I picked up some wiring stuff at the Brigade Dump--it was a long way up the road then, not far from Hellfire Corner. Fritz was shelling the road like hell, going up and down, dropping them in pairs, fifty yards further every time, _you_ know the game.... I had the wind-up pretty badly, and so had the men, poor devils ... but what was worse, they seemed to know that I had.... We had a lot of shells very close to us, and some of the men kept rushing towards the bank when they heard one coming.... Well, you don't get on very fast at that rate, and it's damned hard to keep hold of them when they're like that.... And knowing they were like that made me even worse. When we got to Dead Mule Tree about ten of them were missing ... just stayed under the bank in the holes.... I don't say this to excuse myself ... I just tell you what happened. Then we got to that high bit where the bank stops and the valley goes up on the left.... You know the awful _exposed_ feeling one has there, and they had a regular barrage just at the corner.... I got the men under the bank, and waited till a shell burst ... and then tried to dash them past before the next. But the next one came too fast, and fell plunk into the middle of the column--behind me.... Three men were killed outright, and those of us who hadn't flung themselves down were knocked over. I fell in a kind of narrow ditch by the road. When I put my head up and looked back I saw some of the men vanishing back under the bank. Then another one came--8-inch I should think they were--and I grovelled in the ditch again.... It was just like my awful dreams.... I must have been there about ten minutes. After every one I started to get up and go back to the men under the bank, meaning to get them together again. Every time the next one came too quick, and I was pinned, simply pinned in that ditch. Then Fritz stopped for a minute or two--altering the programme, I suppose--and I got up and ran like hell for the bank. The four or five men lying near me got up and ran too. 'When we got under the bank we lay down and I looked round ... there was not a man to be seen. I shouted, but at first nothing happened. And, I tell you, I was glad.... Some of the men who had gone back, not seeing me anywhere, had melted away home.... I don't blame _them_.... Then a few drifted along from further down the bank.... By degrees most of the party turned up ... there must have been between thirty and forty of them in the end.... 'And then, you see, I knew I should have to go on again ... get past the corner somehow.... And----