Boche must have been scarified . . .  At first it went as I expected.  The outpost line was pushed in, but the fire from the redoubts broke up the advance, and enabled the line of resistance in the forward zone to give a good account of itself.  There was a check, and then another big wave, assisted by a barrage from field-guns brought far forward.  This time the line of resistance gave at several points, and Lefroy flung in the Americans in a counter-attack.  That was a mighty performance.  The engineers, yelling like dervishes, went at it with the bayonet, and those that preferred swung their rifles as clubs.  It was terribly costly fighting and all wrong, but it succeeded.  They cleared the Boche out of a ruined farm he had rushed, and a little wood, and re-established our front.  Blenkiron, who saw it all, for he went with them and got the tip of an ear picked off by a machine-gun bullet, hadn’t any words wherewith to speak of it.  ’And I once said those boys looked puffy,’ he moaned.

The next phase, which came about midday, was the tanks.  I had never seen the German variety, but had heard that it was speedier and heavier than ours, but unwieldy.  We did not see much of their speed, but we found out all about their clumsiness.  Had the things been properly handled they should have gone through us like rotten wood.  But the whole outfit was bungled.  It looked good enough country for the use of them, but the men who made our position had had an eye to this possibility.  The great monsters, mounting a field-gun besides other contrivances, wanted something like a highroad to be happy in.  They were useless over anything like difficult ground.  The ones that came down the main road got on well enough at the start, but Blenkiron very sensibly had mined the highway, and we blew a hole like a diamond pit.  One lay helpless at the foot of it, and we took the crew prisoner; another stuck its nose over and remained there till our field-guns got the range and knocked it silly.  As for the rest—­there is a marshy lagoon called the Patte d’Oie beside the farm of Gavrelle, which runs all the way north to the river, though in most places it only seems like a soft patch in the meadows.  This the tanks had to cross to reach our line, and they never made it.  Most got bogged, and made pretty targets for our gunners; one or two returned; and one the Americans, creeping forward under cover of a little stream, blew up with a time fuse.

By the middle of the afternoon I was feeling happier.  I knew the big attack was still to come, but I had my forward zone intact and I hoped for the best.  I remember I was talking to Wake, who had been going between the two zones, when I got the first warning of a new and unexpected peril.  A dud shell plumped down a few yards from me.

’Those fools across the river are firing short and badly off the straight,’ I said.

Wake examined the shell.  ‘No, it’s a German one,’ he said.