At 9.30 p.m. on June 9th the leading company of the 2/7th K.L.R. began to arrive. At the last moment, owing to the continued harassing fire of the Germans on to the Houplines road, we decided to proceed out by Lunatic Lane in the right battalion sector. This was a long and winding communication trench which so far had sustained little damage. It brought you out by the Lunatic Asylum, and from there you went up the Rue Gambetta and so on to the Rue de Lille. "C" Company remained in the subsidiary line. On arrival in billets we were somewhat astonished to learn that we were under orders to move at one hour's notice, and that guides to bring up reinforcing troops were always to be kept in readiness at Battalion Headquarters. The retirement of the enemy, after the Battle of Messines, from his remaining trenches north of the River Lys had caused the Higher Command to think that a partial retirement might be effected opposite our front also. Consequently some most elaborate schemes to meet this emergency had been issued, and we were now in the throes of trying to draw up, in conjunction with the 2/7th K.L.R., a scheme of movement in the event of the enemy's voluntary withdrawal. We were therefore not a little surprised to find signs that an attack by the Germans might now be expected. The mental effort required to concentrate your attention simultaneously on an advance and a defence--and both had to be fully provided for--and at the same time to attend to the all-absorbing orders and arrangements for the raid, proved somewhat exhausting. For clearness' sake we will take them one by one, but it should be remembered that three sets of orders, and in addition a salvage scheme (a kind of corollary to the advance orders), were all drawn up at the same time, and the difficulty of remembering which you were working on at any particular moment was by no means imaginary. Operation Order No. 22, dated June 15th, 1917, began with the words: "In the event of the enemy voluntarily evacuating his present front line system opposite the battalion frontage, companies will be ready to move forward and occupy the sectors of the enemy line with minimum of delay." The orders ran into fifteen headings with seven appendices and, it need hardly be added, three pages of subsequent amendments, dated July 1st. As the orders, fortunately, were never put into operation, it will be sufficient to deal with them quite briefly. Each company was allotted an area in the enemy front line, and on the word "floreat" fighting patrols, consisting of one officer and twenty-four men, were expected to dash across No Man's Land "at ten minutes' notice." The difficulty of this initial part of the proceedings did not at first occur to the higher authorities, but some weeks later the time allowed was suddenly increased to six hours!