By March they were back on their fortified Le Transloy-Loupart line, except that they still held the village of Irles above Miraumont, which was linked up to the Le Transloy-Loupart line by a peninsula of wired trenches. Irles was carried by the Second and Eighteenth Divisions on the 10th March. As soon as our guns were able to concentrate on the Le Transloy-Loupart line itself, which they did the day after, the enemy, leisurely as always, released it, and fell back on and through his next line a mile or two behind--Rocquigny-Ablainzevelle--steadied his rear-guards, and continued his progress towards the Hindenburg defences, withdrawing along the whole front from south of Arras to Roye. By the 17th of March word was given for a general advance of our troops in co-operation with the French. To go back a month. Rumours of what was to be expected had cheered the camps for some time past; and just as the fall of single rocks precedes the collapse of an undermined quarry-face, so the German line had crumpled in certain spots long before their system readjusted itself throughout. Front-trenches, far removed from actual points of pressure, observed that life with them was quieter than even the state of the weather justified, and began to make investigations. When the Battalion went up, as usual, on the 15th February to relieve the 2nd Grenadiers in the trenches a little north of Rancourt and opposite St. Pierre Vaast Wood, their casualties for the four days were but three killed and five wounded. “Practically no sniping and very occasional shelling.” They treated it lightly enough, for it was here that the sentry told the conscientious officer who had heard a shell drop near the trench: “Ah, it fell quite convenient here”--a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, and as an afterthought--“’Twas a dud, though.” The ground was still hard, and, to the men’s joy, they could not dig.