The Battalion spent the night of the 26th working its way up to the front line, through Flesquières where bombs were issued, two per man; then to La Justice by Graincourt; and thence, cross-country, by companies through the dark to the Bapaume-Cambrai road, where they found the guides for their relief of the Scots Guards. Just as they reached the south edge of Bourlon Wood, the enemy put down a barrage which cost forty casualties. Next it was necessary for the C.O. (Alexander) to explain the details of the coming attack to his company commanders, who re-explained it to their N.C.O.’s, while the companies dressed in attack-order, bombs were detonated and shovels issued. (“There was not any need to tell us we were for it. We knew that, and we knew we was to be quick. But that was all we _did_ know—except we was to go dancin’ into that great Wood in the wet, beyond the duck-boards. The ground, ye’ll understand, had been used by them that had gone before us—used and messed about; and at the back, outside Bourlon, all Jerry’s guns was rangin’ on it. A dirty an’ a noisy business was Bourlon.”) By five in the morning, after a most wearing night, the Battalion was in position, the 2/5th West Riding of the 1st Brigade on its left and the 1st Coldstream on its right; and the Wood in front alive with concealed machine-guns and spattered with shells. They led off at 6.20 behind their own barrage, in two waves; No. 1 Company on the right and No. 2 Company on the left, supported by No. 3 Company and No. 4. Everything was ready for them, and machine-guns opened on well-chosen and converging ranges. Almost at the outset they met a line of enemy posts held in strength, where many of the occupants had chosen to shelter themselves at the bottom of the trenches under oil-sheets, a protection hampering them equally in their efforts to fight or to surrender. Here there was some quick killing and a despatch of prisoners to the rear; but the Wood offered many chances of escape, and as our guards were necessarily few, for every rifle was needed, a number broke away and returned. Meantime, the Battalion took half a dozen machine-guns and lost more men at each blind step. In some respects Bourlon was like Villers-Cotterêts on a large scale, with the added handicap of severe and well-placed shelling. A man once down in the coppice, or bogged in a wood-pool, was as good as lost, and the in-and-out work through the trees and stumpage broke up the formations. Nor, when the affair was well launched, was there much help from “the officer with the compass” who was supposed to direct the outer flank of each company. The ground on the right of the Battalion’s attack, which the Coldstream were handling, was thick with undestroyed houses and buildings of all sorts that gave perfect shelter to the machine-guns; but it is questionable whether Bourlon Wood itself, in its lack of points to concentrate upon, and in the confusion of forest rides all exactly like each other, was