In the morning I had just finished my breakfast when a shell exploded
fifty yards behind the farm, and others followed. "Headquarters" turned
out, and we crawled along a shallow ditch at the side of a rough country
road until we were two hundred yards from the farm. We endeavoured to
get into communication with the other brigade by flag, but after the
first message a shell dropped among the farther signallers and we saw no
more of them.

Shells began to drop near us. One fellow came uncomfortably close. It
covered us with dirt as we "froze" to the bottom of the ditch. A little
scrap of red-hot metal flew into the ground between me and the signal
sergeant in front of me. I grabbed it, but dropped it because it was so
hot; it was sent to the signal sergeant's wife and not to you.

We crawled a hundred yards farther along to a place where the ditch was
a little deeper, and we were screened by some bushes, but I think the
General's red hat must have been marked down, because for the next hour
we lay flat listening to the zip-zip of bullets that passed barely
overhead.

Just before we moved the Germans started to shell Missy with heavy
howitzers. Risking the bullets, we saw the village crowned with great
lumps of smoke. Our men poured out of it in more or less extended order
across the fields. I saw them running, poor little khaki figures, and
dropping like rabbits to the rifles of the snipers in the wood.

Two hundred yards south of the St Marguerite-Missy road--that is,
between the road and the ditch in which we were lying--there is a single
line of railway on a slight embankment. Ten men in a bunch made for the
cover it afforded. One little man with an enormous pack ran a few yards