It was a fifteen-mile march. At the third halt I gave half an hour for the eating of bread and cheese. Then was the hour of the plum-pudding hound; also appeared a sort of Newfoundland collie, very big in the hind-quarters, and very dirty as well as ill-bred. Between them they made rich harvest of crusts and cheese. We sat on a bank along the road, but after half an hour we were all getting cold in the raw air, and I fell them in again, and we got on our way. Soon they warmed up and whistled and sang for a quarter of an hour; then silence returned, and eyes turned to the ground again. This march began to tell on the older men. Halford fell out, and I sent Corporal Dewey to bring him along, hastily scribbling the name of our destination on a slip torn from my field-message book, and giving it to him. Then Riley fell out, and Flynn. I began to dread the appearance of Sergeant Hayman from the rear, to tell me of some one else. They were men, these, who had been employed on various jobs; the older and weaker men. There was no skrim-shanking, for there was no Red Cross cart behind us. But no one else fell out; the pace was steady and they were as fit as anything, these fellows. Then happened an incident. We had just turned off the main Amiens road, and come to a forked road. I halted a moment to make sure of the way by the map, and while I did so apparently some sergeant from a regiment billeted in the village there told Sergeant Hayman that the battalion had taken the left road. The way was to the right, and as I struck up a steep hill, Sergeant Hayman ran up and told me the battalion (which had started nearly two hours before us) had gone to the left. ‘I’m going to the right, sergeant,’ said I. And the sergeant returned to the rear. Up, up, up. Grind, grind, grind. I began to hear signs of doubt behind. ‘Did you hear that? Said the battalion went t’other way,’ and so on. ‘Ain’t ’e got a map all right?’ from a believer. ‘Three kilos more,’ I said at the next stop. But some of the fellows had got it into their heads, I could see, that we were wrong. I studied the map; there was no doubt we were all right. Yet a mistake would be calamitous, as the men were very done. Ah! a kilo-stone! ‘Two kilos to ----,’ a place not named on the map at all. This gave me a qualm; and behind came the usual mispronunciations of this annoying village on the stone. But lo! on the left came a turning as per map. Round we swung, downhill, and suddenly we were in a village. Another qualm as I saw it full of Jocks. The doubters were just beginning to realise this fact, when we turned another corner, and almost fell on top of the C.O.! In five minutes we were in billets....” * * * * * The next day we marched to the village of Querrieux. There I heard the guns again after two months. * * * * *