which was not destined to be pierced till the next year. It was a fleeting transfer to another Army Corps; their own, the Fourteenth, under Lord Cavan, having joined the Fourth Army. They took over from the Somerset L.I. (61st Brigade) a set of trenches which, after their experiences in the Salient, struck them as dry, deep and good, but odd and unhomely. They had been French, were from six to nine feet deep, paved in places with stone, which our men had never seen in trenches before, and revetted with strange French stickwork. The dugouts, too, were not of their standard patterns. The front line was badly battered, but reliefs could be effected in broad daylight without casualties. The activities and comforting presence of our aeroplanes impressed them also as a great contrast to Ypres, where, naturally, our troops for the moment held only a watching-brief and every machine that could be spared had gone to the Somme. The dead of the opening battles lay thick about the place. The Irish buried two hundred of a division that had passed that way, five weeks or so before, and salved, with amazement at its plenty, the wreckage of their equipment. "There's the world and all out there, Sorr," said a man returning from his work. "The very world an' all! Machine-guns and"—his voice dropping in sheer awe—"rum-jars!" They were unmolested, save by a few minenwerfers. Undertaker's work does not hearten any troops, and they were glad to get back to hutments in the untouched woods behind Authie, near their old "poultry-show." During these days 2nd Lieutenants J. N. Ward and T. Gibson joined from home, the latter going to the first-line transport and Captain L. R. Hargreaves took over No. 2 Company on joining from home on the 20th.
On the 23rd August they moved with the Brigade across to Beauval on the Doullens-Amiens road (where camps and hutments almost touched each other), and on the 25th embarked at Canaples in a horror called a "tactical train," which was stuffed with two thousand of their brigade. After slow and spas-
