IT is many days since I wrote the last line. This battle goes on and on. We are drunk for want of sleep and rest. How much farther can we drive these weary bodies of ours without their collapsing? We treat them as things of naught—as mere slaves whom we lash in action to carry our spirits forward. We do not wash them, feed them, clothe them with any care; we scarcely spare the time to keep them alive while the victory is so nearly within our grasp. It is amazing that such a multitude of diverse men should be agreed to have so little mercy on themselves.

One feels that there are two armies fighting, for every one that is apparent: the external, sullen army of heavy-eyed, red-rimmed flesh, and the invisible, eager, clear-eyed army of indestructible souls, which flogs the laggard army of the flesh forward. Behind us, all along the battlefields of the advance, the earth of men lies mouldering and putrescent, but their liberated spirits still fight beside our spirits, treading close upon the heels of the enemy.

The test of scarlet! We used to speak about it, but we never dreamt that it could be such a test. We never knew that human mechanisms could survive such ordeals and be patched up with courage to endure them afresh.

After the capturing of Fransart our corps was drawn out and French troops were thrown in to hold the line which we had broken. Then the terrible night-marches re-commenced, for the enemy must not know where we were going. Again we must play the game of hiding, and vanish entirely. We must be the will-o’-the-wisps of the Western Front and disclose ourselves unheralded at a point where we were least expected. We ourselves must have no knowledge of our destination; our job must be to move like ghosts and to cover as much ground as possible under the shadow of darkness.

At the end of the first stage we concealed ourselves in woods, which had in a day become familiar to all the English-speaking world. It was here that our cavalry surrounded an entire German cavalry division, entrained and on the point of pulling out. It was here that our infantry captured a Hun hospital, and set an example in chivalry by offering the nurses the choice between working for our wounded or a safe conduct to the lines of their own countrymen. It was here that Big Bertha was found—the long-range man-eater which had tried to murder Paris. But, sweetest of all memories, it was here, after the long drought, that the rain descended and we stripped off our clothes, stiff as boards with sweat, and ran naked through the leaves in the stinging downpour.

On the evening of the second stage we passed through wheat-fields, recently re-captured from the enemy, still strewn with Australia’s unburied dead. Here troops were busily at work gathering in the harvest of the trampled grain. We realised then that it was not our blood alone, willingly as it was shed, that would restore peace and happiness to the world, but the thrift that could satisfy man’s bitter cry for bread.

How many marches did we make? How often did we rest? I cannot remember now. What happened is all a blur. We crawled across a devastated land through a fog of moonlight, dawns and sunsets. We gave and obeyed orders mechanically. Our perceptions were dulled; we were mad for sleep. As soon as our eyes closed, the relentless word would go round to harness up and move on, always to move on; but to what were we marching?

It seemed as though all the world were dead and we were the only fighters left. Though the light failed and one could scarcely see his hand before his face, we knew by the heavy staleness in the air that we were traversing interminable grave-yards, where villages, trees, men and horses lay shallowly beneath the swollen sod. And yet we knew that there were other fighters besides ourselves. How the rumour reached us I cannot tell, but we were aware that the Americans were massing before St. Mihiel, and that they were piled up in their thousands behind Yprhs. Long after the graciousness of sleep had come to us, they would tramp in their millions above our quiet beds; we should feel the pressure of their heels upon our foreheads and should know that they were carrying on our work. It didn’t matter what happened to us; the work of victory would go on just the same. The Hun would not triumph. We should not have spent our youth in vain. In this knowledge, despite our weariness, we were glad.

I have a curious feeling that on those long night-marches I held conversations with men, with whom I certainly scarcely exchanged a word. At all events, though I did not speak to them, I knew what was happening inside their heads. Perhaps it was that we had all become abnormal with the strain and developed a mental telepathy which communicated thoughts without the fatigue of words. As we moved through the darkness it was as though each brain was a little lighted house, behind whose windows shadows came and went. I knew, for instance, what Trottot was thinking. He was brooding over his failure to disprove his reputation for being yellow. He was resentful of his sergeant who had kept him back at the wagon-lines whenever the shell-fire was intense up front. He was hungering for the chance to do something so reckless that everyone would have to vote him brave enough to be lead-driver of the gun. I knew what the Major was thinking: at the head of the column he was thinking unceasingly of Suzette. And Heming, bringing up the rear with the transport, he was thinking of two women and hoping that the next fight would be his last.

Sometimes I had the odd sensation that there were many more marching with the battery than would ever again answer the roll-call. I was riding at the head of my section half asleep about midnight, when a horseman came up at the gallop and reined in beside me. I expected to hear him deliver some message; instead he dropped into a walk at my side. His steel helmet shadowed his face. I was too weary to speak unnecessarily and took him for one of my sergeants. Perhaps I drowsed; when I again noticed him the moon was coning out from under cloud. Then I saw that he was wearing an officer’s uniform. That piqued me into wakefulness. I leant forward to get a closer glimpse of his features. As I did so, he flung his horse back on its haunches, wheeled to the left and vanished in the dark. During the brief space while I gazed on him, I recognized Tubby Grain.

Other men in the battery are telling similar stories. They have seen Big Dan, Standish and many of their fallen comrades. They ride on the limbers and the wagons; they plod persistently behind the guns. They do not seek to attract attention to themselves. They do not talk or inconvenience anybody. Having died in a foreign land, it seems normal and right that their spirits should still accompany us. At dawn they vanish. As regards Tubby Grain, since the first time I have never seen his face—only his plump little figure going at the trot through the darkness down the column.

And now our marches are, for the time being, at an end. Once again we have been flung in as the hammerhead of the attack. They say that Foch’s principle is to use up his storm-troops; he never relieves them when once an offensive has begun. We no longer guess—we know the task that lies before us. Last time it was the saving of Amiens; this time it is the breaking of the Hindenburg Line. Two nights ago we pulled into action across the bald chalky country that straddles the Cambrai-Arras road. To the north of us, rising out of the blackness of the Vimy Plain, we could see the ridge which was so long our home and which, because we were not allowed to die, we guarded with so much impatience. Ah, how impatient we were while the indignity of not dying was upon us! How little we valued the supreme gift of life! How we courted death in raid after raid throughout the summer! Had we known then how few sunny days remained for most of us, how much more gratefully we should have lived them. We have come back for what will probably be our severest test to very nearly the spot whence we started.

Nobody now garrisons what was once regarded as the Gibraltar of the Western Front. Our armies have swept forward like a tidal wave and are beating on the doors of the cities in the plain, which a month ago looked so distant and impregnable.

Our brigade has been pushed well up into the point of a narrow salient—a long thin cape of recaptured territory which projects far out into the enemy country. We are so far up that the Hun balloons are actually in rear of us and watch our every movement from either flank. Any time that they choose they can bring accurate fire to bear on us. We have been in some murder-holes before, but this is by long adds the worst. The Hun game is to obliterate us before we get started. All day and all night he bombards us without cessation. When high explosives have failed, he drenches us with gas.

Now that we are here there is no use in trying to disguise either our presence or our purpose. The old subterfuge of camouflage is of no avail. The country is too bare and too much overlooked for any precautions, however ingenious, to protect us. Our only chance is to hurry up and get the attack begun before we are all dead. There will be a percentage of safety when we begin to go forward; there is none in sitting still. That we may launch our offensive quickly, we are making every effort. No man’s life is precious. Guns and ammunition drive up in the broad daylight and are knocked out. No sooner are they knocked out than others are sent forward to take their places. The waste is stupendous. Direct hits are scored on ammunition-dumps; there is never an hour when explosives cannot be seen going up in flames—never an hour when horses and men cannot be seen rolling in their final agony. The spectacle is too ordinary to excite us. We are too much fatalists to be intimidated. With a misleading display of callousness, while the unlucky are dying, we who are whole carry on with our preparations for revenge, which the enemy watching from the sky does his utmost to prevent.

Our battery is in a narrow valley to the left of what was once a town. A sign-board, with the name painted on it, is its only means of identification: “This was a town.” It is the same with all the sites of former human habitation which lie behind us; if it were not for the sign-boards, they would be indistinguishable from the miles of shell-ploughed waste and mine-craters in which this abomination of desolation abounds. The country as far as eye can search, lies stark and evil as an alkali desert.

In our valley there is a stagnant malodorous swamp, close to which we have dragged in our guns so that their muzzles point out across it. It was once a river winding through a pleasant meadow, but gradually it has become choked by the refuse of dead things—dead men, dead horses, dead happiness. God knows what it hides. It has been kind to us, nevertheless, for it has saved us many casualties. All the enemy’s rounds which fall short of us plunge harmlessly into the liquid mud. We hear them coming with the roar of express engines. We make a bet where they are going to burst. Then a column of filth goes up from the swamp-and we know that this slough of despond has again preserved us.

If we have been lucky, others have been less fortunate. The valley being stiff with batteries, there are not enough good positions to go round. One watches the shells alight, then sees the men rushing for stretchers. In an endless chain the ammunition-wagons drive up, fling out their rounds and depart at the gallop. Let them move quickly and ever more quickly, there are always some of them that get caught. The place is rapidly becoming a shambles. No one’s life is worth a minute’s purchase. It would be interesting to know what premium we should have to pay if we wanted to insure ourselves.

The Major has just told me that the attack is to be launched tomorrow at dawn. It’s extraordinarily ambitious, for its third objective is fifteen thousand yards from where we are at present, and it’s ultimate goal is the capture, of Cambrai. Between ourselves and Cambrai stretches the most strongly fortified country of the entire German Front—a country naturally fortified by marshes and canals and made doubly impregnable by military cunning. The Hindenburg Line will have to be taken first before any general advance can be begun. After that certain sacrifice-tanks will go through and drown themselves in the canals to make a bridge over which the living tanks and cavalry may push forward to conquest.

We can stand any amount of pummelling now that we know the worst. “It’s going to be a top-hole show—Berlin or nothing;” those were the Major’s words. Judging by the pleased grins on the men’s faces, it won’t be nothing. We’re going to finish the job this time and be done with it forever. Since the men have heard the news, they’ve generated quite a “home for Christmas” air of jollity. There is only one man who looks sad—Captain Heming. He has received orders to start for Blighty at once to give evidence in the case of Mrs. Dragott.

“Don’t go if you don’t want to,” said the Major. “I’ll stand by you if there’s trouble. Please yourself.”

We’re wondering how he’ll decide. It depends on his evidence, whether it would save or condemn her.

If it would condemn her and he still loves her——

A man can live worse deaths than falling honourably in battle.