Here I collected my apparatus and stood by for instructions. News of our continued pressure on the German line of retreat was penetrating through. First one village, then another fell into our hands. The fall of Peronne was imminent. My instructions were to proceed to Peronne, or rather the nearest point that it was possible to operate from. I journeyed that night as far as Amiens, and arriving there about midnight, dog tired, went to my previous billet in the Rue l'Amiral Cambet, and turned in. Early next morning I reported to a major of the Intelligence Department, who told me our troops had entered Peronne the previous night. Rather disappointed that I had not been there to obtain the entry, I made tracks for that town. I took by-roads, thinking that they would be more negotiable than the main ones, and, reaching the outskirts of the village of Biaches, I left the car there and prepared to walk into Peronne. I could see in the distance that the place was still burning; columns of smoke were pouring upwards and splashing the sky with patches of villainous-looking black clouds. Strapping my camera upon my back, and bidding my man follow with my tripod, I started off down the hill into Biaches. Then the signs of the German retreat began to fully reveal themselves. The ground was absolutely littered with the horrible wastage of war; roads were torn open, leaving great yawning gaps that looked for all the world like huge jagged wounds. On my right lay the Château of La Maisonnette. The ground there was a shambles, for numerous bodies in various stages of putrefaction lay about as they had fallen. I left this section of blood-soaked earth, and, turning to my left, entered the village, or rather the site of what had once been Biaches. I will not attempt to describe it; my pen is not equal to the task of conveying even the merest idea of the state of the place. It was as if a human skeleton had been torn asunder, bone by bone, and then flung in all directions. Then, look around and say--this was once a man. You could say the same thing of Biaches--this was once a village. I stayed awhile and filmed various scenes, including the huge engineers' dump left by the Germans, but, as the light was getting rather bad, I hurried as fast as possible in the direction of Peronne. I wandered down the path of duck-boards, over the swamp of the Somme, filthy in appearance, reeking in its stench, and littered with thousands of empty bottles, that showed the character of the drunken orgies to which the Huns had devoted themselves.