On the 3rd May, Major Chichester, who had been suffering for some time from the effects of a wound by a H.E. that burst within a few feet of him, had to go sick, and Captain E. B. Greer was left temporarily in command. Their own Commanding Officer, the Hon. L. J. P. Butler, who had come out with them at the first and taken all that the Gods had sent since, was on the 5th May translated to the command of a Kitchener Brigade. Here is a tribute of that time, from within the Battalion, where they were not at all pleased by the calls of the New Army for seasoned brigadiers. “Butler, more than any other man, has made this Battalion what it is. Also we all love him. However, I am glad he has got a less dangerous job. He is too brave a man ever to be safe.” On that same day they were relieved and went into one of the scattered wooden camps near Brandhoek for a whole week, which was spoiled by cold weather and classes in wiring under an R.E. corporal attached to them for that purpose. (“We were _not_ clever with our hands at first go-off, but when it came to back-chat and remarks on things, and no officers near, begad there was times when I could have pitied a Sapper!”) By the 12th May the Battalion was in reserve, their Brigade in the line, Major P. L. Reid had assumed command and Lieutenant F. Pym and 2nd Lieutenants A. Pym and Close had joined. Then they began again to consider raids of a new pattern under much more difficult conditions than their Laventie affairs. The 2nd Grenadiers and the 1st Coldstream were to do the reconnoitring for them, and “live Germans were badly needed for purposes of intelligence.” The authorities recommended, once more, two simultaneous raids symmetrically one from each flank. Their C.O. replied, as at Laventie, that live Germans meant stalking, and wished to know how it was possible to stalk to a time-table, even had the ground been well reconnoitred, and if several nights instead of one, and that a relief-night, had been allowed for preparations. Neither of the raids actually came off, but the projected one on the left flank ended in a most typical and instructive game of blind-man’s buff. The idea was to rush a German listening-post known to be held just north of the railway line on the left of Railway Wood, and the point of departure for the Coldstream reconnoitring patrol had been from a listening-post of our own, also on the railway. The patrol’s report was perfectly coherent. They had left our listening-post, gone up the railway line, turned half right, crawled fifty yards, found German wire, worked along it, discovered a listening-post “empty but obviously in recent use,” had hurried back, recrossed the railway about a hundred yards above our own listening-post, and fifty yards to the north of their crossing had noted the outline of another German listening-post where men were talking. (It is interesting to remember that the entire stage of these tense dramas could almost be reconstructed in a fair-sized