We ceased fire and packed up and got mounted and hooked in like six bits of black ginger, but the trouble was that we had to leave the comparative safety of our orchard and go out into the barrage which was churning up the fields the other side of the hedge. I collected the Stand-by and gave him the plan of campaign. They were to follow me in column of route at a trot, with twenty yards between guns,--that is, at right angles to the barrage, so as to form a smaller target. No man can have failed to hear his voice but for some unknown reason they failed to carry out the order. The leading gun followed me over the ditch on to the field, shells bursting on every side. About sixty yards across the field I looked over my shoulder and saw that they were all out of the orchard but wheeling to form line, broadside on to the barrage. The leading gun, which the Stand-by took on, was the only one that got safely away. The five others all stuck with horses dead and men wounded, and still that barrage dropped like hail. We cut out the dead horses and shot the badly wounded ones and somehow managed a four-horse team for each gun. The wounded who couldn’t walk were lifted on to limbers and held there by the others, and the four-horse teams nearly broke their hearts before we got the guns off that devilish bit of ploughed land on to a road, and after another twenty minutes had got out of the shell fire. Three sergeants were wounded, a couple of drivers and a gunner. The road was one solid mass of moving troops, French and English, infantry, gunners and transport. There was no means of going cross-country with four-horse teams. One had to follow the stream. Fortunately there were some R.A.M.C. people with stretchers and there was a motor ambulance. Between the two we got all our casualties bandaged and away. The other batteries had been gone already three quarters of an hour. There was no sign of them anywhere. My own battery was scattered along a mile of traffic; one gun here, another there, divided by field kitchens and French mitrailleuse carts, marching infantry and limbered G.S. wagons. Where the sergeant-major was with the wagon line was beyond the bounds of conjecture. One hoped to find him at the rendezvous at Buchoire. There was nothing with us in the way of rations or forage and we only had the limbers full of ammunition. Fortunately the men had had a midday ration issued in the orchard, and the horses had been watered and fed during the morning. In the way of personnel I had the Quartermaster-sergeant, and two sergeants. The rest were bombardiers, gunners, and drivers,--about three men per gun all told. The outlook was not very optimistic.