were about 20 foot deep & about 40 foot in circumference & the ground between the craters & the trenches was very wet & muddy making movement difficult. There were two such posts, one was to be attacked by about 45 men of the 1st Royal Scots Fusiliers & the other by an equal number of Royal Fusiliers. The great difficulty was the wire cutting as it had to be cut within a few yards of a German sentry – at about midnight one officer & two men from each battalion crept out of the trench & reached the German wire without being seen inspite of many flares which the Germans sent up. It took about 1½ hours to clear a path through – during the whole time the man had to lie