the guns of the 7th remained under my command. On this same night the 310th Brigade was subjected to a more than usually heavy bombardment; over two thousand gas shells fell among the batteries, and we lost five gunners killed, and about 12 wounded. On the 15th, Lieuts. A. J. Edwards and E. W. Jephson were wounded, the latter for the second time.

On the 16th May, Lieut.-Colonel E. P. Bedwell left the Division, invalided home. His services had been invaluable, and I fully shared the sorrow which all ranks of his brigade felt at his departure. He had trained and commanded this brigade, the 312th, from the earliest days of its formation, and might fairly claim to have made it; it must have been a great satisfaction to him to see how well its performances in France had repaid his care. I am glad to say that he recovered his health and was able to take his place again in the fighting line later on, though not in the 62nd Division. Major F. H. Lister took over the command of the brigade, with the acting rank of Lieut.-Colonel.

Both sides now settled down to deliberate trench warfare, a state of things which entailed constant work of a dangerous and harassing nature, but which furnished few outstanding incidents of sufficient interest to be chronicled. On the 26th May a sad disaster occurred in D/312 Howitzer Battery. The camouflage over one of the howitzers caught fire and blazed up. It was merely a question of a few moments when the flames should reach the ammunition and cause a terrible explosion, but there was a slight chance of the fire being put out in time, and Capt. H. B. Gallimore, who was temporarily commanding the battery, with Lieut. G. Hardy and a party of N.C.O.'s and men, made a gallant attempt to extinguish the flames. Unfortunately their efforts were vain, and there was a tremendous explosion. Poor Gallimore was killed, and also ten others (including all the six "Numbers One" of the battery), while Hardy was dangerously wounded, and also five gunners more or less severely. The loss of two such officers and six of the most valuable N.C.O.'s was a very serious blow to D/312, but the splendid act of devotion, in which they sacrificed their brave young lives, conferred a lustre not only on their own battery, but on the whole of the Divisional Artillery, and will not soon be forgotten. Hardy, unhappily, died of his wounds on the 28th.

The casualties in the artillery up to this date had been:

3 officers and 72 other ranks killed.
23 officers and 256 other ranks wounded.

On the 29th May our infantry was withdrawn from the line for a rest, and I therefore ceased to command the artillery tactically; it remained in the line in support of the 58th Division.

It was a great disappointment to me that the artillery could not be withdrawn for a rest after all its strenuous work since coming into action. The promise of rest in the near future had long been dangled before our eyes, but the plain fact was that guns could not be spared from the firing line, and although the Commander-in-Chief, in a confidential circular issued about this time, showed that he "fully realised the untiring energy of the artillery during the first half of the year," still he was unable to hold out any hopes of relaxation, and could only "rely upon all ranks to continue their good work ungrudgingly." His reliance was well founded, for all ranks accepted the situation loyally, and learned now, and I may add for the rest of the war, to do without rest, and to "stick it" somehow or other even when it might have been truly said that

I think that all realised the impossibility of reducing the number of guns in front of the enemy, and one scarcely ever heard a word of grumbling, but it is well that the fact should be placed on record that the artillery practically never got a rest. Their work was not perhaps so much in the public eye as that of their gallant comrades in the infantry, nor did they experience as a rule the same extremes of danger, but it should be remembered that, while the latter were periodically withdrawn from the danger zone after about eight days in the trenches to rest billets miles behind the firing line, the men behind the guns endured the dirt and discomfort of the trenches for months at a time, were never safe day or night from hostile shell fire, and were constantly hard at work. Only perhaps those who have actually served in a battery in war-time can realise the amount of hard work and nerve strain involved in keeping up even the normal programme of day and night firing, the map readings and calculations to be worked out by the officers in a damp dug-out by the light of a guttering candle, the long spells of duty to be endured by the weak gun detachments always under strength through sickness and casualties, the heart-breaking and back-breaking labours of keeping up the ammunition supply, and with it all the constant sense of an ever-brooding danger. That all sorts and conditions of men should have endured this kind of existence for several years, cheerfully and without a murmur, seems to me a more wonderful phenomenon than even the most dramatic act of individual gallantry.

The following honours were announced on the 30th May:—

Major G. Fleming, Legion of Honour.
Major G. A. Swain, Croix de Guerre.

Chapter II
JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1917. TRENCH WARFARE