that our party got safely to their rendezvous in No Man’s Land, where they had to lie in hiding in shell-holes till the artillery started. Everything was going well and it was only a few seconds to zero hour when a returning enemy patrol stumbled across them. Our chaps didn’t dare to shoot lest they should warn the garrison in the Hun front-line. They had to use their bayonets, trip them up and choke them into silence. While this was in the doing our barrage came down and then, since noise no longer mattered, they made short work of the patrol In this preliminary scrap Silborrad, the scout-officer, was killed. He was hugely popular with       his men, for he had a reputation of always recovering his wounded. His death made them see red. When our barrage lifted and they stormed the Hun trench, they killed everything in sight; it was only when nothing living was left that they remembered that they had taken no prisoners. The proper thing to have done would have been to have come back. Their orders were not to remain in enemy territory longer than fifteen minutes; there’s always the danger that the enemy supports may move up for a counter-attack and his artillery is almost certain to place a wall of fire in No Man’s Land to prevent the raiders from getting back. It was Battling Brown who decided the question. “We’ll take a chance at their second-line,” he said. “If we don’t find anyone there, we’ll poke about in their communication-trenches till we do find someone.”     

       They found the second-line strongly held by machine-gunners. There was bloody work, but they secured their prisoners. The problem now was how to get back with their dead and wounded. The green lights which the men in our front-line were shooting up to guide them, showed very faintly and were often lost to sight on account of the rolling nature of the country. The return journey was made still more difficult by snipers who picked them off as they retired. They had already entered our wire, when word was passed along that one of our men was missing. Dick must have heard it; when they were safe in our trench and called the roll, it was discovered that he too was absent. This much I learnt in the early hours from the wounded who limped up the sunken road to my left. It wasn’t until dawn that I heard the rest of the story: that was when they were bringing out the dead. The engine of the ambulance had quickened its beat, getting ready to climb the hill. I ran out and found them lifting something wrapped in a blanket.     

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