On the next day it was decided to use an opportunity to improve the position of our outpost line by occupying a group of cottages which lay in front. A platoon of A Company practically reached the nearest cottages without a sign of hostile opposition being shown. The fate of this little operation was the fruit of my miscalculation of the enemy's strength. The Germans knew better than ourselves how to sit still behind their machine-guns and avoid discovery. French civilians were moving about among the cottages at the time when our advance to occupy them was made and it seemed impossible that the enemy could be holding them even weakly. Civilians, too, were mingled in the fray as well on this as on later occasions. After trench-warfare days there was an incongruity in some episodes, which was not devoid of humour. One old Frenchman, at an hour when his farm was actually being fought over, arrived at Company Headquarters with a special passport to feed his beasts; and the tenacity of an old woman in clinging to her household goods terminated in her discovery, at the time of an attack, in a shell-hole in No-Man's-Land, where she was sheltering from the machine-gun barrage under a large umbrella (one felt that she at least deserved a copy of the operation orders!) During the ensuing weeks visits by French civilians to the front line became such that almost as many sentries were required to watch or restrain their movements as were needed against the enemy. [Illustration: ROBECQ OLD MILL & BRIDGE] A more serious attack, in which the 4th Division upon our right was intended to co-operate, was made by B Company at 7.30 p.m. on April 15 against the same cottages, which formed part of the hamlet called La Pierre au Beurre. Our bombardment in support of this attack was almost due to start, when an urgent message from the line announced that large forces of the enemy were massing opposite our front. To have called for S.O.S. fire by the artillery would totally have upset the programme of attack, and one could only hope that our zero would be the earlier. Luck was in our favour. Whatever else happened that night, it is certain that the enemy received a severe shelling from our guns.