On the 21st, at the discomfortable hour before earliest dawn, our R.E. Company began to send over gas from four-inch Stokes mortars and projectors, and our own two-inch Stokes in the front line strove to cover the noise by separate rapid fire. Thanks to past practice with the box-respirators, in which our perspiring men had at last learned to work, there were no casualties when a gas “short” burst just behind the front line. It was their first acquaintance with gas-shells but, all told, only one officer and five men were gassed, nearly all of whom returned to duty in a few days. The relief was a small action in itself, for the companies had to be extricated one by one, and “the dispositions of the relieving battalions were different from ours.” Nor was it a clean departure, since the back-lines were more and more crowded with fatigue-parties, each claiming right of way, and the Battalion was held up in Hunter Street, which at its widest was perhaps four feet and a half, by a couple of hundred men shifting trifles such as mats and bridges towards the firing-line. When they were getting away between Bleuet and Marguerite Farms, Lieutenant Keenan was hit in the thigh by a splinter of shell. That tour cost the Battalion six officers killed or wounded and sixty casualties in other ranks. Considering the shelling, the heavy traffic and the back-line “furniture removals,” the wonder was that they had not suffered thrice as much; but for the eve of a first-class engagement it was ample. Their last preparations for the attack were put in in bivouac in the wooded area about half a mile north-west of De Wippe Cabaret, where half the Battalion was requisitioned for long, heavy, and unpleasant fatigues across shelled ground into forward areas, which led to a small group of casualties. Accommodation in the woods was insufficient, and many slept where they could under the trees (no bad thing with wandering planes at large); but the weather held fine and hot. And then, with everything ready to loose off, the attack was delayed. The reason given was that the French were to spend a few days more in making sure of success before carrying out their end of it. A battalion takes the smallest interest in its neighbours at any time, and on the edge of battle less than usual. All that the men knew was that the French were on their left, where the Belgians had been, and they hoped that they were strong in .75’s. (“Ye can hear the French long before ye can see them. They dish out their field-gun fire the way you’d say it was machine-guns. A well-spoken, quiet crowd, the French, but their rations are nothing at all.”)