every direction, laughing and gesticulating as if the battle were being fought for their amusement alone. Fortunately, the "Boche" had withdrawn his guns and there was no reply, or many lives would have been lost in the streets of Prisches. As if was, the battle passed off like a parade. The Sherwoods advanced cautiously, but with few casualties, and the enemy machine gunners melted away before the fire of out guns, to be seen no more until Cartigny was approached.
While the battle was still in progress, the 8th Sherwoods in support were making a triumphal entry into Prisches.
Nowhere had the khaki uniform been received with greater demonstration. The inhabitants greeted the "point" of the leading company with flowers and fruit and with a strange concoction—a liquor made from a species of prune. It was impossible fo keep formation. The advance into the town soon resolved itself into a procession in single file; officers and men pushed their way gently but firmly along, surrounded by crowds of civilians giving vent to their feelings as only French people can do. A lad of eighteen, who had been hidden for four months in a room behind a German officers' mess, climbed up the church steeple with the tricolour in his hand, while German snipers were taking shots at him from posts beyond the town. Little cared he as he climbed until he achieved his ambition, and immortalized himself by nailing the colours triumphantly to the very top of the steeple. Here, as everywhere else, the rescued inhabitants set themselves to do the little they could, both to increase the comfort of the men to whom they owed relief, and to assist them to the utmost of their ability in the task of speeding the "Boche" back to the home he should never have left. Leading citizens
