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[Page 12]
& really made a bad start, not being quite ready for the order to charge when it did come. The artillery on both sides were by then pounding away, but I had no fear as I clambered over the parapet & went forward in the darkness with the boys. It was a weird sight to see the crouching forms going forward. In our sector we met with little opposition in the way of machine gun or rifle fire, & I for my part did not at the time see a German, tho' several of our men had hand-to-hand encounters : my Davies shot one. With shrapnel bursting over us & H.E.s around us we pushed on beyond the 1st German line now held by D & C companies, losing men here & there but still going forward into what was a wood, but now a churned up mass of earth & splinters. Many of the boys went too far forward & got into our own artillery fire instead of remaining on the line joining the centre of D with the left flank of B : in the darkness & under the conditions it was not at all