“To me it fell to push on to the advanced Headquarters of the Infantry Brigades concerned to explain the plans for the morrow’s battles and to deliver certain necessary maps to the Tank Commanders who would be co-operating.
“I slung the maps for easier porterage along a pole that I and my orderly shouldered and from which they dangled in swaying white packages to the great interest and mystification of passing troops, to whom the bearers and the pole were invisible in the inky dark.
“It was a weary way up to Graincourt with nothing but gun flashes and infrequent star-shells to light the way, but at last we reached it.
“Two of the Infantry Brigades had, we found, established their Headquarters in a sort of catacomb underneath the ruined church—a wonderful place, part mediæval and part the work of the industrious Hun.
“Down and down you went—the old vaulted brickwork giving place to stout German timbering—until at the very bottom, some hundred feet below the floor of the church, the steep stairway ended in a gallery off which opened a whole street of little chambers.
“The place was insufferably hot and stuffy to one fresh in from the cold of the outer night; there was haze and reek of tobacco smoke and cooking, half drowning the stale dank smell, inseparable from a deep dug-out that has been long occupied—especially by Germans.
“Graincourt had been taken by surprise and had changed hands so quickly that we had taken over these very eligible Headquarters as a going concern ‘ready furnished for immediate occupation.’
“So sudden, indeed, had been the change of tenancy that the two Boche engineers whose job it was to run the electric lighting plant had been captured in their own subterranean engine-room and were even now stolidly carrying on their old duties, seemingly but little concerned by the fact that they were now ‘under entirely new management.’
“As it turned out, it was very well for us that we did capture and retain this precious pair, for when they found that they were going to be kept on to run the lighting as before, they quite shamelessly said:
“‘Well, if that’s the case, there’s just one little point we ought to warn you about, and that is, if any one moves what looks like the main switch—as any one would who didn’t know, when starting up the plant—the demolition charges would be blown. If you would like these removed in case of accidents, we can show you where to dig for them—we know exactly where to find them, as it was our job to lay them.’