During the night orders arrived for a move forward to support the Warwick Brigade, which had been fighting for several days between Maissemy and Fresnoy. At 7.30 a.m. on April 9 we marched in wind and rain to Marteville, and then formed a reserve line in front of Maissemy and Keeper's House. All day we dug trenches and erected wire. A divisional relief was to take place. The weather was vile; almost every hour a violent squall of hail and snow swept over us. That night was spent in bivouac in sunken roads. Next morning many of us walked along the Holnon road to view St. Quentin, whose cathedral and factory chimneys were only visible between the storms. The town seemed undestroyed. The Germans were busy shelling its approaches. Salvoes of their 5.9s fell steadily, and black splashes of earth jumped up ever and again, whilst smoke from the preceding shells coiled and drifted away to the west. The 61st Division was relieved on April 11 and moved back to the Nesle area. The 2/4th Oxfords marched to Hombleux, a village where the enemy had left the church and a few houses standing. The German retirement from the Somme, now practically complete, had opened a new phase in the war. For the first time since 1914 ground in France had changed hands upon a large scale. The enemy's relinquishment of 30 miles of front line trench and his withdrawal to a depth, in places, of 40 kilometres, restored the principle of manoeuvre to armies which had fronted one another for two years in positions hitherto justifying the description of stale-mate. Strong moral and political effects accompanied. And this manoeuvre, though carried out upon a part only of the entire battle front, infused a sense of change and movement into the most static portions of the allied line. From theory open warfare had passed into practice. In its old sense trench-warfare was no more; its genius had departed. Trenches and dug-outs, which in some sectors had been visited and revisited with changeless repetition for thirty months, lost their sense of eternity. Who could say when the trenches opposite might not be found empty and the burning wake of a German retreat glow in the skies? Schemes for action in event of enemy withdrawal began to take precedence over trench standing orders. Corps lines ceased to be the show-places for Russian colonels, and the Corps Commander's gardener paused before sowing a new season's peas in the chateau grounds. G.H.Q. were agog. CHAPTER VIII. THE RAID AT FAYET, APRIL, 1917. A German vantage-point.--Shell-ridden Holnon.--A night of confusion.--Preparing for the raid of April 28.--The enemy taken by surprise.--The Battalion's first V.C.--The affair at Cepy Farm.