A long night came to an end and presently to my relief Hewitt turned up. Afterwards we got his story out of him. The poor fellow who had been hit had died, and they had to bury him as best they could. If they showed their heads above the top they were at once shot at. Hewitt had sent no further messages back as it was too risky, and he decided to wait until dark and then get back as best he could. He did so, and luck was with him--they found their way eventually to our present place. They had had a dreadful time, and a really terrible experience, but like all good soldiers, they hated to talk about it, so we left it at that. OCTOBER, 1918. In the evening (Oct. 1st) the Division was relieved and we went back again to the west of Cantaing into trenches with improvised shelters. The next day or two we spent in reorganising, quite a difficult job as we were very weak, and cleaning up. We now felt fairly certain that we were going out for a rest, as we had had a pretty stiff time since the 26th and had lost a lot of very fine fellows, mostly wounded, thank goodness. We needed a rest, and felt somehow that we had earned it, but on October 6th a message came before breakfast that we were to have another go for Niergnies, this time jumping off from Rumilly. It was to be an “in-and-out show,” just a day’s hard fighting and then out again, and if we were successful it would ensure the fall of Cambrai. Our reconnaissances and plans having been made we moved (7th) to Noyelles, and so to a field where we tried to sleep a bit, to the accompaniment of a neighbouring 6-inch naval gun, and crossed the canal after dark and slowly made our way to our assembling place. Soon the show started and we found that a sunken road, where our H.Q. dug-out was, came in for considerable attention from the Boche. Quite a lot of people were wounded just outside, my signalling officer (Bayne) amongst them.[15] Then the two Intelligence Officers--my own (Besch) and the Bedfords--went to find us a new H.Q. The latter was hit before he got across the road, Besch escaped and got on all right. Soon all the rest of us followed. The shelling did not seem to be so bad when we got out--it never does--dug-outs are beastly, and things sound much worse in them than they are. It was nice to be out and following up the Battalion, of which we could see nothing at first, but we soon got up to them, found they had managed to keep together, and were in good order and busy digging in. Things seemed to be going very well. “A” Co. were very pleased with themselves, as they got 105 prisoners and 12 machine guns in one trench on the way. Soon there was unusual activity up at the front, and one of our tanks came back chased by a 5.9 all the way. It was a wonderful sight, and rather funny, but poor sport for the men in the tank. It was extraordinary how near the shells fell round it and yet never once hit it, and I heard afterwards that it got home.