On the last day of November the Division was withdrawn from the Arras sector: its move to relieve some of the troops who had been severely handled by the enemy at Bourlon Wood seemed probable. Events occurred to change the destination. The Battalion, after two nights at Arras, entrained amid all symptoms of haste on the morning of November 30 and travelled without the transport to Bapaume. The noise of battle and excited staff-officers greeted its arrival. In the back area it was on everybody's lips that the enemy had broken through. Bapaume was being shelled, many officers had travelled unprepared for an early engagement with the enemy, and the General was not yet on the scene; the situation was as unexpected as it was exciting. At 3 p.m. we were placed in buses under Bicknell's directions and moved rapidly to Bertincourt, a village four kilometres west of Havrincourt Wood. The night of November 30/December 1 was spent in an open field. It was intensely cold. At 4 a.m. a flank march was made to Fins, where some empty huts were found. Enemy long range shells, aimed at the railway, kept falling in the village. Through Fins at 10 a.m. on December 1 the Guards marched forward to do their famous counter-attack on Gouzeaucourt; on the afternoon of the same day the Battalion moved up to Metz, whither Brigade Headquarters had already gone. During the night, which was frosty and moonlight, the Colonel led the Battalion across country to occupy a part of the Hindenburgh Line west of La Vacquerie. On the following morning the enemy delivered a heavy attack upon the village, from which, after severe losses in killed and prisoners, troops of the 182nd Brigade were driven back. To assist them C Company was detached from the Battalion. The trenches--our front was now the Hindenburg Line--were frozen, there was snow on the ground, and the temporary supremacy of the enemy in guns and sniping produced a toll of casualties. It was an anxious time, but the Battalion was involved in no actual fighting; the German counter-attack, for the time-being, was at an end. The 61st Division was left holding a line of snow-bound trenches between Gonnelieu and La Vacquerie, consisting of fragments both of the Hindenburg Line, the old German front line, and our own as it stood before the Cambrai battle opened. Except in the 184th Brigade the casualties suffered by the Division during the heavy German counter-attacks had been heavier than those at Ypres. The 2/4 Oxfords by luck had escaped a share in this fighting, and the Battalion's casualties during these critical events were few.