LAST night we had another terrible march; neither the men nor the horses can stand much more of it. It isn’t a matter of stoutness of heart; it’s a plain question of physical endurance. How many more nights can men and horses go without sleep and bungle through the darkness of a strange country without collapsing? It isn’t as though these were easy marches—all of them are forced. And then again, it isn’t as though we had the knowledge that in a few days’ time our present exertions would be followed by a rest; on the contrary, we know that our present exertions are as nothing compared with what will be demanded of us. Everybody is extraordinarily willing—there’s no grumbling; but we’re working under a high nervous tension of suspense which, in itself, is exhausting. If we were actually in battle, our excitement would carry us twice as far without letting us drop. In the presence of death one can achieve the incredible; these miracles are difficult to accomplish while one still has a reasonable certainty.

To tell the truth, our equipment isn’t equal to the strain which is being laid upon it. Our teams are not matched; many of them are worn out; some of them consist of mules. One wonders living, whether they could go into action at the gallop without falling down. For the past three years there’s been precious little galloping for the Field Artillery on the Western Front. Our work has consisted for the most part of dragging our guns up through mud at the crawl and afterwards of packing up ammunition on the horses’ backs. This has broken the hearts of the animals, and robbed us of our dash and snap.

The animals which have been sent to us during the past two years to replace casualties are of an utterly inferior physique and stamp from those we had when war started. They’re either ponies or draught-horses, or else patched-up, decrepit old-timers from the veterinary hospitals, which have been ill or wounded, and have been returned to active service to die in harness because no others are available. Our best animals are the few survivors we have of the original teams which we brought with us from Canada to France.

What is true of the horses is equally true of the men. The physical standard has dropped. In 1914, unless one were physically perfect, it was impossible to get accepted. To-day both among the officers and in the ranks, one sees spectacled faces, narrow chests, stooping shoulders and weak legs. Boys and old gray-haired men go struggling up front through the mud to-day in France. Apparently, whatever his appearance, anyone is eligible to wear khaki who can tell a lie about how long he has been in the world. I would make a guess that fully a third of our drivers and gunners had not seen their eighteenth birthdays at the time when their military age was recorded as twenty; on the other hand, there is a goodly proportion who are supposed to be thirty and are well over forty. And then, besides those who are too old or too young, there are the crocks—men who, like the houses from the veterinary-hospitals, have been patched up again and again and, after short rests at comfortless places somewhere between the base and the Frontline, have once more been returned to active service to help push the Hun a little farther back before they themselves stumble into an open grave. These crocks are for the most part men who have never had the luck to be wounded; if they had once reached a hospital in England, they would never have been allowed to see the Front again. But the hospitals in France are compelled to be less merciful; their job is to repair the broken human mechanism and return it to the fighting-line so long as it has any usefulness. Our crocks are chiefly men who have been crushed by exposure and hardship. They suffer from debility, poor feet, rheumatism, running-ears, etc.; the ear-troubles are caused by the sharp concussion of the guns in the pits when they are fired. I suppose those in authority have been forced to the opinion that all men are of equal value when they are dead, and that it’s a waste of energy, when you’re collecting material for cannon-fodder, to be too picksome.

In England, after the Hun drive of the spring had commenced, the magicians of the man-power boards were taking very much the same point of view, and arbitrarily improving the nation’s health by raising re-examined C III men to an A I category. There are few men now, except the very aged, who are not on paper sufficiently healthy to die for their country. This changed attitude is summed up in the treatment of wounded men. Whereas to have been severely wounded was formerly a just reason for honourable discharge, to-day we have men still fighting who have made the trip to Blighty five times on a stretcher. There are officers who have suffered amputations, who are still carrying on.

Necessity knows no law; nevertheless, this desperate use which we are making of both human and four-footed material which is below par, makes itself felt when we are called upon for unusual efforts. We’re beginning to fear lest before the show starts, these forced night marches may use up our reserves of strength. We do not own that there are any limitations to our power to obey and suffer, but common-sense tells us that there is a point beyond which the flesh cannot be driven, however great the heart.

Last night we were on the road from ten o’clock till seven this morning. It took two hours from the time when we pulled into our present place of hiding, till the men could lie down and rest. Very many of the horses had kicks and galls, all of which had to be attended to before anyone could think of himself.

I call this our place of hiding purposely, for it is so obviously just that. We are in a high rolling country, cut up into shadowy patterns by deep ravines, and dotted where it lies nearest the sky by squares and oblongs and triangles of woods. It is in one of these protecting woods that we have our bivouacs and horse-lines. We are so well covered from sight that peasants in the nearest village, two miles away, do not suspect our presence. We have not found it necessary to warn the men against revealing themselves; they’re too played out to walk a yard further than is necessary.

A glance at the map makes our game of guesswork grow interesting. We’re directly to the west of Amiens now; one night’s march would bring us into the line. Amiens is the great junction-point of the railroad system which feeds the entire British Front and which connects us up with the French. The Hun came perilously near to capturing it this spring; since then it has been vacated by its civilian population and kept by the Hun continually under shell-fire. The result has been that trains have had to make a ditour by branch-lines to get round behind the Amiens salient, and our military transportation, as a consequence, has been working under a heavy handicap. Every fighting-man has been aware of this, for whereas formerly one could buy almost anything within reason at the Expeditionary Force Canteens, since the spring stocks have not been replenished and only limited quantities have been allowed to be purchased by each person.

There have been weeks together when one has had to scour the country far and wide to find a packet of cigarettes. After so much mystery and so many conjectures, it seems not unlikely that the push is to be put on to save Amiens.

The rumour concerning some Canadian troops having been sent to Yprhs to deceive the Hun, was confirmed yesterday by our Major. In his ride abroad he met the Colonel of one of the battalions which had sent a detachment. From him he learnt that not only were Canadians and Australians sent over in a series of raids that they might be identified by the enemy, but that Canadian Maple Leaf badges and Australian slouch-hats had been issued to other units who were holding that line, that they might be mistaken for the storm-troops. Whether the ruse has succeeded in drawing the Hun reserves up north he could not learn.

The Major and Captain Heming rejoined us last night just as I commenced to lead the battery out of the woods on to the high road. Directly I spoke to Heming I had the feeling that something was wrong; it was about half-an-hour later that the Major sent back word for me to ride beside him and told me what had happened. It appears that at the officers tea-room, where they had dinner, a number of week-old London dailies were strewn about. They sat glancing through them as they waited for the meal to be served. The Major had got hold of a torn sheet, when he came across a column headed, The Coldest Woman In London. “This sounds promising,” he said to Heming; “I’ve met some of her sort myself.” Then he started to read the item aloud, throwing in his own racy comments. The coldest woman in London, it appeared, was a Mrs. Percy Dragott. She was reputed to have ruined many notable careers by her unresponsive attraction. She was extraordinarily beautiful and had been painted by many artists. The best known of all her portraits was one by————.

“Hulloa, Heming, this can’t be you, can it? A chap of your name is mentioned.————By Jove, it must be you though; it says that this Heming was in Ottawa when war broke out, and is at present at the Front with the Canadian Artillery.”

“Go on, sir, will you, if you don’t mind? I’d like to hear a little more about this Mrs. Dragott.” That, according to the Major, was all that Heming had said; but his face was very white, though his voice was hard and steady. So the Major had no option but to read on. Mrs. Dragott’s social eminence was recorded and hints were thrown out as to the personalities of the various prominent men who had broken themselves against her coldness. Her husband had committed suicide five years before, under circumstances which had helped to confirm her reputation for being a woman incapable of affection. And now, dramatically, after a hectic affair with a man who had proved to be already married, she had committed————. It was at this point that the paper was torn, leaving no due as to what it was that she had done. Heming had been terribly upset, the Major said, and had turned the place upside down to find the missing portion. “I have an idea,” the Major told me, “that Heming himself must have been fond of her.”

“Perhaps,” I said, and kept my mouth shut, for I remembered that Mrs. Percy Dragott was the name which Heming had handed to me that day on the Somme, when we were caught by the Hun out in No Man’s Land and he had wriggled his way forward that he might risk his own life and save ours. What was it that she had done? Had she killed herself or the man? I could imagine all the questions that kept running through Heming’s head, as he followed behind the wagon that carried Suzette, riding through the darkness at the rear of the column.

It only required a happening of this sort to bring home to us how much we are cut off from the outside world. Whatever tragedies are suffered by those whom we have loved, we cannot go to their help. Between them and us there is a great gulf fixed.

It’s six o’clock in the evening. We had made up our minds that we would certainly be here for the night; it did not seem possible that, with men and horses so exhausted, they could send us on another march. That’s what they’re going to do, however. The harnessing up is nearly completed and the first of the teams are already being led out from the lines to the gun-park. A special order has just come in for me to join the Colonel with a blanket and rations for twenty-four hours. I and one officer from each of the batteries are to be prepared to go forward with him in a lorry. Where we are going and for what purpose, we are left to surmise.