In spite of this hail, a few Germans managed to break through their walls of dead and wounded. One of them, disguised as a French officer, and wanting us to think he had been a prisoner, but had just broken away from the Germans, rushed up to Robson and patted him on the shoulder and said: “Brave fellow!” And with that he whipped round his sword and killed our maxim gunner on the spot; but he himself was instantly shot down by our enraged fellows. There was another case of treachery, this time, unhappily, from inside our ranks. Our guide, a man claiming to be a Frenchman, at about one o’clock in the morning, turned traitor, and went and told the Germans how many there were of us, and by way of indicating our position he fired a haystack; but he had no sooner done that than two bullets settled him. One of our corporals dashed away to put the fire out, but before he reached the haystack he was killed. It was at this time that Private Wyatt, of my company, rushed out--everything was done at a rush--and brought in a wounded officer. The colonel, who was on his horse, and saw what had happened, said: “Who is that brave man?” He was told, and afterwards Wyatt was taken before the general and recommended for a decoration. Hour after hour, all through the time of darkness, and until daylight came, that terrible fight went on. For seven long hours a few hundred British Guards had kept at bay an enormous body of Germans--and at the end of the firing we had killed far more than the whole of our force numbered when the battle began. We had given them wholesale death from our machine-guns, our rifles, and our artillery, and they had faced it--they had been driven on to it. Now they were to have the bayonet. We gave them two charges; but they didn’t stop long, for as soon as they saw the cold steel on the ends of our rifles they were off like a shot, throwing down a lot of rifles and equipment. When this happened it was between five and six o’clock on the morning of the 27th, and we then got the order to retire. We were told that we had lost 126 in killed and wounded. That was a heavy list, but not so big as we had expected, bearing in mind the furious nature of the fight. The marvel was that we had not been wiped out, and we should certainly have been in a very serious state if it had not been for the 17th Field Battery. There is this to be said, too: if the Germans had broken through our lines it would have meant that, in all probability, the whole Second Division of our army would have been cut up. We fell in and were soon on the march again, retiring, and we marched as fast as we could go till we halted at a rather large town about ten miles from Landrecies. Here we were in clover, in a way of speaking, because we sheltered in a clay-pit where the French had been making bricks, and we all sat down and waited for our tea of German shells.