On the 20th the Gunner Officer, Major Young, paid a breakfast call, with the pleasant news that he was going to open an old repaired gap in the enemy wire, and cut two new ones, which, on the established principle of “throwing stones at little brother,” meant the infantry would be “retaliated on.” He did it. The C.O.’s of the Battalion and the 1st Coldstream, and the Brigade-Major, made a most careful periscope reconnaissance of the ground, with particular attention to the smoking gaps that Major Young had blasted, and arranged for a joint reconnaissance by the 1st Coldstream and 2nd Irish Guards for that very evening. The two subalterns told off to that job attended the conference. Second Lieutenant Brew, who had gifts that way, represented our side, for the affair naturally became an inter-regimental one from the first, and 2nd Lieutenant Green the Coldstream. That afternoon everybody conferred—the brigade commanders of the 2nd and 3rd Guards Brigade, with their Staffs, all four C.O.’s of the 2nd Brigade, and the C.O. of the 1st Welsh Guards; and between them they arranged the attack in detail, with a simplicity that in later years almost made some of the survivors of that conference weep when they were reminded of it. The gas was to be turned on at first, while machine-guns and Lewis-guns would make a joyous noise together for five minutes to drown the roar of its escape. The artillery would start heavy fire “at points in rear” simultaneously with the noisy gas. At five minutes past Zero machine-guns would stop, and the artillery would slow down. But thirty-five minutes later they would “quicken up.” Three quarters of an hour after Zero “gas would be turned off,” and, five minutes after that, the attacking parties would start “with gas-helmets on their heads but rolled up” and, penetrating the enemy’s second line, would “do all possible damage before returning.” Then they arranged to reassemble next day, after inspecting the ground. The Battalion was relieved that same evening by the 1st Coldstream, whom they expected to have for their confederates in the attack, and lay up at Pont du Hem. On the 21st December, Brew, who had been out the night before reconnoitring with Green of the Coldstream, started on yet another investigation of the enemy wire at 3 A. M. They got right up to the wire, were overlooked by a German patrol, and spotted by a machine-gun on their way home. “But they lay down and the bullets went over them.” There was another conference at Winchester House in the afternoon, where all details were revised, and the day ended with a message to the troops who would be called upon, that the “attack had been greatly modified.”