concentration on the West of Bucquoy. The second (2) was subsidiary, and arose from the fact that, during the morning of March 26th, constant reports were received of mounted enemy troops seen in Hébuterne and even to the West of it. Possibly, isolated patrols had reached the edge of the village, but, as the result of these rumours, ‘unauthorized orders were issued by persons totally unknown, in a more or less excited state,’ to clear all transport westwards, and some valuable hours were lost in collecting and bringing back those units. [Illustration: THE CHURCH, BUCQUOY.] This bare account of one day’s fighting leaves much to the imagination. But an hour by hour recital of the deeds of unit by unit in the Division would make too much of a day’s work, which was only the beginning of a hard battle. We must not lose the perspective in a contemplation of detail, and this perspective is admirably rendered in the few lines devoted by Sir A. Conan Doyle to the 62nd Division on March 6th. ‘South of Puisieux,’ he writes, ‘there was a gap of four or five miles [the Divisional Commander says ‘three or four’] before one came to British troops. Into this gap in the very nick of time came first the 4th Brigade of the Second Australian Division, and later the New Zealand Division in driblets, which gradually spanned the vacant space. It was a very close call for a break through without opposition. Being disappointed in this, the Germans on March 26th spent the whole afternoon in fierce attacks on the 62nd Division, but got little but hard knocks from Braithwaite’s Yorkshiremen,’ who, we remember, had been on the move since early morning the day before. ‘The 186th Brigade on the right,’ it is added, ‘threw back a flank to Rossignol Wood to cover the weak side.’[109] We shall not further expand it.