The rear-guard passed numbers of these lying utterly exhausted by the roadside, and the road for miles was strewn with the wreckage of the retreat, with men who had fallen out unable longer to march on blistered or bleeding feet or collapsed in the heedless sleep of complete exhaustion; with broken-down carts dragged clear into the roadside and spilled with their jumbled contents into the ditch; with crippled horses and footsore cattle; with quivering-lipped, grey-haired old men, and dry-eyed, cowering women, and frightened, clinging children. Some of these peasantry roused themselves as the last of the rear-guard regiments came up with them, struggled again to follow on the road, or dragged themselves clear of it and sought refuge and hiding in abandoned cottages or barns or the deep dry ditches. At one point where the road crept up the long slope of a hill the rear-guard came under the longe-range fire of the German guns. The shells came roaring down, to burst in clouds of belching black smoke in the fields to either side of the road, or to explode with a sharp tearing cr-r-rash in the air, their splinters and bullets raining down out of the thick white woolly smoke cloud that coiled and writhed and unfolded in slow heavy oily eddies. One battalion of the rear-guard was halted at the foot of the hill and spread out off the road and across the line of it. Again they were told not to lie down, and for the most part the men obeyed, leaning heavily with their arms folded on the muzzles of their rifles or watching the regiments crawling slowly up the road with the coal-black shell-bursts in the fields about them or the white air-bursts of the shrapnel above them. ‘Pretty bloomin’ sight--I don’t think,’ growled a gaunt and weary-eyed private. The man next him laughed shortly. ‘Pretty one for the Germs, anyway,’ he said; ‘and one they’re seein’ a sight too often for my fancy. They’ll be forgettin’ wot our faces look like if we keep on at this everlastin’ runnin’ away.’ ‘Blast ’em,’ said the first speaker savagely, ‘but our turn will come presently. D’you think this yarn is right, Jacko, that we’re retirin’ this way just to draw ’em away from their base?’ ‘Gawd knows,’ said Jacko; ‘but they didn’t bring us over ’ere to do nothin’ but run away, an’ you can bet on that, Peter.’ An order passed down the line, and the men began to move slowly into the road again and to shake into some sort of formation on it, and then to plod off up the hill in the wake of the rest. The shells were still plastering the hillside and crashing over the road, and several men were hit as the battalion tramped wearily up the hill. Even the shells failed to rouse most of the men from their apathy and weariness, but those it did stir it roused mainly to angry resentment or sullen oath-mumblings and curses. ‘Well, Jacko,’ said Peter bitterly, ‘I’ve knowed I had a fair chance o’ bein’ shot, but burn me if ever I thought I was goin’ to be shot in the back.’