West of Cambrai, about four miles on the road to Bapaume, and on a little rising ground, stands the Bourlon Wood, which has for us a history perhaps even more tragic than that of the woods north of the Somme. The full story of our attempt to take Cambrai in November, 1917, the first accounts of which induced foolish authorities to have "joybells" rung (a proceeding which they must have bitterly regretted afterwards), is given in Haig's Despatches (pp. 153-171). The large-scale map by which it is accompanied shows how we gained the wood, and were, in fact, close to Cambrai for a week, but a week later had lost nearly the whole of our gains. The photograph (Plate 81) is taken from the village at the north-west corner of the wood, the farthest point which we reached on the 23rd-24th November. It was in this fighting that a small party of East Surreys were rescued after having held out, surrounded, for forty-eight hours, while later on a company of the 13th Essex, entirely surrounded and without hope of relief, fought to the last man rather than surrender. Bourlon Wood was only recovered, in our final great advance, on the 27th of September, 1918. The road from Cambrai to Le Cateau, the scene of so much fighting both in August, 1914, and in October, 1918 (see p. 78), runs eastwards from Cambrai. I was able to visit a number of the villages south of the road in October, 1918 (finding in some houses the hastily left meals of their late German occupants), while fighting still continued a few miles farther north, and was surprised to find that they were very little injured in spite of the indications of heavy barrage over the face of the ground. The fighting here had gone over the ground too rapidly to leave behind it the fearful trail of destruction which is everywhere visible on the land where fighting was continuous for many weeks, or even months, together.