Many fell out--fell out in the literal as well as the drill sense of the word; swerved to the side of the road and missed foot in the ditch and fell there, or stumbled in the ranks, tripped, lacking the brain or body quickness to recover themselves, collapsed, and rolled and lay helpless. Others, again, gasped a word or two to a comrade or an N.C.O., stumbled out of the ranks to the roadside, sank down with hanging head and rounded shoulders to a sitting position. Few or none of these men deliberately lay down. They sat till the regiment had plodded his trailing length past, tried to stagger to knees and feet, succeeded, and stood swaying a moment, and then lurched off after the rear ranks; or failed, stared stupidly after them, collapsed again slowly and completely. All these were left to lie where they fell. It was useless to urge them to move, because every officer and N.C.O. knew that no man gave up while he had an ounce of strength or energy left to carry on, that orders or entreaties had less power to keep a man moving than his own dogged pluck and will, that when these failed to keep a man going nothing else could succeed. All were not, of course, so hopelessly done as this. There were still a number of the tougher muscled, the firmer willed, who kept their limbs moving with conscious volition, who still retained some thinking power, who even at times exchanged a few words or a mouthful of curses. These, and the officers, kept the whole together, kept them moving by force of example, set the pace for them and gave them the direction. Most of them were in the leading ranks of their own companies, merely because their greater energy had carried them there past and through the ranks of those whose minds were nearly or quite a blank, whose bodies were more completely exhausted, whose will-power was reduced to a blind and sheep-like instinct to follow a leader, move when and where the dimly seen khaki form or tramping boots in front of them moved, stop when and where they stopped. The roads by which the army was retreating were cumbered and in places choked and blocked with fugitive peasantry fleeing from the advancing Germans, spurred into and upon their flight by the tales that reached them of ravished Belgium, by first-hand accounts of the murder of old men and women and children, of rape and violation and pillage and burning. Their slow, crawling procession checked and hindered the army transport, added to the trials of the weary troops by making necessary frequent halts and deviations off the road and back to it to clear some block in the traffic where a cart had broken down, or where worn-out women with hollow cheeks and staring eyes, and children with dusty, tear-streaked faces crowded and filled the road.