We advanced very slowly, with long pauses, lying flat on the ground waiting for orders to continue. Now the officer commanding the company on the right would send word to say he had reached such a point, and would C Company come up in line with him? Now Evans passed along that we were getting ahead of the Dorchesters. The attack is a very slow and ticklish business in these days of modern firearms. All this while steady firing could be heard on the right as the --th Brigade swung round, and for about an hour there was sharp firing on the left, but in front of us not a shot was heard. At last we gained a group of cottages on a road which marked the point we had been told to reach. There was still no sign of the enemy, and had it not been for the firing on the right and left we should have doubted his existence in the neighbourhood, so quiet and peaceful did the cottages look. However, we heard afterwards that the brigade on the right had suffered heavily, and that the brisk firing on the left was the Dorchester Regiment under machine-gun fire from the village they had been told to take. It just happened to be our luck that day to have an uncontested piece of frontage to advance over. A road ran through the group of houses and beyond a ploughed field. At the end of the ploughed field there was a hedge and ditch, which formed a natural trench facing the enemy. In spite of the apparent absence of the enemy Goyle refused to allow the men to loiter about along the road or in the farms and cottages, but ordered the company to line this ditch. As it turned out later it was well he did so.