The only features not included were the hidden concrete “pill-boxes” supporting each other behind his line, on which the enemy was basing his new and unpleasant system of elastic defence. But, allowing for inevitable unrealities, there is no doubt that training “on the model” supplies and brings a battalion to hand better than any other device. The men grow keen as they realise by eye what is to be expected; talk it over afterwards (there are certain analogies between trench-to-trench attack and “soccer”); the N.C.O.’s discuss with the officers, and the battalion commander can check some preventable errors before the real thing is loosed. His Majesty the King came on the 6th July to watch a brigade attack in the new formation. It was a perfect success, but the next week saw them sweated through it again and again in every detail, till “as far as the Battalion was concerned the drill of the attack was reduced almost to perfection.” In their rare leisure came conferences, map- and aeroplane-study, and, most vital of all, “explaining things to the N.C.O.’s and men.” They wound up with a model of a foot to a hundred yards, giving all the features in the Battalion’s battle-area. The men naturally understood this better than a map, but it was too small. (“’Twas like a doll’s-house garden, and it looked you would be across and over it all in five minutes. But we was not! We was not!”) On the 14th, in hot weather, the move towards the cockpit began. They bivouacked in certain selected woods that gave cover against searching planes, who knew as much about it as the enemy staff did, and bombed all movements on principle.