They were not allowed to follow up this easy success, and consequently the enemy was still left in possession of a small salient.  The Subaltern’s own Company was then sent to prolong the right of the Battalion, and to get in touch with the “people” on the right.

This was eventually done; the “people” proving to be a regiment of cavalry, employed as infantry.

In this particular part of the line the situation was, to say the least of it, a little muddled.  The cavalry did not seem to be altogether at home in their new role.  Their trenches seemed too small and detached.  The front was covered with copses, which were continually changing hands.  The whole line seemed to be dangerously weak, and the facilities for communication too precarious.  The Subaltern regarded the whole affair as a sort of nightmare, and prayed fervently that they would not be made to stop permanently in that quarter.

It appeared that they had been told off to hold in check the side of the salient.  They took up their position along the edge of a wood, three or four yards in it.

“We’ll be shelled in about twenty minutes, so dig all you know,” said the Captain.

How they dug can be easily understood.  They had only their entrenching implements, but in ten minutes most of them had very fair “lying down” cover.  Ten minutes was all they were allowed.  There was no artillery fire by the end of that time, but the bullets began to whizz past, or flatten themselves in the tree trunks.  It was rather hard to see precisely what was happening.  Black dots emerged from the wood, and quickly flitted back again.  The enemy seemed rather half-hearted.

When the attack, if attack it could really be called, had subsided, a Sergeant got up from somewhere down the line, and continued work on his hole.  There was a whizz overhead, and he dropped back abruptly.  The Subaltern thought that he had realised the danger and had naturally bobbed down for safety, but word was passed up “to keep down, as Sergeant Simkins had been shot dead—­through the heart.”  He never uttered a sound, and must have met his death instantly.

Work was continued, but with the utmost caution.  Meanwhile the afternoon was drawing rapidly to a close, and the prospect of holding such a position appalled the Subaltern when he thought of it.  The Sergeant had been killed by enfilade fire.  It was quite obvious that their line was thrown out, as it were, between the two general lines.  Consequently they were enfiladed by the enemy, threatened very seriously on their front, on account of the proximity of the copses, and if forced to retire there was absolute certainty of being mown down by their own cavalry.  The Senior Subaltern succeeded in clearing one copse, after firing a few shots and making a bold advance, but had not sufficient men to retain it.  Then, just as darkness was closing down on the hopeless tangle, a message was passed up to “close on the road.”