So we were far from disheartened when day broke on May 14th. The German heavy guns had seemed at times during the 13th to number scores on scores. Though fire came from every direction into the badly placed and rottenly made British trenches, blowing our thin line sky-high all along the front, the net result of advantage to the enemy was extremely small. On the morning of the 14th de Lisle said to me: "Bad as our losses have been, I have the situation in hand. The men have held the line, and will continue to do so. Every hour sees things get better." The shattered, depleted, almost anihilated regiments of the day before were found by the grey light of that cold, rainy May morning to be fighting forces still, their moral undamaged, and their spirits undimmed. By half past six o'clock I was off for Potijze with de Lisle, a heavy rain during the night having covered the road with slimy mud and made it terribly slippery. We found Hun gunners so docile that I could with impunity run the general to the G.H.Q. line on the Potijze road. As I waited in the roadway two of the Blues came past. Mud-covered and battle-stained, they slouched along as if completely tired out. "Good morning," I called out, cheerily. "Good morning, sir," they answered, straightening, instinctively, as they spoke. Fine chaps they were, and soldierly from head to foot, in spite of the mantle of dirt in which they were wrapped. Nerves and muscles relaxed, almost at the limit of endurance, steeped in physical fatigue, like a flash they could pull up, eyes clear, heads erect, voices firm, the look on their faces showing that they were just as good fighting men at that moment as they were thirty-six hours previously. Over the smoke of welcome cigarettes we chatted of the charge of the day before. The rushing of the German trenches, the capture of a section of them, and then being overpowered and turned out by overwhelming numbers of Huns, was gone over, spiritedly, by the troopers. "Only seventy of the Blues are left, though," said one of them. "That's the hard part of it." "You are sure to find more when things get straightened out," I replied. "Casualty lists always grow smaller when the returns are all in." They trudged on soberly, "Hoping so." Splendid men. I was sent to search the houses in Potijze, or what was left of them, for a couple of wounded officers who were reported to be waiting to be evacuated by an ambulance that had not yet arrived. An Essex Yeomanry trooper limped slowly passed as I started, and I gave him a "lift" for a few hundred yards. He had badly sprained his knee during the charge the day before. By morning it had become so swollen and painful he could only hobble along with great difficulty. No thought of coming back to have it attended to, after the charge, had entered his mind. "We were told to hang on till dark," he explained, "and it took all of us that were left to hang on. I couldn't have come back very well, could I?"