The Sergeant was killed "in his zeal to finish the job completely"—no mean epitaph for a thorough man. By eleven o'clock that morning all the companies had reached their objectives, and, though sorely harassed, began to feel that the worst for them might be over. There were, however, two German "whizz-bangs" that lived in Orival Wood still untaken on the Battalion's left, and these, served with disgusting speed and accuracy, swept Silver Street mercilessly. The situation was not improved when one of the sergeants quoted the ever-famous saying of Sergeant-Major Toher with reference to one of our own barrages: "And even the wurrums themselves are getting up and crying for mercy." The guns were near enough to watch quite comfortably, and while the men watched and winced, they saw the "success" signal of the Canadians—three whites—rise high in air in front of Bourlon Wood. Then No. 1 Company reported they were getting more than their share of machine-gun fire, and the 1st Guards Brigade Trench Mortar Battery, reduced to one mortar, one officer, one sergeant, four men, and ten shells, bestowed the whole of its ammunition in the direction indicated, abandoned its mortar, and merged itself into the ranks of No. 3 Company. It had been amply proved that where trench-mortars accompany a first wave of attack, if men are hit while carrying two Stokes shells apiece (forty pounds of explosives), they become dangerous mobile mines.
Enemy aeroplanes now swooped down with machine-gun fire; there seemed no way of getting our artillery to attend to them and they pecked like vultures undisturbed. Then Battalion Headquarters came up in the midst of the firing from the left, established themselves in a dug-out and were at once vigorously shelled, together with the neighbouring aid-post and some German prisoners there, waiting to carry down wounded. The aid-post was in charge of a young American doctor, Rhys Davis by name, who had been attached to the Battalion for some time. This was his
