Came _one_ English aeroplane, drifting aimlessly across the sky. Walking wounded came, trudging painfully across the fields, singly and two by two, arms dangling, heads bandaged. (There were no steel helmets in those early days.) Came a gray company of prisoners, capless, weaponless; fell out; squatted on their hunkers among the root-fields. Came a dozen peasant-children, sprung somehow to life; wrenched up roots from the field; pelted the captives as they squatted. The company fell in again; trudged off towards Béthune; followed by the spitting, cursing children. (And there were many “gentlemen” in England still abed that morning!) Came, towards noon, down the road from Sailly, long brown columns of infantry, guns and horses; marching towards Noyelles. The Northdown Division! Gun-range away behind the grimy remnants who were even then bombing out the cellars in Loos village beyond the skyline. . . . But from Beuvry to Annequin the roads were bare. And on the left of the attack, round the Hohenzollern Redoubt, in the Chalk Quarries, at the foot of Fosse Eight, men fought unsupported, died cursing the chance that was never taken, the help that never came. “The situation with regard to the Southdown Division is still obscure at the time of drawing up my report,” reads official history of a fortnight later. § 5 Peter, relieved by Purves, stumbled down from his eyrie at about two o’clock; found Colonel Stark and Doctor Carson sitting over the débris of lunch. “Very sad,” the Irishman was saying. “What is?” asked Peter, slipping off his gas-satchel, sitting down to cold beef. “Poor Halliday’s been killed,” answered the Weasel. “Doc’s just been up to Vermelles on a push-bike.” “They nearly got me too. Bromley’s crowd have been having a pretty rotten time.” The casualty, first among their officers, cast a gloom over the three men. Soon, the Doctor went back to his impromptu surgery—a tiny room off the hall where his batman had set out from their wicker cases, bandages, shining instruments, bottles of disinfectants, boxes of tabloids. “Sportsman, the doctor,” commented Stark. The telephone on the shelf began buzzing; Peter went to it; picked up the receiver. “Seventh Don Ack . . . Adjutant fourth Southdown Brigade . . . Brigade Major wishes to speak to you, sir . . . Right . . .” A pause . . . “That you, Jameson? Look here, we want your batteries to open fire again. . . .” Followed map-references which Peter repeated. . . . “Yes. The loophole plates. But go slow with your ammunition.” Stark glanced at the big marked map on the wall; saw that the targets were the same as those for the previous day. “Infantry held up, I suppose,” he said. “What was that about ammunition? . . . Very well, tell the batteries to fire a round a minute. H.E.,[10] of course. You might go down and see how they’re getting on. Tell Mr. Black I want to see him; and send in a telephonist as you pass the dug-out.”