The view itself did not tend to lighten one’s depression. We climbed a fairly steep slope which gave a view of the country for miles on either side. The main roads and every little crossroad as far as the eye could carry were all massed with moving troops going back. It looked like the Allied armies in full retreat, quite orderly but none the less routed. Where would it end? From rumours which ran about we were almost surrounded. The only way out was south. We were inside a bottle which we could not break, all aiming for the neck. And yet everywhere on that slope French infantry had dug themselves in, each man in a little hole about knee-deep with a tiny bank of mud in front of him, separated from the next man by a few yards. They sat and smoked in their holes, so like half-dug graves, waiting for the enemy, watching us go back with a look in their eyes that seemed to be of scorn. Now and again they laughed. It was difficult to meet those quiet eyes without a surge of rage and shame. How much longer were we going to retreat? Where were our reinforcements? Why had our infantry been “relieved” that morning? Why weren’t we standing shoulder to shoulder with those blue-clad poilus? What was the brain at the back of it all? Who was giving the orders? Was this the end of the war? Were we really beaten? Could it be possible that somewhere there was not a line of defence which we could take up and hold, hold for ever? Surely with magnificent men like ours who fought till they dropped and then picked themselves up and fought again, surely something could be done to stop this appalling débâcle! 26 The tide of traffic took us into Guiscard where we were able to pull out of the stream one by one and collect as a battery,--or at least the gun part of it. While studying the map a mounted orderly came up and saluted. “Are you the ---- Brigade, sir?” he said. I said yes. “The orders are to rendezvous at Muiraucourt instead of Buchoire.” To this day that man remains a mystery. The rest of the brigade did rendezvous at Buchoire and fought twice again that day. The Colonel never gave any order about Muiraucourt and had never heard of the place. Where the orderly came from, who he was, or how he knew the number of the brigade are unsolved problems. I never saw him again. Having given the message he disappeared into the stream of traffic, and I, finding the new rendezvous to be only about three kilometres away in a different direction to Buchoire and out of the traffic road led on again at once. We passed French gunners of all calibres firing at extreme range and came to Muiraucourt to find it absolutely empty and silent. While the horses were being watered and the wounded ones bandaged I scouted on ahead and had the luck to find an A.S.C. officer with forage for us and a possibility of rations if we waited an hour. It was manna in the wilderness.