As night fell the shelling of Bucquoy grew very severe, and orders were received from Corps Headquarters to retire the infantry to a line covering Bucquoy, while the Divisional Headquarters moved back to Foncquevillers. It was a night of great stress and anxiety during which there was no sleep for anyone; the artillery was safely withdrawn, and positions were taken up in the area between Hannescamps and Les Essarts, my own weary batteries having to move up from the positions they had just occupied near Monchy. When the morning of the 26th dawned the infantry were holding their new line, and the guns were nearly all in action. There was desperate fighting throughout this day, in the course of which our right was pressed back out of Puisieux. Headquarters was shelled constantly, as was the whole area occupied by the artillery. Fortunately the enemy had not yet had time to locate the battery positions, and the shelling, being distributed over the whole country side, caused fewer casualties than might have been expected. The situation was most critical, as the gap on our right flank still lay open to the enemy who kept pressing up into it and actually got up to the outskirts of Hebuterne in the afternoon. It seemed as though he would succeed in getting round the rear of the division, and many alarmist reports were rife as to the presence of Huns in all sorts of unlikely places behind us. These reports spread back for miles and caused a good deal of commotion in the back area. It was believed that they were propagated by German spies, and it may well have been so. Certainly many suspicious cases were reported of orders having been given to various units to retire at once by red-tabbed officers who could never be identified afterwards as belonging to the staff of any of the divisions engaged. At least one such case occurred in the Divisional Artillery; a Staff Officer hurried up to Major Jephson, and, telling him that the enemy was working round behind his Division, advised him to retire his battery, C/310, before it should be too late. Jephson, of course, declined to adopt the suggestion, and reported the matter by telephone to Headquarters. He was from there told to arrest the Staff Officer, but unfortunately by the time the order got through to him the bird had flown.