, owing to the large number of gas shells which were falling in the area. At one point on the duck-board track along which the battalion was winding its way in single file, Colonel Fletcher at its head, a large working party of another battalion was halted and blocking the way. This working party was held up in front by heavy enemy shell fire, which was falling on a road across which the track ran. After waiting some forty minutes, it was observed that the shell fire, which covered about 200 yards of the road, was being lifted at regular intervals of about fifteen minutes on to a different sector of the road, and after another fifteen minutes brought back to the former objective. Time was getting on, so Colonel Fletcher decided to try to rush his battalion through next time the bombardment lifted from the immediate neighbourhood of the track; and with this end in view arranged with the officer commanding the working party in front to get his men off the track to give the 2/6th K.L.R. a clear run through. It was known from a reconnaissance made the previous day that the track crossed the road and then the stream called the Steenbeck on the far side of it. The Commanding Officer calculated that he would just have time to get his battalion across the road and over the Steenbeck before the barrage returned to the track. Word was passed down the battalion from front to rear to be prepared to travel at the fastest possible speed, and at a correctly judged moment a move forward was ordered. The working party in front had meanwhile got off the track, so good progress could be made over the 200 yards which remained to be covered before the road was reached. When the head of the battalion arrived at the road, the unpleasant discovery was made that the bridge over the Steenbeck had been destroyed by the bombardment. An officer succeeded in crossing the stream by the trunk of a fallen tree, but on his return reported that the track on the other side had also been destroyed for a considerable distance, and that the place where it recommenced again could not be found in the darkness. The Commanding Officer came to an instant decision and ordered the column to turn to the left along the road in a north-easterly direction, with the intention of reaching another road which ran north-west through the