There was precious little information as to what had happened or was happening. Our infantry had captured the town immediately in front of us and were preparing to go forward behind our barrage to capture the next town which lay ahead. Everybody said that we had insufficient tanks for the task and that the enemy was making a determined stand. How much of this was conjecture and how much fact, nobody could assert positively. There was a feeling of tension and anxiety. No one was quite certain what he was expected to accomplish. Our own fear was that in firing without more exact information we might be killing our own men. The Major himself determined to go forward to ascertain the true condition of affairs. While he was gone, Heming returned from the wagon-lines, bringing with him two Hun field-guns he had found, so making us into an eight-gun battery. We had been firing for about half an hour when a mounted signaller, sent back by the Major, rode up. He reported that the attack had been only partially successful, owing to the tremendous concentration of enemy machine-guns, which lay hidden in the wheat-fields between the two towns. Another attack was to take place within the hour; it was necessary that the battery should move up in order that our support might be more immediate and effective. The signaller added that the Major was at Death Corner, in full sight of the enemy and that his groom had been killed within five minutes of his arrival there. We hooked in and started off by a mud-track. The mud-track was strewn on either side by men and horses, newly dead. Some of them we recognised as people who had passed us while we had been in action. The enemy shells were sweeping the track for all the world as though a gigantic hose were playing down its length. Now they would spray this part of it, then lift a hundred yards and spray that. Ahead of us stretched a billowy level of wheat-fields; to the right lay Rouvroy, the town which we had captured; at right angles to the track and passing in front of Rouvroy ran a road, which was clearly indicated above the wheat by a straight line of splintered trees. The point where the track met the road was Death Corner. It looked as unhealthy a spot as one could well imagine; everything was rocking in a whirlwind of explosions. Three hundred yards short of the corner we swung off to the left and came into action. Over the short distance which separated the battery from the Major we ran in a telephone wire. From where he was and indeed from any point on the high road, the entire battle-field lay exposed and, on its furthest edge, the entrenched town of Fouquescourt which it was essential we should possess.