three forms loomed in the distance through the gloom; and then we were all of a tremble! Fortunately they turned out to be three of our own Tommies, so we waited till they had passed, and then we went in. Many a laugh over the affair have those two waiters and myself had on after occasions. Next morning, December the twenty-second, we were properly let in. The enemy commenced to shell us, continuing for some hours; then they came up in force. Unfortunately, by taking those three lines of trenches the night before, we had got too far in front; and consequently we were surrounded before we knew where we were. Anyhow, with bombs and rifle-fire (our machine-gun section being behind and not in position by then), we kept them off as long as we could--then we had a run for it, as the Company on our left had had to give in. There were very few of us left that day; but our machine-gun soon got into action, and held the position until reinforcements came up, when the remainder of us formed up in the Rue-de-L'Epinette. When the roll was called we numbered one hundred and thirty Officers and men out of eight hundred and thirty who went into action seventeen hours before. Our C.O., Major Powell, was very much upset, remarking that there had been a grave mistake somewhere, and he would immediately go to the General for satisfaction: we, of course, did not hear how he got on. That night we were taken to Lacature until all the stragglers had joined up: they made the Regiment up to about two hundred; and next day we marched off to Essairs, just the other side of the canal of Bethune, where we spent a quiet but not joyous Christmas Day, as we felt greatly the loss we had sustained two days before. CHAPTER VIII LA BASSÉE DISTRICT Next day, Boxing Day, December the twenty-sixth, 1914, we once more packed our traps, and, marching viâ Beuvry and Annequin, entered Cambrin. The first four days we were billeted in houses and shops, which had been shelled to pieces, and set to work digging ways through the walls of cellars for means to get out should the house be hit again by a shell during a bombardment. That night a night-attack by the enemy was expected and the usual precautions were taken; it came to nothing. Although this village was in ruins and only about two thousand yards from the enemy's front line, civilians continued to live there. Between the twenty-sixth of December and the twenty-ninth of December there was "nothing doing": most of the Regiment were employed in the communication trenches, cleaning up and carrying planks to lay on the bottom, some parts of the trenches being deep in mud and water. In the "Old Kent Road," a trench running from the church at Quinchy to the front line was in a really dreadful state: one had to wade through mud and water like whipped cream up to the armpits.