Here are some details of an outpost engagement which took place that night. A sapping party numbering fifty, under the command of Captain Bradstock, had to cross the river and dig just under Redoubt No. %. The fort saw them and so did the Germans entrenched by the main road on their right, with the sult that they "caught it" hot and strong from rifles, pompous and maxims on three sides, was the tightest corner I hope ever to be in," said a Lieutenant who related the whole episode to me. "Te looked as though it would be only a question of time before the whole lot of us were wiped out." Star-shells and searchlights gave the Germans every possible chance and but for the cool way in which Captain Bradstock retired his men (the sap, of course, completed,) there would have been a bigger casualty list than was actually the case—sixteen killed and wounded.
The eve of the general advance was grey and bitingly cold. General Kamio's new headquarters lay among gullies close to the village of Fonsanhou. All along the line of redoubts, and a little in front and behind them, columns of smoke kept shooting upwards, flattening out and drifting away. Occasionally one saw the flash of German guns, and sometimes shell pitched over the are of hills to the right. But reply to the Allies' bombardment had weakened very considerably, and in comparison with the scone presented on October 31 and November 1 the valley was dull, lifeless, played out.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.