“Now we’re for it,” I said to myself, and gave the order to unlimber the guns.  One limber had been held up some little way back I found, by getting jammed in a shell-hole in the road.  I couldn’t wait for it to come up, so sent my sergeant back with some men to get hold of the guns and tackle in it, and follow on as soon as they could.  I got out the rest of the things that were there with us and prepared to start on after the battalion.  “I’ll go to the left, and you’d better go to the right,” I shouted to my sergeant.  “Here, Smith, let’s have your rifle,” I said, turning to my servant.  I had decided that he had best stay and look after the limbers.  I seized his rifle, and slipping on a couple of bandoliers of cartridges, led on up the slight hill, followed by my section carrying the machine guns.  I felt that a rifle was going to be of more use to me in this business than a revolver, and, anyway, it was just as well to have both.

It was now just about four o’clock in the morning.  A faint light was creeping into the sky.  The rain was abating a bit, thank goodness!

We topped the rise, and rushed on down the road as fast as was possible under the circumstances.  Now we were in it!  Bullets were flying through the air in all directions.  Ahead, in the semi-darkness, I could just see the forms of men running out into the fields on either side of the road in extended order, and beyond them a continuous heavy crackling of rifle-fire showed me the main direction of the attack.  A few men had gone down already, and no wonder—­the air was thick with bullets.  The machine-gun officer of one of the other regiments in the brigade was shot right through the head as he went over the brow of the hill.  I found one of his machine-gun sections a short time later, and appropriated them for our own use.  After we had gone down the road for about two hundred yards I thought that my best plan was to get away over to the left a bit, as the greatest noise seemed to come from there.  “Come on, you chaps,” I shouted, “we’ll cross this field, and get to that hedge over there.”  We dashed across, intermingled with a crowd of Highlanders, who were also making to the left.  Through a cloud of bullets, flying like rice at a wedding, we reached the other side of the field.  Only one casualty—­one man with a shot in the knee.

Couldn’t get a good view of the enemy from the hedge, so I decided to creep along further to the left still, to a spot I saw on the left front of a large farm which stood about two hundred yards behind us.  The German machine guns were now busy, and sent sprays of bullets flicking up the ground all round us.  Lying behind a slight fold in the ground we saw them whisking through the grass, three or four inches over our heads.  We slowly worked our way across to the left, past an old, wide ditch full of stagnant water, and into a shallow gully beyond.  Dawn had come now, and in the cold grey light I saw our men out in front of me advancing in short rushes