We have to record that the operation, as planned, could not be fully carried out. Briefly, it had been devised as follows: unless, as seemed improbable, the Hindenburg Line should be found to have been evacuated, the Australian Division, supported by Tanks, was to push forward to Riencourt and Bullecourt. As soon as their work rendered it possible, the 185th Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General V. W. de Falbe, C.M.G., D.S.O.) was to push one Battalion into Bullecourt from the south-west, with another Battalion in support. The Tanks (two, followed by four), after clearing Bullecourt, were to move out of the village, and clear the Hindenburg Line up to a stated position, where they would come under the orders of General de Falbe, in command of an Advanced Guard, detailed to capture Hendecourt and to move forward as indicated above. This formed the operation, as planned. The operation, as executed, starts with Battalion reports to the Brigade, at 5-15 a.m., 6 a.m. and 7-10 a.m., to the effect that not a Tank was in sight. We may imagine the anxiety at Headquarters. Reconstruct the surroundings on that April morning: the immense line of British Troops stretching right away beyond Vimy, the noise of guns, the open country on the other side; remember the significance of Bullecourt, not merely as the objective of the 62nd Division, but as the last stronghold of the enemy in that sector before he retired to the Quéant switch behind the real Hindenburg Line; multiply every missed appointment and its consequent inconveniences in civil life to the _n_th power of calculation; add a responsible sense of the great issues depending on prompt action; and then conceive what it meant to Lt.-Col. John H. Hastings, D.S.O., the Officer Commanding the 2/6th West Yorkshires (to return for a moment to this unit), to have to report three times in two hours that, so far as he was aware, the conditions precedent to his pushing on to Bullecourt still remained unfulfilled. Item one: the Tanks had not arrived. Item two: there was still no news of the Australians having entered Bullecourt. Colonel Hastings went forward to make enquiries, and to discuss matters with the Australian Division. On his return, he advised the Brigadier that the situation was ‘very obscure.’ His patrols, he said, had not reported, but there was no sign of the Australians clearing Bullecourt, and several enemy machine-guns had been located on the south-east fringe of the village. This report crossed a message from the Brigade (through the 2/8th Battalion, West Yorks.), stating that Tanks had been seen at a factory between Bullecourt and Hendecourt, and adding: ‘Please take immediate action, without waiting for Tanks to arrive, to clear up situation in Bullecourt and seize Hindenburg Line to the west of the village.’ (This message in original was received an hour later.) A reply was sent through the 2/8th Battalion to the effect that the instructions seemed to be