On the 29th May our infantry was withdrawn from the line for a rest, and I therefore ceased to command the artillery tactically; it remained in the line in support of the 58th Division. It was a great disappointment to me that the artillery could not be withdrawn for a rest after all its strenuous work since coming into action. The promise of rest in the near future had long been dangled before our eyes, but the plain fact was that guns _could_ not be spared from the firing line, and although the Commander-in-Chief, in a confidential circular issued about this time, showed that he "fully realised the untiring energy of the artillery during the first half of the year," still he was unable to hold out any hopes of relaxation, and could only "rely upon all ranks to continue their good work ungrudgingly." His reliance was well founded, for all ranks accepted the situation loyally, and learned now, and I may add for the rest of the war, to do without rest, and to "stick it" somehow or other even when it might have been truly said that "there was nothing in them "Except the will that said to them, Hold on." I think that all realised the impossibility of reducing the number of guns in front of the enemy, and one scarcely ever heard a word of grumbling, but it is well that the fact should be placed on record that the artillery practically never got a rest. Their work was not perhaps so much in the public eye as that of their gallant comrades in the infantry, nor did they experience as a rule the same extremes of danger, but it should be remembered that, while the latter were periodically withdrawn from the danger zone after about eight days in the trenches to rest billets miles behind the firing line, the men behind the guns endured the dirt and discomfort of the trenches for months at a time, were never safe day or night from hostile shell fire, and were constantly hard at work. Only perhaps those who have actually served in a battery in war-time can realise the amount of hard work and nerve strain involved in keeping up even the normal programme of day and night firing, the map readings and calculations to be worked out by the officers in a damp dug-out by the light of a guttering candle, the long spells of duty to be endured by the weak gun detachments always under strength through sickness and casualties, the heart-breaking and back-breaking labours of keeping up the ammunition supply, and with it all the constant sense of an ever-brooding danger. That all sorts and conditions of men should have endured this kind of existence for several years, cheerfully and without a murmur, seems to me a more wonderful phenomenon than even the most dramatic act of individual gallantry. The following honours were announced on the 30th May:-- Major G. Fleming, Legion of Honour. Major G. A. Swain, Croix de Guerre. CHAPTER II JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1917. TRENCH WARFARE