What a change from the night before! It was a lovely morning, and once out in the open, going towards the Canal, it was a wonderful sight to see our barrage and the men following it up. I cannot describe the feeling I had watching the Artists in action--to me the first time. From behind it looked as near drill-perfect as you could wish for. We were not long in getting across the Canal, where we saw one of our tanks stuck, and met many wounded coming back, amongst them being Fergus Young, who was supported by a Boche prisoner about twice his size. He was very worried about his Company, though as it turned out he had no need to be--they were carrying on all right, away on in front. As we got nearer the front line things seemed to get very busy. There were crowds of prisoners coming down--batches of 200 at a time in charge of one or two men--all their officers wanting to go down into dug-outs to collect their belongings, but I do not suppose they found many, because the ground was literally on fire, and after walking a short distance between the Hindenburg Line one’s feet were quite hot from the heat of the earth. Soon messages began to come back--that the first objective had been taken--then the barrage moved on again, so did our men, and our messages came fast--“Cannot get on for machine gun fire;” “No sign of the Bedfords on the right flank,” and with like messages from the left. It then appeared that things were sticking a bit, so we pushed on up to see what really was happening, and found things pretty well mixed up--our men short of bombs, having used everything they had and everyone doing his level best. We discovered that both our flanks were well in the air, and getting forward was out of the question until matters righted themselves on the flanks. By this time we had lost the barrage for our second objective, and it had become a question of holding on to what we had until the position cleared up. Being shot at from three sides is never a very pleasant experience but the men stuck it out wonderfully. I saw that we should need every single available man to hold on, so I went down the line a bit to collect any oddments I could find. It is surprising the number one comes across in a big show like this. There were Bedfords and Fusiliers who were beginning to come along in large batches. They were all gathered into parties and sent up straight away. The Fusiliers had had a pretty rough time trekking about all night, and had just arrived in time to go over with the Canadians, where they were soon doing their share “good and hard” as the Brigadier, who had spent his time cheering up the men, would say. I found the Signallers fixing up communications to the Companies and we got news of the poor Bedfords too who had had a very rough crossing, but had come through all right. We knew then that our right flank was in touch though it was thrown back very considerably, and we seemed to catch the whole attention of the Boche.