The Carlisle independent., 1918-05-09

| HUuIS- IL WdS WdTlu duu UrtBnl. could look out of my shelter and see our support lines digging themselves in several hundred yards away. The cannon fire ceased. the machine guns settled down to an occasional fitful burst and it was midday of beautiful spring day.
 A couple of partridge flew over me. What did they know or care about all this noise and racket and men getting up in line and killing each other?
 Along about three o'clock things be- gan to liyen up again. In the mean l time headquarters had been establish l ed in sunken road with banks about | this cut was half filled with dead). My aid post was in a dugout near by and gradually things got hotter and hotter.
 Our men had dug themselves in and were popping away with their rifles. The field batteries behind us were putting up a barrage, airplanes were circling overhead, both ours and the Germans. The Germans put up a counter-barrage the machine guns were going like mad. I was standing with the colonel on a little rise of ground above the sunken road when the Germans broke through about a mile to the north of us: They conld be plainly seen pouring over the ridge in close formation.
 Tanks Get Into Action.
 Then the tanks came up, and you should have seen them runi Just like rabbits The tanks retired; the Boches reformed and came at 1t again. They tell me that at certain places our men withstood fifteen sue cessive attacks and that tse Germans went down in thousands. One Welsh man told me that his gun accounted for 75 in three minutes during one wave.
 Machine-gun bullets were nipping around me, the shell fire was getting hotter, and even though it was won- derful sight to watch I decided "dis- cretion was the better part of valor," or something like that, and got down in my dugout.
 was sitting there smoking a cig- arette when my orderly came down and said I was being relieved and was to go back and work with the ambu- lance. Fifteen hours later the man that relieved me was captured. But l am getting ahead of my story.
 I went back to the advanced dress oh hn fire I ever experienced. More than once I went down on my face when a shell burst and the pieces went whiz- Zing over my head. I spent the night in a mined village where the advanced dressing station was located, and all night they shelled it to blazes. It was remarkable how few casualties we had.
 About eleven o'clock the morning of the third day a shell blew in the side of our post, but luckily no one was hurt. We stuck to 1t until about four in the afternoon, when we saw our men retiring over a ridge in front of us. keeping up continuous machine gun and rife fire. and we beat 1t back to another village and opened anoth. CT post.
 The Besrimed Lord.
 About ten o'clock on the morning of the fourth day Lord Thyme, my col onel when l was with the battalion, stumbled into the shack where I was sitting. He looked like a ghost. He had lost his hat, his face was covered with four days beard, the sweat had traced tracks in the dust from his forehead to his chin. His sleeve was torn and bloody and he had gash ir his arm where he had been struck by piece of flying shell case.
 My God. doc. are you here?" ht said. You got out just in time. The battalion is all gone The sunken road is filled with dead-mostly Huns damn 'em. The line broke on the right; we were surrounded. and al the last we were fighting back an6 back. Only thirty of us got away"
 So we knew the Boehe had broker through to our right and our left, and it was question of how long it would be before we. too, were surrounded but we wanted to stick 1t out as long as we could
 But not more than an hour later a medical officer rushed in from one ot the battalions and between gasps for breath told us the Germans were on the edge of the village, had shot him through the sleeve with a machine gun bullet Ouckily that was alb, and for us to beat it.
 The ninth day, sitting around the fire in our mess after the best dinner we had had in days, the commanding officer handed me some papers and said, Here Is something that will in terest you. Petit I want to say we shall be sorry to lose you"
 And this is what 1t was: 'Lieut Roswell T. Petit. M R. C.. is relieved from duty with the British army ane will proceed to the A. E. F., where he