WE watered our horses out of the buckets at the few wells which had not been poisoned. It was a lengthy process, but we were all finished and ready to move off by the time Tubby returned. He brought word that it had been found impossible to pull off the attack at the hour set. The country in front of us was studded with woods and cut up by gorges, which the enemy was holding with machine-guns. Moreover, by retiring the Hun had shortened the distance for his supports to come up and was now numerically much stronger than had at first been imagined. The bulk of our artillery were too far back to be brought up, so the tasks which ought to have been undertaken by the guns were to be carried out by bombing-planes. As soon as these were ready the assault would commence. Meanwhile our instructions were to push on to the head of the ravine and remain there concealed till we were ordered forward.

“It’s going to be a pretty sporting show, if I know anything about it,” Tubby said, when we were once again on the march. “The infantry are fed up to the back-teeth with the way in which the guns have failed to keep in touch with them. And I don’t wonder—you wait till you see the kind of country they’ve got to tackle. It’s no joke being a lone man on two legs, with hundreds of field-guns pointing at you and quite as many machine-guns singing your swan-song in the woods, and all their stuff coming over and none of yours going back It’s a bit stiff to tell chaps to advance against that, as though you expected ‘em to strangle whole batteries with their naked hands. It’s up to us to show them that the eighteen-pounders aren’t quitters. We’ll take as long a chance as any of them. If some of us aren’t pushing daisies by sunset, it won’t be our fault.”

Out of the corner of my eye I watched him. He wasn’t the same man who had made that shabby little confession to me earlier in the morning. He had been weak and conscience-haunted then; now he was eager and heroic. One no longer noticed that he was fat and good-natured and ordinary; a new boldness and dignity transformed him. The test of scarlet was discovering chivalrous values in Tubby of which he himself was only partly aware.

As though he recognised my thoughts, he nodded. “I’m happy. I wouldn’t have missed to-day for worlds.”

To the south of us, like hail-stones pounding on a roof of metal, a heavy bombardment had been steadily growing in violence. It was the French putting on an attack. Probably the seventy-fives we had seen trotting into action that morning were in it. Good luck to them. As suddenly, as it had opened, it died down, and was succeeded by the crackling of rifle-fire. We pictured the true-clad tiger-men of France going over, dropping on one knee to take aim, then up and on again to slake the thirst of their bayonets.

With a kind of glee, Tubby whispered, “Our turn next.”

Up to this point the ravine had been bare of any signs of battle; now dramatically, as we rounded a spur in the hillside, we found ourselves gazing on a scene which made us catch our breath. This must have been one of the enemy’s camps, cleverly selected because of the shelter which the steeply sloping banks afforded. The open space between the banks was so narrow that it looked like an emptied river-bed. In this open space were wagons, arrested in the act of pulling out. The drivers still sat on their seats, as though overcome by sleep, with their heads sagging against their breasts and the reins held limply in their hands. The teams still hooked to the vehicles, had crumpled forward in the traces. The doors of all the little wooden shacks along the side of the ravine were wide open. Between them and the wagons men lay sprawled upon the turf, as though caught midway in the act of running. The only living things which stirred, were wounded horses of appalling leanness, which were feebly grazing and on seeing us, tottered a few steps, and then waited, as if asking us to come to their help.

Instinctively, without an order being given, the entire column behind us halted. Death is horrible enough when it looks like death; but when it mimics life, it applauds its own terror. At first we had the feeling that we had stumbled on a sleepy hollow; were we to make a noise, all these sleeping forms would waken and rise from the ground.

How had the tragedy happened? Had our guns, after having allowed them to believe themselves secure, deluged then! with shells when the dawn was breaking? Or had our bombing-planes discovered them at the moment when they were escaping? However they had died, it was easy to reconstruct the scene’s mercilessness and agony. In contemplating it, we felt a momentary shame. The cowardice of war is forever treading hard on the heels of its valour. These men had had no chance to defend themselves. They had not seen the men by whom they were murdered. They had been roused from sleep by a commotion, to find death raining on them from the air.

As we renewed our advance, we discovered that not all of the men were dead. Some looked up with dimming eyes as we passed. They neither approved nor condemned us. They were beyond all that. We had neither the time nor the materials to help them. The shell-dressing, which we each carried, we might need for ourselves before the day was out. We had not dared to fill our water-bottles at the wells in the village; so our supplies were only what we had brought with us, and they were fast getting exhausted.

When we came to the head of the ravine, we were glad that we had not given water to the enemy, for there we found our own wounded scattered through the grass. They were too far forward for the stretcher-bearers to reach them for many hours yet. There was no one with the means or time to spend upon them; we were all fighting-men, under orders to press on at any moment. Nevertheless our gunners slipped down from the limbers and went among them, pouring the last of their water between their parching lips. At the sight of their suffering an illogical anger seized us against the brutes who had done this to men who were ours. We did not reason that we also were trying to wound and kill; we only felt a blazing indignation that those boys, who had passed through our guns cheering so gallantly in the early morning, should lie so silent now. After this, when an enemy asked for water, we turned from him in contempt; whatever drops we had to spare were for our friends. Mounted and eager to go forward, we sat pitilessly among the dying enemy.

We were there not to show mercy, but to avenge.

The sun grew dark while we waited; then rapidly the rain descended. We caught it in our cupped hands and on our tongues as it dripped from the edge of our steel helmets. The wounded in the grass lay back with their blackened lips wide apart, sucking in the moisture which the heavens, indifferently impartial, allowed to fall on both enemies and friends.

Tubby and his signallers had again gone forward to make connections with the infantry. I had arranged with him that we would follow in close support the moment he sent back word that the advance had commenced. By the number of planes that were in the air we knew that, the moment was at hand.

I glanced back at my men, trying to estimate how they had been affected by the scenes which they had already witnessed. In trench-warfare the gunners and drivers rarely see a battlefield until long after the wounded have been collected and carried back They never see their own infantry in the act of attacking, and they never see the bursting of their own shells. In a few minutes all these new experiences were to be theirs. There were no signs of trepidation on their faces—only an expression of stern and happy elation.——On the top of the bank one of Tubby’s mounted signallers appeared, waving his flag. I gave the order to “Walk, March,” then, to trot, and we were off.

For the first half mile we could see nothing very unusual. In front of us and on every side, climbing a gentle slope to the sky-line, was a vast wheatfield scarcely trampled. Here and there we saw a fallen man, who seemed only to be taking his rest. As far as evidences of battle were concerned, we might have been out on manoeuvres. As we neared the sky-line, I halted the guns and rode forward with my signallers. Over the crest a very different sight presented itself. The wheatfield ended and a splendid stretch of country, green and cool, resembling a parkland, commenced. Floating like islands in the greenness were dense clumps of trees. On the farthest edge of the plain were deep ravines, church spires and the roofs of houses. The atmosphere and barriers of woods, above which were washed clean by rain and made golden by the afternoon sunshine, was so clear that one’s eye-sight carried for miles and picked out each isolated movement. In the foreground our infantry wandered in apparently leisurely fashion, going forward in little groups of from five to ten. Every now and then a shell would burst near them or the turf would fly up in spurts of dust where a machine-gun had been brought to bear on them. Then they would scatter, throwing themselves flat. Presently some of them would rise and wander on again; those who did not rise would roll over once or twice, as a man does when he settles himself in bed, and then, having found his comfort, lies motionless. The thing was so quickly done that, for the beholder, it was robbed of its terror.

In front of the infantry the cavalry were in action. They pricked in and out the clumps of trees, not galloping or even trotting, but unhurriedly, as if out for an afternoon’s pleasure. The sun shone on their drawn blades and, over the green distance, at intervals their trumpets sounded.

Ahead of the cavalry the tanks nosed round the edges of the woods, dragging their bellies along the ground like satiated dragons. Now and then they spat fire and were lost to sight in undergrowth and deep shadows: usually when they re-appeared, there were little dots of smoke-gray pigmies fleeing calamitously before them. Along the ridge on the far horizon a road ran, which was black with escaping ants. Out of the ravines and gorges, leading up to the read, more panic-stricken ants swarmed tumultuously. Above them, darting and swooping like swallows after gnats, flew our bombing-planes and scouts It was all very sylvan and picturesque—more like a pageant which had been rehearsed and staged than the most dramatic happening in a war which had excelled all other wars in drama.

Half a mile away a flag began to wave: I read the signal and turned back to lead my guns into action. As we came out of the wheatfield at the gallop a general tried to stop us, shouting questions as to where we were going. We simply pointed ahead and went by him without slackening our pace. We downed trail behind a hedge and commenced firing over open sights; our target was the enemy transport retreating along the ridge. As our shrapnel began to burst in little puffs of smoke above the heads of an enemy already mad with terror, the wildest confusion resulted. Lorries were ditched. Batteries became entangled. Horses stampeded through the crowds of flying men, knocking them down and grinding their bodies beneath the wheels of the vehicles.

The enthusiasm of our gunners rose to fever-pitch when for the first time they could see the havoc which their shells were working. They became careless of their own safety and indifferent to death, if only we could push the Boche further back and make the day completely victorious. The same self-forgetfulness was seen on every hand. Out there in that green picture-world, the cavalry were pushing impetuously far ahead. They were so impatient to get forward that, when they were held up by machine-gun nests, they would not wait for the other arms to come up, but were charging the storm of lead with their naked steel and riding to almost certain annihilation. V. C.s were being won under our eyes by men whose heroism would not even be recorded. And no one cared—no one coveted glory for himself. We were fanatics, lifted far above self-seeking. It was the game that counted. Dust we were and to dust we would return; but the triumph of this day would live forever.

Distracting us from the white intensity of our effort we heard the droning of an engine and saw a shadow settling down; above our heads an aeroplane was hovering so low that we could see the moving lips of the pilot. A message, attached to yellow streamers, came drifting down. When the pilot was sure that we had received it, he again flew off up front. The message gave us the map-location of a machine-gun in action, which we were asked to do our best to knock out. Soon Tubby was again seen frantically signalling. He was telling us that the enemy, while undoubtedly in full retreat, was leaving behind him picked suicide-troops to hold machine-gun nests and strong-points. These people were lying doggo till our tanks had gone past them and were then resurrecting themselves and mowing down our men. We limbered up and once more went forward, the signallers and myself going in advance, the guns and ammunition-wagons strung out at safe intervals behind us.

We came across the parkland to a deep cutting, which was the entrance to a gorge. There was nothing to warn one that the cutting was there until the moment before he stood gazing down into it. The hollow between the two banks was full of dead cavalry. Some of the horses were sitting up on their haunches like dogs, swaying their heads slowly from side to side. One by one they would struggle to rise, only to sink back in despair. The riders lay beside their mounts, with their sword-arms flung wide and the sunlight flickering along their blades. From the semi-circle in which they were spread out, one judged that they had made their charge fan-wise, concentrating as they neared the object of their attack. One man out of so many had reached his objective; he had ridden down the Hun machine-gunner, burying the gun beneath the body of his horse and sabring the gunner as he fell.

And these were the magnificent exponents of glory whom I had seen in their pride that morning, prancing through the polluted village so capriciously that their feet seemed to spurn the ground. They had done their bit and by their sacrifice had brought us one step nearer to victory. It was heroic and magnanimous; but, when I remembered the beauty of their vigour as they bounded to the music of their hunting-calls, I could not believe that any gain was worth their anguish. The horrible unfairness of war was all that I could visualize?—that one man behind a machine-gun should be able to transmute so much loveliness into corruption in a handful of seconds. And then came another thought—the desire for revenge.

There was the sound of heavy firing further up the gorge. Tubby came riding back; his right arm was hanging loosely and a bullet had seared his forehead. His face was tense.. The little beast he rode was flecked with blood and wildly excited. He broke into a broad grin at catching sight of me. “By the Lord Harry, we’ve got our chance,” he panted. “My arm! No, it’s nothing—broken I guess.... There’s a place up here just behind a bend; If we can sneak a gun in quickly, we can blow the stuffing out of them. We’ll be on to them before they know we’re there. It’s a regular nest, four or five of ‘em spurting away like blazes. They’ve nailed our chaps so that they can’t budge. But if we look lively, it’s a cinch; we’ve got them cold.”

Following him cautiously, we came to the bend he had mentioned Twenty yards short, we unhooked and ran the gun up by hand. Had we driven straight on to the position, the heads of the horses would have shown up and we should have been wiped out before we had fired our first round. As it was there was a bunch of scrub, just tall enough to hide us. Peering through the branches, we could see about five hundred yards distant a barricade constructed of timbers and sandbags, from which came vicious sprays of death. Repeated endeavors had to be made to rush it. In front and all around lay our fallen infantry, their rifles with fixed bayonets tossed aside and their fingers dug into the turf. The postures in which they had collapsed were violently grotesque. There was forlornness, but little dignity about their twisted attitudes.

Behind the sandbags there was a sense of watching eyes; but only the sense—one saw no movement. The men who kept guard there were brave. They hadn’t a chance in the world. They must have known that their fate was sealed from the first. They were selling their lives dearly that their comrades, fleeing behind them, might gain time. Those comrades would never know how they had died—would never be able to thank them. There would be no Iron Crosses co reward their valour—they would be lucky if they were awarded the decency of a grave. We acknowledged their courage, and we hated them.

Our first shot went plus, our second minus, our third scored a direct hit on the barricade. As the sandbags crumbled and the gray uniforms became plain, our infantry leapt from their places of hiding, charging up the gorge with their cold bayonets. We saw hands thrust up in an appeal for mercy, then nothing but khaki, stabbing and cheeking wildly. When we had hooked in and rode by five minutes later, four men in smoke-gray lay watching the sky with unblinking eyes. They were decent looking men, with flaxen hair and high complexions. They were perfectly ordinary individuals, with nothing either noticeably noble or brutal in their appearance. Had we encountered them as waiters in a London or New York restaurant, they would probably have proved entirely in keeping with their situation. By the accident of war they had been called upon to perform a deed quite as desperate as that of the Roman Horatius, who kept the bridge against unnumbered foes. The gorge was one of the keys to the great plain across which the Huns were retiring. These four men, single-handed, with no hope of saving their own lives, had held up our advance for half an hour against repeated infantry and cavalry charges, accounting for fully twenty times their own number in casualties. It was an act of superb sacrifice, which could only have been inspired by the highest sense of duty and patriotism. Had we met them in fable, we should have done them homage; meeting them where we did, we clubbed them like rats escaping from a cage. Even now that they were dead we detested them.

At the top of the gorge we struck a level stretch of country, which appeared to be surrounded by a solid belt of forest; but from the map we learnt that the forest was actually made up of separate woods between which passed channels of sward. Hidden in these separate woods were towns and villages, the spires of whose churches peeped above the trees and speared the horizon. Across the plain ran a net-work of white roads, some of which were mere tracks trampled out of the chalk by military traffic, others of which dated back to the days before the coming of the Germans. The main road was the one which we had shelled from our first position. It was littered with men, horses, broken limbers, guns and abandoned transport. A hospital-tent stood at a road-juncture with the Red Cross flag still flying. Whatever it had been used for, it had been stripped naked—not a cot or a bandage had been left. We cast our eyes across the green level for miles; there were all the signs of recent frenzy, but nothing stirred. It was uncanny, this sudden disappearance of men and armaments. There was fighting behind us—we could hear that. There was fighting to the right and left; but before us only the silence. We began to suspect that we had pressed on too hurriedly and were in front of our own attack. This suspicion was strengthened when one of our own batteries, far in the rear, opened fire on us, mistaking us for the enemy. To avoid their shells, we clapped spurs to our horses and went forward for yet another mile at the gallop. Then we halted behind a cutting to consider matters.

Our position was trying. We were utterly exhausted and only upheld by the excitement. We had food for neither horses nor men. The water in the men’s bottles had been expended on the wounded: the horses had had nothing to drink since noon. There was very little chance of the Major’s keeping his promise and sending us up our rations; the battery must have moved by now and neither they nor we had any knowledge as to each other’s whereabouts. To add to our complications Tubby’s arm proved to have been badly smashed by a machine-gun bullet and, though he would not own it, he was suffering intensely. The light was beginning to fail and within two hours darkness would have settled. It was absolutely essential that we should find food and water, and discover what was the military situation. If we were actually in front of our attack, then it was evident that our people-had lost touch with the enemy; in which case, under the cover of night, the enemy was likely to return. If he did, we and our outfit would be killed or captured.

Tubby refused to stay with the guns and rest, so we started out in separate directions to reconnoitre. Tubby went mounted on account of his arm being in a sling; I went on foot, since thus I should afford a smaller target. Throughout the day, as our difficulties and exhaustion had increased, he had grown gayer and more reckless. He had treated his broken arm as nothing; in the presence of his gallant high spirits none of us had dared to recognise hardship. As he rode away he flung back his old jest, “How’s your father?” Several of the men, not to be outdone in this game of brave pretence, shouted after him, “He’s all right, sir. Till the war ends he’s got his baggy pants on.”

My direction took me over to a long line of woods on the right, from which came the spiteful sound of rifles firing in volleys. The sun had begun to set; as I glanced across the plain I could see Tubby, trotting far out into a sea of shadows and greenness. I felt misgivings for his safety; we had no information as to what lay ahead. Presently I met an infantryman with a bandaged forehead, who confirmed my doubts. He told me that he and fourteen others had pressed on, keeping the enemy in sight and supposing that the rest of the advance was following. The enemy had made a stand; it was then they had discovered that they were out of touch and unsupported. “My mates,” he said, “I don’t know whether they’re alive or dead. They were holding out when I left; they sent me back for help. Fritzie was getting ready to counter-attack. He may be coming any moment.” He looked back apprehensively and, without waiting to say more, staggered on. I reached and entered my wood.

Bullets were tearing through the leaves and branches, going by with the hiss of serpents. Beneath the shadow of the trees I found stables and a camp; but the Huns, before they had cleared out, had loaded up every particle of food and forage. Nothing but the bare buildings were left. Following a track, I came to water-troughs, but it would be impossible to lead our horses down to them while the rifle-fire lasted. On the farther edge of the wood I came across our infantry.

They were lying flat on their stomachs and crawling from point to point on their hands and knees, sniping at the enemy. They were very few in numbers, over fifty per cent of their force having fallen during the day. By their vigilance and the rapidity of their fire they were trying to create the impression that they were stronger than they were. I found their colonel. He was not certain, but believed they were the Front-line. The tanks and the cavalry had disappeared entirely. They might be still pursuing; they might have been captured; they all might have become casualties. At any rate, the line of these woods was the front that he intended to maintain throughout the night; so I arranged to run a telephone wire up to him and to stand to throughout the hours of darkness in case of a surprise attack. One definite piece of information I gleaned from him—that his left flank was “up in the air.” Any time that the enemy discovered the fact, he could get round behind this handful of men; in the direction which Tubby had taken there was nothing between himself and the enemy.

Hurrying back through the wood I found, when I came out on the farther side, that my section had followed me. While I had been gone, the sergeants had also learnt that nothing stood between themselves and the Hun. When I asked them whether they had news of Mr. Grain they shook their heads; the last they had seen of him was an insignificant dot dwindling into the distant landscape. They had left two mounted men in the cutting to guide him on to us if he returned.

The horses were “all in” by this time from lack of water, so there was nothing for it but for some of us to take a chance and go down to the trough with buckets. I lost two of my best drivers there.

We had one piece of luck to console us. In my absence the men had run across some of our fallen cavalry and had collected sufficient oats from their feed-bags to go the rounds and sufficient rations from the haversacks of the dead to last the men.

Just as we had finished watering and feeding, we saw a tank lumbering homewards round the point of the wood through the dusk. I galloped out to meet it. The officer in charge halted and put his head out on seeing me approaching.

“Hulloa, old bean,” he laughed, “what are you doing up here all on your wild lone? You know there’s nobody in front.”

I explained matters and asked if he had seen anyone like Tubby.

“A little fat chap with his arm in a sling?” he asked. “Yes, I saw him. I shouted to him and tried to stop him, but all he did was to ask me a silly question about my father. I don’t think he was all there. He rode on towards the village from which I was escaping. It was empty when first I entered, so I waddled about for half an hour mucking things up. By that time the Huns had found out that we weren’t following and they were coming back. So I skedaddled. If I were you I wouldn’t go and look for your friend—Hulloa, what’s that? You’d better duck!”

That was a burst of bullets, coming from a clump of trees to the left. The chap was right; the enemy was sneaking back.

I wheeled the guns about and went off at the trot to a little copse in which I had arranged with the infantry colonel to take up my position for the night. It was pitchy black when we arrived; the place stank of blood. It was already occupied by sleeping men; they did not speak to us, but we tripped over them in the darkness and felt them beside us when we lay down.

Having unlimbered our guns and got them on for line, we ran a wire up front to the colonel so as to keep in touch and open fire on the second if required. We divided our men into watches; they were wearied out, for it was many nights since they had slept. They lay down with all their equipment on, so as to lose no time in the event of an alarm. The girths of the saddles were loosened, but none of the harness was removed from the horses’ backs. If the enemy broke through, the first news we were likely to get would be when they were upon us. Our lives and those of the infantry might depend upon our promptitude of action.

It was just before dawn that Tubby’s horse rejoined us riderless. There was blood on the saddle and the reins were broken as though the little beast had wrenched itself free by jumping back from the thing to which it had been tied. It was a broncho trick it had, which was well known to all the battery. When in our lines it was never fastened, but allowed to stand. The broken lines proved that it had been in strangers’ hands; Tubby would never have tied it. When the men asked it what had happened to its master, it looked at them with quivering nostrils and frightened eyes and then, turning its intelligent head, gazed back ever the way that it had come.

With the first of the daylight we discovered why it was that the men with whom we had shared the wood had been so very silent—why they had not spoken when we had tripped over them, or been disturbed when we had lain down beside them.

Sticking out of the pocket of one of them was a London daily of fairly recent date. I picked it up in mere curiosity and glanced through its pages. Then suddenly, for fear anyone should want to borrow it, I hid it; away in my tunic. It contained an extraordinary story, affecting the honour of a man I loved well—an account of the police-court proceedings in the case of Mrs. Percy Dragott.

An odd way to get news of the secrets of a pal, with whom you eat and risk your life daily—by rifling the pocket of a stranger, whom you had thought to be sleeping and had discovered to be dead!