Huts, built by the French but vacated more than a year ago and now very dilapidated, formed the accommodation. In them Christmas dinners, to procure which Bennett had proceeded early from the line, were eaten. And O'Meara conducted the Brigade band. CHAPTER XIII. THE GREAT GERMAN ATTACK OF MARCH 21, JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH, 1918. The French relieved on the St. Quentin front.--The calm before the storm.--A golden age.--The Warwick raid.--The German attack launched.--Defence of Enghien Redoubt.--Counter-attack by the Royal Berks.--Holnon Wood lost.--The battle for the Beauvoir line. --The enemy breaks through. The Battalion's mid-winter respite was brief. On New Year's Eve, 1917, the 2/4th Oxfords quitted the wretched Suzanne huts and marched through Harbonnieres to Caix. No 'march past' was necessary or would have been possible, for so slippery was the road that the men had to trail along its untrodden sides as best they could. Old 61st Divisional sign-boards left standing nearly a year ago greeted the return to an area which was familiar to many. The destination should have been Vauvillers, but the inhabitants of that village were stricken with measles. Better billets and freedom from infection compensated for a longer march. At Caix the Battalion was comfortable for a week. The Division's move from the Bray-Suzanne area to south of the Somme heralded a new relief of the French, whose line was now to be shortened by the amount on its left flank between St. Quentin and La Fere. About January 11 the Battalion found itself once more in Holnon Wood, where a large number of huts and dug-outs had been made by the French since last spring. The front line, now about to be held between Favet and Gricourt, was almost in its old position. The outpost line of nine months ago had crystallised into the usual trench system. Those courteous preliminaries, so much the feature of a French relief, were, on this re-introduction to scenes soon to become so famous--and so tragic--a little marred by an untimely German shell which wounded Weller, who had accompanied the Colonel to see the new line. Industrious calm succeeded the relief. Since the Russian break-up and the consequent liberation from the Eastern Front of fresh German legions, the British army had been on the defensive. A big effort by the enemy was expected, and when it came, the St. Quentin front was not unlikely to receive the brunt of his massed attack. The months of January and February and the first half of March were ominously quiet. Shelling was spasmodic. After the artillery activity of the last summer and autumn our guns seemed lazy. So quiet was it that Abraham used to ride up to the two small copses that lay behind our front.