On May 5th I found E. F. Lumsden, of the A.S.C., an old friend with a passion for car repair of all sorts, who had charge of the lorries and motor workshops attached to the 7th Brigade Royal Garrison Artillery Ammunition Park. His lot were in Estaires. I turned my car over to them for rejuvenation while I hied myself to London to purchase an alarmingly large collection of parts with which to assist the somewhat extensive rebuilding Lumsden had gleefully planned. I was back with a heavy load of hardware and empty purse by the night of May 7th, and by midnight on the 8th left Estaires with my chariot, which was in a greatly chastened mood. While I was on leave in England the troopers of the 1st Cavalry Division had spent their nights in the Ypres Salient digging reserve line trenches and making barbed wire entanglements. Ypres on fire, the trench line alight with flares and the flash of constant shell-bursts, made this work more spectacular than pleasant. Once or twice a shell fell sufficiently near the troopers to wound one or two. One Black Maria unfortunately dropped among a squadron of the 18th Hussars, killing two of them and wounding a couple of dozen more. Lunching on the 8th with a gunners' mess on the Laventie front, I learned of a big "push" ordered at dawn on the 9th. The Auber ridge was to be attacked from the south-west by two Indian Divisions, and from the north-west by the 8th Division and the 7th Division, with the Northumbrian Territorial Division and the newly arrived West Riding Territorial Division somewhere about. Something like 120,000 men were thus to be engaged. The Canadian Division was in reserve, in addition, and the 9th Division, the first of the "K" troops to reach the Front, was expected by rail that night. The 6th Division, in the Bois Grenier area, was ready and eager to push forward toward Lille if the Auber ridge attack proved successful. Instructions had been given, in anticipation of any misunderstandings which might tend to lead to another fiasco like the battle of Neuve Chapelle. Orders were issued that troops in certain areas were to push on and not delay, because telephonic communication had not been established. The order of the day asked the troops to "break a hole in the enemy's line," and assured the attacking Divisions that the whole Army was behind, ready to deal sledge-hammer blows on the broken German front. My gunner friends confidently expected to sleep in Lille on the night of the 9th, and proceeded jocosely to mark on a map of that city the houses each one chose as his billet. Roads to Lille had been selected for the ammunition columns, and orders given which would ensure a supply of shells that far forward, in case the attack "got through."