At 6 p.m. the 2/5th King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment relieved us, and the battalion withdrew to bivouac in an open field just west of Fontaine and on the south side of the Cambrai--Bapaume road. This completed an awkward period of desultory but difficult fighting. We took twenty-one prisoners, with one machine gun and one trench mortar, but had two officers killed and two wounded, while among the men there were fifty-nine casualties. The officers killed were 2nd-Lieutenant Purdie, a most popular and gallant Scotsman who had been with us for a long while, and had seen active service during the greater part of the war; and 2nd-Lieutenant Alty, D.C.M., who had only joined us at Barly, but whose worth we knew, as he won his D.C.M. when serving at Houplines in the ranks of the 2/7th K.L.R. Of the officers wounded, Lieutenant James has been already mentioned; the other was 2nd-Lieutenant Shirt, who, like Alty, had joined us at Barly, and we regretted his swift departure to "Blighty." Among the men the loss of Company Sergeant-Major Woodward, of "C" Company, who was wounded during the concentration in front of the Canal du Nord, was the most serious. He was one of the very old members of the battalion who had risen steadily to warrant rank. He was badly wounded and his subsequent death in hospital was universally deplored. Company Quartermaster-Sergeant G. Lane was promoted to fill the vacancy that had occurred. [Illustration: Official Photograph by permission of The Imperial War Museum.] For the whole of September, during a good part of which the battalion had been engaged in active operations, our casualties had totalled as follows:--Four officers killed and 10 wounded; 47 men killed and 188 wounded; 13 men missing. Our "effective strength" was 34 officers and 708 men, as against 42 officers and 919 men on September 1st. Our "trench strength" was, as always, considerably lower than our "effective strength," as the latter included everyone detached, whether on duty or leave, who was not counted in the war establishment of another unit. Moreover, the Transport, rear headquarters, and the 33⅓ per cent. forming the "nucleus party" have to be further deducted to show the number of "rifles" available for fighting purposes.