XI. THE G IN GAPToC

1 P.M.: For some miles after leaving Varesnes it was retreat—rapid, undisguised, and yet with a plan. Thousands of men, scores of guns and transport vehicles, hundreds of civilians caught in the last rush, all struggling to evade the mighty pincers' clutch of the German masses who, day after day, were crushing our attempts to rally against their weight and fury. Unless collectedly, in order, and with intercommunications unbroken, we could pass behind the strong divisions hurrying to preserve the precious contact between French and British, we should be trapped. And when I say we, I mean the very large force of which our Brigade formed one tiny part. Not even the colonel knew much at this moment of the wider strategy that was being worked out. The plain and immediate task was to free the Brigade, with its seven hundred odd men and its horses and waggons, from the welter of general traffic pouring on to the main roads, and bring it intact to the village that Division had fixed as our destination. And as we had now become a non-fighting body, a brigade of Field Artillery without guns, it was more than ever our business to get out of the way.

Our men found room for some of the aged civilians in motor-lorries and G.S. waggons; but I shall always remember one silver-haired dame who refused to be separated from the wheel-barrow heaped up with her belongings, which she was pushing to a place seven miles away. For some reason she would not allow a gunner to wheel the barrow for her. Poor obstinate old soul! I hope she got away; if she didn't, I trust the Boche was merciful.

The colonel and I rode through a forest in order to catch up the batteries. As we emerged from the wood we came upon five brigades of cavalry—three French and two British—fresh as paint, magnificently mounted, ready and waiting. "The most cheering sight we've seen this morning," remarked the colonel.

We came up with C Battery, and rode at their head. Despite the spurt to cross the canal, their turn-out was smart and soldierly, and there was satisfaction in the colonel's quick, comprehensive glance. Through Pontoise, another village from which the inhabitants had fled the day before, and past the outskirts of Noyon, with its grey cathedral and quaint tower. The evacuation here had been frantic, and we heard stories of pillage and looting and of drunken men—not, one is glad to say it, British soldiers. In all that galling, muddling week I did not see a single drunken soldier. As we were near a considerable town, I gave my groom twenty francs, and told him to buy what food he could: we might be very short by nightfall. He returned with some sardines, some tinned tunny fish, and a few biscuits, the sardines costing five francs a small tin. At one cross-road a dozen American Red Cross cars were drawn up, and I recall the alacrity of a middle-aged American doctor, wearing gold pince-nez, in hopping off his ambulance and snapshotting the colonel at the head of the battery. I wondered bitterly whether that photograph would subsequently be published under the heading, "British Artillery in Retreat."

2.30 P.M.: The four batteries were now ranged alongside a railway siding at a point where the road by which we had journeyed joined the main road to Compiègne. For several hours this great traffic artery had been packed with troops and transport moving to and from the battle-front. It was hot and dusty, and our men and horses were glad of the half-hour's halt, although the respite had only lasted so long because the traffic on the main route had been too continuous for us to turn on to it and reach the road fifty yards farther down along which we had to continue. Remembering a lesson of the Mons retreat emphasised by a Horse Artillery major lecturing at Larkhill—that his horses kept their condition because every time there was a forced halt near a village he despatched his gunners with the water-buckets—I had told my groom to search around until he found water for my two horses. Then I stood under the trees lining the main road and watched three battalions of French infantry march past, moving north of the part of the front our brigade had just left. They were older, smaller, more town-bred French soldiers than those we had seen during the two previous days, more spectacles among them, and a more abstracted expression. The thought came to me that here must be last-line reserves. Up on the steep hills that overlooked the railway siding bearded French troops were deepening trenches and strengthening barbed wire.

3 P.M.: We were anxious to get on now, and longed for a couple of City of London traffic policemen to stand in majestic and impartial control of these road junctions. The colonel and Major Bullivant, after expostulating five minutes with a French major, had got our leading battery across. Then the long line of traffic on the main route resumed its apparently endless flow. An R.A.M.C. captain came out and stood by as I stationed myself opposite the road we wanted our three remaining batteries to turn down, watching to take quick advantage of the G in the first possible Gap. "Pretty lively here last night," volunteered the R.A.M.C. captain. "General scramble to get out, and some unusual sights. There was a big ordnance store, and they hadn't enough lorries to get the stuff away, so they handed out all manner of goods to prevent them being wasted. The men got pretty well carte blanche in blankets, boots, and puttees, and you should have seen them carting off officers' shirts and underclothing. There was a lot of champagne going begging too, and hundreds of bottles were smashed to make sure the men had no chance of getting blind. And there was an old sapper colonel who made it his business to get hold of the stragglers. He kept at it about six hours, and bunged scores of wanderers into a prisoners-of-war cage; then he had 'em marched off to a collecting station. He was hot stuff, I can tell you."

A gap came at last on the main route, but something also that would dam the opening we had awaited for over an hour.

A tremendous line of French lorries was moving towards me on the road opposite. The French officer in charge had come forward to reconnoitre the crossing. Three British lorries, loading up, also stood on the road along which we wanted to go. If the French lorries reached that spot first, our batteries might be held up another hour. It was a moment for unscrupulous action. I told my groom to dash off and tell Major Bartlett to come along at the trot; then I slipped across and engaged the French captain in conversation. If I could prevent him signalling back for his lorries to quicken speed, all would be well. If Major Bartlett failed, there would be a most unholy mix up near the three stationary lorries. Major Bartlett responded nobly. His leading team reached the three lorries while the first French motor-waggon was still thirty yards away. The gap between the stationary lorry and the moving one narrowed to eight yards; but the waggon and six horses were through, and the battery now commanded the position with a line of horsed waggons and baggage-carts stretching back along the fifty yards of the main road, with A and B Batteries following in column of route past the railway siding. The line of French lorries extended back far as the eye could see. The French officer turned sharply, cursed impatiently, and asserted volubly that his lorries must come through. I explained soothingly what a long time we had waited, and asked his forbearance. Meanwhile C Battery continued to trot through the gap, and I called Heaven to witness that the whole of our Brigade would be through and away before ten minutes passed. I ran back to urge A and B Batteries to keep up the pace. When our very last water-cart, mess-cart, and G.S. waggon had passed, I thanked the French officer with great sincerity, and felt I had done a proper job of work.

4.30 P.M.: We sat by the roadside eating bread-and-cheese—the colonel, young Bushman, and I. The batteries were well on the way to their destination; and we three, jogging along in rear, had encountered Bombardier M'Donald, triumphant at having filled his forage and rations waggon for yet another day. So we and our grooms helped ourselves to bread-and-cheese and satisfied hefty appetites, and drank the cider with which Bushman had filled his flask at Caillouel the day before.

Another of the mournful side-spectacles of the retreat was being enacted under our eyes. Opposite a small cottage a cart packed to a great height, but marvellously balanced on its two huge wheels, stood ready to move off. A wrinkled sad-eyed woman, perched on top, held beside her her grandchild—a silent, wondering little girl. A darkly handsome, strongly-built daughter had tied a cow to the back of the cart. A bent old man began to lead the wide-backed Percheron mare that was yoked to the shafts with the mixture of straps and bits of rope that French farm folk find does well enough for harness. But the cow, bellowing in an abandonment of grief, tugged backwards, and the cart did not move. The daughter, proud-eyed, self-reliant, explained that the cow was calling for her calf. The calf would never be able to make the journey, and they had been compelled to sell it, and it would be killed for food. It was hard, but it was war.

They tried again; but the cow refused to be comforted, and tugged until the rope threatened to strangle her. They brought the calf out again and tied him alongside his now pacified mother; but this time, when the cart moved forward, he protested in fear and bewilderment, and tried to drag himself free. The cart was still there when we rode off.

Our way ran through a noble stretch of hilly country, well wooded, with sparkling streams plashing down the hillsides—a landscape of uninhabited quiet. Two aeroplanes droned overhead—the first Allied planes we had seen since the retreat began. "The old French line," observed the colonel, pointing out a wide system of well-planned trenches, deep dug-outs, and broad belts of rusted barbed wire. "The Boche ought not to get through here."

Up and over a hill, and down into a tiny hamlet which more stricken civilians were preparing to leave. As our little cavalcade drew near, a shrinking old woman, standing in a doorway, drew a frightened little girl towards her, and held a hand over the child's eyes. "I believe they took us to be Germans at first," said the colonel when we had passed.

In another village a woman was trying to make a cow pull a heavily-laden waggon up the hill. With streaming eyes and piteous gestures she besought us to assist with our horses. She would pay us money. Twice before she had lost everything through the Boche, she pleaded. The colonel looked grieved, but shook his head. "We'll send back a pair of draught-horses if we can," was all he said to me. And we did.

6 P.M.: We had reached Thiescourt, a hillside village that had thought never to be threatened by the Germans again. Dwellings damaged during their last visit had been repaired. New houses made of fine white stone, quarried in the district, had been built, and were building. The bitterness of it, if the foul devastating Boche were to come again! There were many evidences of the hurried flight of the last two days,—torn letters and papers, unswept fire-grates, unconsumed food and drinks, beds with sheets in them, drawers hurriedly searched for articles that could be taken away, disconsolate wandering dogs. A few days before it had been arranged that the major-general, his Divisional Staff, Ordnance, the Divisional brass band, and all the usual appurtenances of a Divisional Headquarters, should come and make this village a Divisional rest area. Few even of the first preparations for visitation were left now. D.A.D.O.S., blue-tabbed and business-like, was in the main street, bewailing the scarcity of lorries for removing his wares to an area still farther back. He had several rifles he would be pleased to hand out to our batteries. There was a large quantity of clothing which would have to be left in the store he had established. Any we didn't want would we burn, or drop in the stream before we left? No lorry to remove the Divisional canteen. Would we distribute the supplies free to our men? Biscuits, chocolate, potted meats, tooth-paste, and cigarettes went like wildfire.

Brigade H.Q. mess was installed in a new house that had chalked messages scrawled on doors, walls, and mirrors, telling searching relations and friends the address in a distant town to which the occupants of the house had fled. In another dwelling that Boche aeroplanes had already bombed, we discovered sleeping quarters. At 7 P.M. a lieutenant on a motor-cycle arrived with Corps orders for the morrow. We were to leave for Elincourt immediately the tactical situation demanded it.

We dined early, and sought our beds early too. I had been asleep two minutes, as I thought—really about an hour and a half—when Dumble woke me up. "Cavalry are coming through," he said, shining his electric torch right in my eyes, "and they say the enemy is at Lagny. Hadn't you better let the colonel know?"

"No," I retorted with some asperity.

"But listen; can you hear all that traffic? It's our infantry coming back."

"Can you hear machine-gun fire?" I asked resentfully.

"No."

"Well, I'm damned if I disturb the colonel until you can tell me that, at least," I said finally, turning on my right side.

XII. OUT OF THE WAYToC

The usual monotonous spectacle when we woke next morning: the narrow streets of what a few days before had been a tranquil, out-of-the-war village choked with worn-out troops marching to go into rest. Now that we had become a brigade of artillery without guns, a British non-fighting unit struggling to get out of the way of a manœuvring French army, our one great hope was that Corps would send us right back to a depot where we could refit ourselves with fresh guns and reinforcements, to some spot where we need not be wondering every five minutes whether the enemy was at our heels. Men who have fought four days and nights on end feel like that when the strain of actual battle ceases.

The Boche guns sounded nearer, and the colonel had ordered a mounted officer to go back and seek definite information upon the situation. By 10 A.M. a retiring French battalion marched through, and reported that the line was again being withdrawn. By 11 A.M. two batteries of "75's" came back. Which decided the colonel that the tactical situation demanded our departure, and the Brigade began the march to Elincourt. On past more evacuated villages. Abandoned farm carts—some of which our batteries eagerly adopted for transporting stores and kit—and the carcases of dogs, shot or poisoned, lying by the roadside, told their own story of the rush from the Hun. By 1 P.M. we reached Elincourt, a medieval town whose gable-ends and belfry towers, and straight rows of hoary lime-trees, breathed the grace and charm of the real France. I made immediately for the Mairie, bent upon securing billets for officers and men; but standing at the gateway was a Corps despatch-rider who handed over instructions for the Brigade to continue the march to Estree St Denis, a town twenty kilometres distant.

5 P.M.: Estree St Denis, to which I rode in advance with a billeting officer from each battery, proved to be a drab smoky town of mean-looking, jerry-built houses. One thought instinctively of the grimiest parts of Lancashire and the Five Towns. The wide and interminably long main street was filled with dust-laden big guns and heavy hows., four rows of them. Every retreating Division in France seemed to be arriving and to be bringing more dust. Hundreds of refugees from villages now in Boche possession had come, too. What a place to be sent to! It was useless looking for billets, so I fixed upon a vast field on the outskirts of the town where we could establish our horse lines and pitch tents and bivouacs. This was satisfactory enough, but the watering problem was bound to be difficult. Four small pumps in the main street and one tiny brackish pond totalled the facilities. It would take each battery an hour and a half to water its horses. "Corps moves in most mysterious ways," crooned Stone. "Why did they send us here?" We rode and walked until we were tired, but found nothing that would improve matters. Then Fentiman, Stone, and I found the Café de la Place, and entered the "Officers only" room, where we sat down to a bottle of wine and devoured the Continental 'Daily Mail' of March 23, the first paper we had seen since starting the retreat. Madame informed us that some officers of Divisional Headquarters had turned up the day before and were dining there. As we went out to go and meet the batteries and lead them to the waggon lines, there was a shout of recognition, and "Swiffy" and the little American doctor ran up, grinning and rather shamefaced. "We thought of posting you as deserters," I said with pretended seriousness, "not having seen you since the afternoon of the 23rd." It was now the 26th. They narrated a long and somewhat sheepish story that, boiled down, told of a barn that promised a sound afternoon's nap, an awakening to find every one vanished; then a worried and wearied tramp in search of us, with nothing to eat except what they could beg or buy at ruinous prices; one perturbing two hours when they found themselves walking into the arms of the oncoming Hun; and finally, a confirmed resolve never to stray far from the Brigade mess-cart again.

7 P.M.: When the batteries were settled in their waggon lines, I led the colonel and "Swiffy" and the doctor through the crowded dusty streets into the Café de la Place. The restaurant was filled with French and British officers. "Swiffy" insisted on cracking a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the doctor and himself to the fold; then I spotted Ronny Hertford, the Divisional salvage officer, who was full of talk and good cheer, and said he had got his news from the new G.S.O. II., who had just come from England, travelling with a certain politician. "It's all right, old boy," bubbled Ronny. "The War Office is quite calm about it now; we've got 'em stone-cold. Foch is in supreme command, and there are any number of Divisions in reserve which haven't been called on. We're only waiting to know if this is the real push, or only a feint, and then we strike. We've got 'em trapped, old top, no doubt about that."

"Right-o, strategist!" I retorted in the same vein.

"Do you want to buy a calf, old boy?" he switched off. "Look here—there's one under the table. About 110 lbs. of meat at 3 francs a pound. Dirt cheap these times. A Frenchman has left it with Madame to sell. We'd buy it for our mess, but we've got a goose for dinner to-night. Stay and dine with us, old boy."

Through the glass door that showed into the café one saw a little group of civilians, dressed in their Sunday black, waiting for carts to take them from the town. A mother was suckling a wailing child. An old cripple nodded his head helplessly over hands propped up by his stick. A smart young French soldier came in at the door, and Madame's fair-haired daughter rushed to his arms and held him while she wept. They talked fast, and the civilians listened with strained faces. "Her fiancé," quietly explained an interpreter who came through the café to join us in the "Officers only" room. "He's just come from Montdidier with a motor-transport. He says he was fired at by machine-guns, which shows that the Boche is still coming on."

The camp commandant of the Division, nervously business-like, the baths' officer, D.A.D.O.S., and a couple of padres came in. The Camp Commandant refused to hear of the colonel sleeping in a tent. "We've got a big dormitory at the back here, sir—thirty wire-beds. We can put all your Brigade Headquarter officers up." The colonel protested that we should be quite happy in bivouacs, but he was overruled.

We dined in a tent in the waggon lines. As I made my way there I noticed a blue-painted motor-van, a mobile French wireless station, some distance away in the fields. What really caught my eye when I drew near it was a couple of Camembert cheeses, unopened and unguarded, on the driver's seat. I bethought myself that the operator inside the van might be persuaded to sell one of the cheeses. He wasn't, but he was extremely agreeable, and showed me the evening communiqué that had just been "ticked" through. We became friends, which explains why for three days I was able to inform the camp commandant, Ronny Hertford, and all their party, of the latest happenings at the Front, hours before the French newspapers and the Continental 'Daily Mail' arrived.

And what do you think the men of two of our batteries were doing an hour after the camps were pitched and the horses watered?—playing a football match! Marvellous fellows!

We stayed at Estree until the evening of the 28th, days of gossip and of fairly confident expectations, for we knew now that the Boche's first offensive was held—but a time of waiting and of wondering where we were to be sent next. Division was nearly thirty miles away, incorporated with the French Army, and still fighting, while Corps seemed to have forgotten that we needed supplies. Still there was no need to worry about food and forage. Estree was an important railhead, and the supply officer seemed anxious to get his stores distributed as soon as they came in: he was prepared to treat most comers as famine-stricken stragglers. Besides, near the station stood an enormous granary, filled to the brim, simply waiting to be requisitioned.

About noon on the 28th we were very cast down by the news that, to meet the demand for reinforcements, the Brigade might be disbanded, and the gunners hurried off in driblets, to make up losses on various parts of our particular Army's front.

The colonel had instructions to attend a Staff Conference in the afternoon, and each battery was ordered to prepare a list of its available gunners.

There were sore hearts that afternoon. Many of the men had been with the Brigade since it was formed, and to be scattered broadcast after doing well, and coming through a time of stress and danger together, would knock the spirit out of every one. The colonel came back at tea-time, impassive, walking briskly. I knew before he opened his lips that the Brigade was saved. "We move to-night to Pont St Maxence. We are going on to Poix to refit," was all he said.

Every one was anxious to be off, fearing that the Staff might change its mind. It rained in torrents that night, and owing to the Corps' failure to map out proper accommodation arrangements, we slept anyhow and anywhere, but no one minded much. The Brigade was still in being, and nothing else mattered. I could tell many stories of the next few days—marching and billeting and getting ready for action again; of the village that no English troops had visited before, and the inhabitants that feared us, and afterwards did not want us to leave; of the friendly bearded patron of an estaminet, who flourished an 'Echo de Paris,' and pointed to the words ténacité anglaise in an account of the fighting; of the return of the signalling officer, who, while attending a course at an Army School, had been roped in to lead one of Sandeman Carey's infantry platoons; of the magnificently equipped casualty clearing station that a week before the offensive had been twenty-five miles behind the lines, and only got its last patients away two hours before the Boches arrived!

April 2nd: A few more new guns had come in from the Refitting Depot. We were almost complete to establishment. The horses were out grazing and getting fat again. Most of the men were hard at it, playing their eternal football. The colonel came out of the chateau, which was Brigade Headquarters billet, and settled himself in a deck-chair. He looked sun-tanned and fit.

"If all colonels were as competent and knowledgeable as our colonel, we should have won the war by now," said Dumble as he and I walked away. "What a beautiful day."

"Yes. Oh to be in England, now that April's here," I chimed in.

"Oh to be in England, any bally old time of the year," Dumble corrected me.

THE RETURN PUSH

I. THE DEFENCE OF AMIENSToC

On a day towards the end of April the colonel and I, riding well ahead of the Brigade, passed through deserted Amiens and stopped when we came upon some fifty horses, nose-bags on, halted under the trees along a boulevard in the eastern outskirts of the city. Officers in groups stood beneath, or leaned against, the high wall of a large civil hospital that flanked the roadway.

Reinforced in guns and personnel, and rested after the excitements and hazards of the March thrust-back, our two brigades of Divisional Field Artillery, and the D.A.C., were bound again for the Front. These waiting officers formed the advance billeting parties.

"We've been obeying Sir Douglas Haig's Order of the Day—getting our backs to the wall," growled the adjutant to me, after he had sprung up and saluted the colonel. "The staff captain met us two hours ago at ——; but they were shelling the place, and he said it wouldn't be safe for waggon lines; so we came on here. He's inside the building now seeing if he can put the whole Divisional Artillery there....

"I'll bet we shan't be ready for the batteries when they come in," he went on gloomily—and then added, like the good soldier that he is, "My groom will show you where the horses can water."

A long-range shell, passing high overhead and exploding among the houses some way behind us, showed that Amiens was no health resort. But horse lines were allotted, and in due course the long corridors of the evacuated building resounded with the clatter-clatter of gunners and drivers marched in to deposit their kits. "You've got a big piece of chalk this morning, haven't you?" grumbled the adjutant to the adjutant of our companion Brigade, complaining that they were portioning off more rooms than they were entitled to. Still he was pleased to find that the room he and I shared contained a wardrobe, and that inside the door was pinned a grotesque, jolly-looking placard of Harry Tate—moustache and all—in "Box o' Tricks." The discovery that a currant cake, about as large as London, sent a few days before from England, had disappeared from our Headquarters' mess-cart during the day's march, led to a tirade on the shortcomings of New Army servants. But he became sympathetic when I explained that the caretakers, two sad-eyed French women, the only civilians we ourselves met that day, were anxious that our men should be warned against prising open locked doors and cupboards. "Tell 'em any man doing that will be shot at dawn," he said, leaving me to reassure the women.

Twenty-four hours later, after another march, our guns were in position. With pick and shovel, and a fresh supply of corrugated iron, the batteries were fortifying their habitations; Brigade Headquarters occupied the only dwelling for miles round, a tiny café that no shell had touched. The colonel had a ground-floor room and a bedstead to himself; the adjutant and myself put down our camp-beds in an attic, with the signalling officer and the American doctor next door, and H.Q. signallers and servants in the adjoining loft that completed the upper storey. It was a rain-proof comfortable shelter, but the C.R.A. didn't altogether approve of it. "You're at a cross-roads, with an ammunition dump alongside of you, and the road outside the front door is mined ready for blowing up should the Boche advance this way," he said grimly, when he visited us. "In any case, he'll shoot by the map on this spot immediately he starts a battle.... I think you ought to have a retiring headquarters in readiness." So I put in two days superintending the erection of a little colony of houses, built of ammunition boxes and corrugated iron, half a mile from the main road. I camouflaged the sloping roofs with loose hay, and, at a distance, our "Garden City" looked like a bunch of small hay-stacks. We got quite proud of our handiwork; and there was a strained moment one midday when the regimental sergeant-major rode hurriedly to the café with a most disturbing report. Riding along the main road he had observed a party of men pulling down our huts, and piling the sheets of corrugated iron into a G.S. waggon. When he cantered across, the driver whipped up his horses, and the G.S. waggon bounded over the open fields for half a mile before the sergeant-major got sufficiently near to order it to halt. "They belong to the  —st Brigade, sir," the sergeant-major informed the adjutant, "and I've told the sergeant in charge of the party to consider himself under arrest until you have seen him."

The adjutant, eye flashing, nostrils dilated, was already out of the café walking hard, and breathing dire threats against the servant who had been posted to guard our new home. Apparently he had gone away to complain that the cook was late in sending his dinner.

The sergeant and his assistant "pirates" were restoring the dismantled huts by the time the adjutant and myself drew near. The sergeant was plainly a disciple of the "It's all in the same firm" school. He submitted, with great respect, that he was innocent of criminal intent. There was nothing to show that the huts were in use ... and his battery wanted iron for their gun-pits.

"None of your old soldier talk with me," blustered the adjutant, shaking a ponderous forefinger. "You knew you were doing wrong.... Why did you send the waggon off when you saw the sergeant-major?"

"I went after it and stopped it when he told me to, sir," returned the sergeant.

The sergeant-major admitted that, strictly speaking, this was a correct statement. There was a ten seconds' pause, and I wondered what the adjutant's next thrust would be.

"The waggon was trotting away, was it?" he demanded slowly.

"Yes, sir," replied the sergeant.

"And you made no attempt to prevent it trotting until the sergeant-major told you to stop it?"

"No, sir."

"And you know it's forbidden for waggons to be trotted except in very exceptional circumstances?"

"Ye-s, sir."

"Very well, I put you under arrest for contravening G.R.O. by trotting draught-horses."

"Artful beggar—I know him of old," chuckled the adjutant, as he and I returned to the café. "He was a gunner in my battery when I was sergeant-major of  ——  Battery, R.H.A."

The Boche was expected to attack on St George's Day. Our Brigade was defending a reserve line, and would not fire unless the enemy swept over our first-line system. Fresh trenches were being dug, and new and stout rows of wire entanglement put down. Corps orders were distinct and unmistakable. The fight here would be a fight à outrance. On March 21 our retirement had been a strategic one. But this Front had to be held at all costs, and we should throw in every reserve we had. Only once during our stay in the café did the adjutant and myself sleep in pyjamas. "These walls are so thin one 5·9 would knock the whole place out; if we have to clear we may as well be ready," he said meaningly. The ridge, three-quarters of a mile in front of us, was shelled regularly, and every night enemy bombing planes came over, but, strangely enough, the Boche gunners neglected our cross-roads; we even kicked a football about until one afternoon a trench-mortar officer misdirected it on to the main road, and an expressive "pop!" told of its finish under the wheel of a motor-lorry. St George's Day, and still no Boche attack! We began to talk of the peaceful backwater in which we were moored. Manning, our mess waiter, decorated the stained, peeling walls of the mess with some New Art picture post-cards. I found a quiet corner, and wrote out a 'Punch' idea that a demand for our water-troughs to be camouflaged had put into my head. Major Bullivant, who had succeeded poor Harville in the command of A Battery, and Major Bartlett of C Battery, dined with us that night, and the best story told concerned an extremely non-military subaltern, newly attached to the D.A.C. When instructed to deliver an important message to "Div. Arty."—the Army condensation for "Divisional Artillery"—he pored long and hopelessly over a map. Finally he appealed to a brother officer. "I can't find the village of 'Divarty' on the map," he said, and, of course, sprang into immediate fame throughout the Division.

April 24: About 4 A.M. a shell burst that shook the café. Then the steady whistling scream of high-velocity shells going overhead. I lighted a candle and looked at the adjutant as he poked his red face and tousled grey hair from under his blankets. "They've started," he muttered solemnly. "The old Hun always shells the back areas when he attacks."

We got up slowly, and fastened boots and leggings. "I suppose we ought to put on revolvers," he went on dubiously, and then added with sudden warmth, "I hope he gets it in the neck to-day."

Our telephone pit in the cellar below the café was alive with industry. Our batteries were not firing, but the colonel had already asked the battery commanders whether any shells, particularly gas shells, had come their way. A couple of 4·2's had landed close to C Battery, but they seemed to be stray shots; it did not seem likely that the enemy knew where the batteries were sited. The Boche bombardment continued.

After breakfast, a 5·9 exploding 200 yards from our café, blew out the largest pane in the unshuttered window. Shells had dropped by now in most spots around us; but the cross-roads remained untouched. A cyclist orderly from our waggon line, two miles back, brought news that a direct hit had blown the telephone cart to bits; fortunately, neither man nor horse had been touched. The adjutant was outside exhorting four infantry stragglers to try and find their units by returning to the battle line. A Royal Fusilier, wounded in the head, had fainted while waiting at the cross-roads for an ambulance; our cook had lifted him on to a bench inside the café and was giving him tea. The colonel, who remained in the mess, in telephone touch with the brigadier-general, C.R.A., and the brigade-major, had never seemed so preoccupied. Days afterwards, he confided to me that when the Hun bombardment started he feared a repetition of the overpowering assault of March 21.

"They had tanks out to-day," a boy captain of infantry, his arm in a sling, told me, as he climbed into a motor ambulance. "By Gad, I saw a topping sight near Villers Bretonneux. The Boche attacked in force there and pushed us back, and one of his old tanks came sailing merrily on. But just over the crest, near a sunken road, was a single 18-pdr.; it didn't fire until the Boche tank climbed into view on top of the crest. Then they let him have it at about 100 yards' range. Best series of upper-cuts I've ever seen. The old tank sheered off and must have got it hot." I learnt afterwards that this was a single gun detachment belonging to our companion brigade, who had been pushed forward as soon as news came that the enemy was being held.

By tea-time we ourselves had been ordered forward to relieve a brigade that had suffered considerably in the opening stages of the assault. And, after all, we didn't occupy the "Garden City" headquarters I had been at such pains to build. We handed it over to the brigade we were relieving, and their colonel congratulated our colonel on his forethought.

The colonel decided that only the doctor, the signalling officer, and myself should go forward. The adjutant could settle at the waggon lines and occupy himself with reinforcements, clothing, and salvage returns, Army Form B 213, watering and forage arrangements, and suchlike administrative duties. My task would be the "Forward" or "G" branch—i.e., assisting the colonel with the details of his fighting programmes.

The colonel and I lay down that night in a hole scooped out of a chalk bank. The corrugated iron above our heads admitted a draught at only one corner; as our sleeping-bags were spread out on a couple of spring mattresses, moved by some one at some time from some neighbouring homestead, we could not complain of lack of comfort.

April 24 was the last day on which our Brigade awaited and prepared to meet a Boche attack of the first magnitude. But it was not until the month of July that any of us conceived, or dared to believe in, the possibility of his mighty armies being forced upon the defensive again.

During May and June we accepted it that our rôle would be to stick it out until the Americans came along en masse in 1919. The swift and glorious reversal of things from August onwards surprised no one more than the actual fighting units of the British armies.

II. THE RED-ROOFED HOUSEToC

"We're doing an attack to-morrow morning," said the colonel, returning about tea-time from a visit to the C.R.A. "We are under the  —th Divisional Artillery while we're up here, and we shall get the orders from them. You'd better let the batteries know. Don't say anything over the wire, of course.... Any papers for me to see?" he added, pulling out his leather cigarette case.

I handed him the gun and personnel returns, showing how many men and guns the Brigade had in action; and the daily ammunition reports that in collated form find their way from Divisional Artillery to Corps, and from Corps to Army, and play their part in informing the strategic minds at the back of the Front of the ebb and flow of fighting activity all along the vast battle line, enabling them to shape their plans accordingly. "D Battery are a bit low in smoke shells," remarked the colonel. "You'd better warn Major Veasey that he'll want some for to-morrow morning."

"B Battery ... two casualties ... how was that?" he continued, before signing another paper.

"About an hour ago, sir. Their mess cart was coming up, and got shelled half a mile from the battery position. Two of the servants were wounded."

"I've never seen an order worded quite like that," he smiled, when I showed him a typed communication just arrived from the Divisional Artillery, under whose orders we were now acting. It gave the map co-ordinates of the stretch of front our guns were to fire upon in response to S.O.S. calls. The passage the colonel referred to began—

"Sounds as if the French colonel were lending his batteries like a regimental band at a Bank Holiday sports meeting, sir," I ventured.

"Yes, we are learning to conduct war in the grand manner," smiled the colonel, opening his copy of 'The Times.'

Our mess, under a couple of curved iron "elephants" stuck against the bank, had looked a miserable affair when we came to it; but judicious planting of sandbags and bits of "scrounged" boarding and a vigorous clean-up had made it more habitable. Manning, the mess servant, had unearthed from a disused dug-out a heavy handsome table with a lacquered top, and a truly regal chair for the colonel—green plush seating and a back of plush and scrolled oak—the kind of chair that provincial photographers bring out for their most dignified sitters. By the light of our acetylene lamp we had dined, and there had been two rubbers of bridge, the colonel and the little American doctor bringing about the downfall of Wilde, the signalling officer, and myself, in spite of the doctor's tendency to finesse against his own partner. The doctor had never played bridge before joining us, and his mind still ran to poker. The Reconnaissance Officer of the  —th Divisional Artillery had rung up at 10 o'clock to tell us that an officer was on his way with a watch synchronised to Corps time, and that we should receive orders for the next morning's operation viâ a certain Field Artillery Brigade who were somewhere in our vicinity. I had told the brigade clerk that he could go to bed in his 3 feet by 6 feet cubby-hole, and that the orderlies waiting to convey the battle orders to the batteries ought to snatch some rest also. It was 11 P.M. now. Wilde and the doctor had gone off to their own dug-out. It was very dark when I looked outside the mess. We were in a lonely stretch of moorland; the nearest habitation was the shell-mauled cottage at the railway crossing, two miles away. Every ten minutes or so enemy shells screamed and flopped into the valley between us and the road alongside which D Battery lay.

"We'll try and hurry these people up," said the colonel, picking up the telephone. Even as he told the signaller on duty to get him Divisional Artillery, a call came through. It was the Artillery Brigade from whom we expected a messenger with the orders.

"No!" I heard the colonel say sharply. "We've had nothing.... No! no one has been here with a watch.... You want an officer to come over to you?... But I haven't any one who knows where you are."

A pause. Then the colonel continued. "Yes, but you know where we are, don't you?... Umph.... Well, where are you to be found?... You can't give a co-ordinate over the telephone?... That's not very helpful."

He rang off, but I knew by his expression that the matter was not yet settled. He got through to the  —th Divisional Artillery and told the brigade-major that it was now 11.20 P.M., that no officer with a synchronised watch had arrived, and that the other brigade were now asking us to send an officer to them for orders for the coming battle. "I have no one who knows where they are," he went on. "They must know our location—we relieved one of their brigades. Why can't they send to us as arranged? I may have some one wandering about half the night trying to find them."

In a little while the telephone bell tinkled again. "I'll answer them," said the colonel abruptly.

"All right, I'll send to them," he replied stonily. "Where are we to find them, since they won't give us co-ordinates over the telephone?... A house with a red roof!... You can't tell us anything more definite?... Very well.... Good-bye."

He put down the telephone with a little "Tchat!" that meant all forms of protest, annoyance, and sense of grievance. But now that no possible concession was to be gained, and certain precise work had to be done by us, he became the inexorable matter-of-fact executive leader again. "There's nothing for it," he said, looking at me. "You will have to go."

Buildings with red roofs are not marked as such on military maps, and I bent glumly over the map board. However, houses were exceedingly few in this neighbourhood, and the chateau on the other side of the railway could be ruled out immediately. It was known as "The White Chateau," and I had noticed it in daytime. Besides, it had been so heavily shelled that our companion brigade had evacuated it two days before. "It's pretty certain to be somewhere in this area," observed the colonel, bending over me, and indicating a particular three thousand square yards on the map. "I expect that's the place—on the other side of the railway," and he pointed to a tiny oblong patch. I estimated that the house was three miles from where we were. It wanted but five minutes to midnight.

I went outside, and flickering my electric torch stumbled across ruts and past occasional shell-holes to the copse, three hundred yards away, that sheltered the officers' chargers. I crackled a way among twigs and undergrowth until the piquet called out, "Who goes there?"

"I think your groom's here, sir," he said, and the trees were so close set that my shoulder brushed the hindquarters of a row of mules as he piloted me along. "Are you there, Morgan?" he shouted, pulling open a waterproof ground-sheet that was fastened over a hole in the ground. "No—go away," called a voice angrily. "Where's Morgan sleep? Mr  ——  wants him," persevered the piquet.

We found my groom in another hole in the ground about thirty yards away. He listened sleepily while I told him to get my horses ready immediately. "Do you want feeds on, sir?" he asked, with visions apparently of an all-night ride.

There was no moon, and I gazed gratefully at the only constellation that showed in a damp unfriendly sky—the Great Bear. I let my horse find his own way the first few hundred yards, until we struck a track, then we broke into a trot. The swish and plop of gas shells in the valley towards which we were descending made me pause. I calculated that they were falling short of the railway crossing I wanted to reach, and decided that a wide sweep to the right would be the safest course. We cantered alongside some ploughed land, and the motion of the horse, and the thought that with luck I might finish my task quickly, and earn a word of commendation from the colonel, brought a certain sense of exhilaration. The shelling of the valley increased; my horse stumbled going down a bank, and for the next five minutes we walked over broken ground. "Getting a bit too much to the right," I said to myself, and turned my horse's head. Further thoughts were cut short by the discovery that his forelegs were up against a belt of barbed wire.

For ten minutes I walked in front of the wire, searching for an opening, and getting nearer to where the shells were falling. All the time I looked earnestly for the railway line. I began to feel bitter and resentful. "If our own Divisional Artillery had been doing to-morrow's show I shouldn't have had to turn out on a job of this kind," I reflected. "Damn the  —th Division. Why can't they do their work properly?"

But little gusts of anger sometimes bring with them the extra bit of energy that carries a job through. We had reached a ruined wall now, and there was still no opening in the wire. I could see telegraph posts, and knew that the railway was just ahead. I got off my horse, told the groom to wait behind the broken wall, and, climbing through the barbed wire, picked my way along smashed sleepers and twisted rails until I came to the crossing.

I followed the deserted shell-torn road that led from the level-crossing, searching for a track on the left that would lead to the house I sought. A motor-cyclist, with the blue-and-white band of the Signal Service round his arm, came through the hedge.

"Is there a house on top of that hill?" I asked him, after a preliminary flicker of my torch.

"Yes, sir."

"Is it a red-roofed house?"

"Well, ... I don't know, sir."

"Who's up there?"

"Smith's group, sir."

"Oh, hang! that tells me nothing. What are they—artillery?"

"Yes, sir—heavies, I think, sir."

I felt myself at a standstill. Orders for us were not likely to be with a group of heavy artillery. "Whom are you from?" I asked finally, preparing to move on.

"From the  —th Div. Artillery, sir."

"Oh!"—with a rush of hopefulness—"you have no orders, I suppose, for the  —nd Brigade?"—mentioning our Brigade.

"No, sir."

I broke off and strode up the hillside, determined at any rate to gather some sort of information from the house the motor-cyclist had just left. I came upon a bare-looking, two-storied brick building with plain doors and windows. Through the keyhole of the front door I could see a light coming from an inside room. I opened the door and walked down the passage, calling, "Is this the  —rd Field Artillery Brigade?"

"No! This is the  —nd Field Company," replied a fair-moustached sapper captain, who was lying on a mattress in the room from which the light came, reading a book of O. Henry stories.

"Sorry to trouble you," I said, "but I'm trying to find the  —rd Brigade. Do you know if they are round here?"

"I don't, I'm afraid. We only came in this afternoon."

"It's a house with a red roof," I went on, rather hopelessly.

"I think I know the place," chimed in a voice from an inner room. "It's a shooting-box, isn't it? Your best way is to get on the road again and take the next track on the left. I noticed a red-roofed house up there when we came by."

I trudged back and got on to the new track, feeling very martyred but very resigned. I suppose I ought to have kept my eyes open more, I thought. Next time I go to a new part of the country I won't miss a single distinguishing feature.

It was now 1.15 A.M. I came to a lonely house fronted by a neatly railed garden. I hammered noisily on the door and found that it opened into a darkened passage. A torch flashed into my face. "Is this the  —rd Brigade?" I began.

"Yes," a voice shouted, and suddenly a door opened and a spurt of light revealed a youthful pink-cheeked staff lieutenant. "Are you from the  —nd Brigade?" he asked. "Oh, bon! bon!—I've been waiting for you."

"Waiting for me!" I retorted, nettled by his airy manner. "Hard luck on me having to traipse at this time of night to a place I don't know to get orders you ought to have sent out."

"Yes, I know," he replied cheerfully. "We're awfully sorry, but it's the French Division, you know. We've only just got the orders out of them. It's really their show.... And I'm afraid the first part of your orders have been sent off to the wrong place." Saying which, he led me into a large sombre room in which four or five officers sat immersed in papers and message forms. An elderly colonel looked up and nodded over his glasses. The young staff officer handed me some barrage maps and a quantity of type-written operation orders.

"Zero hour is 5.10 A.M.," he began, "and here is the part of your orders that has gone astray. I can't give you this copy. Will you take the orders down from this?"

I commenced writing out the operation order, and was struck to find that the barrage "lifts" were in hundreds of metres instead of hundreds of yards. "Yes, the French insisted on that," explained the staff lieutenant briskly.

"But we haven't metres on our range-drums," I said with an air of abandonment.

"Yes, I know, but the French insisted on it, because of their infantry.... Oh! there's a para. there about smoke-shells—that's important."

"The para. about smoke-shells is deleted ... there will be no smoke-shells," put in the elderly colonel, looking up.

"Oh, is it, sir?" said the staff lieutenant, turning round.

"Yes; the correction has just come through."

"Right, sir."

I synchronised my watch, thrust the bundle of papers into my hip-pocket, and hurried away to find my horses. It was half-past one, and the attack was timed to start at 5.10. The colonel would require to deal with the orders, and the battery commanders would have but the barest time to work out their individual "lifts." I started back at the gallop, skirting the side of the valley. I remember wishing to heaven that the clumps and hillocks of this part of France did not look so consistently alike. If only it were light enough for me to pick out the mustard field that lay, a bright yellow landmark, behind our chalk bank!

The colonel was in bed when I got back, but I held a candle while he read through the orders, and got out his ivory ruler, and apportioned a barrage lane to each battery. "Metres will have to become yards," was one of his remarks.

By twenty-to-three the orderlies had set out with the battle orders to the batteries, while I spoke on the telephone to an officer of each battery, and synchronised watches.

When I turned in, after a whisky-and-soda and a couple of biscuits, the colonel was fast asleep. I felt satisfied, however, that I had done my share that night towards beating the Hun.

By 7 A.M. we were up again, and until 7 P.M. the telephone buzzed continuously. It was a day of hard infantry fighting, of attacks that were held up and had to be renewed, of German counter-efforts to shift us from points won at the opening of our attack. All day long F.O.O.'s and liaison officers telephoned reports of changes in our front line, and five times I turned on our batteries to respond to S.O.S. calls. By the end of the day we held three parts of the ground that our Higher Command had planned to seize.