I have written elsewhere (in The Battles of the Somme ) how young officers and small bodies of these London men held the barricades against German attacks while others tried to break a way back through that murderous shellfire, and how groups of lads who set out on that adventure to their old lines were shattered so that only a few from each group crawled back alive, wounded or unwounded.

At the end of the day the Germans acted with chivalry, which I was not allowed to tell at the time. The general of the London Division (Philip Howell) told me that the enemy sent over a message by a low-flying airplane, proposing a truce while the stretcher-bearers worked, and offering the service of their own men in that work of mercy. This offer was accepted without reference to G.H.Q. , and German stretcher-bearers helped to carry our wounded to a point where they could be reached.