One particularly sad disaster befell a regiment in the course of the retirement; it is remarkable that there were not many others of a like nature. The 1st Gordons lost their way after dark, and began to march in a direction across the front of the German advance. About midnight the regiment found itself moving into masses of troops. The first thought was that they were amongst the French, for it was supposed that they had been marching towards French support. Suddenly fire was opened upon the regiment from all sides, and though the Gordons put up the gallant fight which they have ever done in a tight corner, the odds were too impossible, and ten minutes saw the end. I think that disaster affected the Force more than anything else in that opening month. Men spoke of it in hushed tones. A magnificent regiment with glorious traditions, and to be crushed out as they were in those few minutes. And yet not crushed out! Though the older generation of the family may die, there is the younger generation which follows, and their sons after them. And well do I remember that younger generation at the Aisne, when the Regiment rose again reincarnate from the ashes of the dead. I see now the stern-set faces of the officers, proud in their determination to avenge their honour; faces shaded and hallowed by the knowledge of what the Regiment had done and suffered, what it must now do and suffer that their dead may rest in peace. As it was, so shall it be, Rising, roaring, rushing like the tide, (Gay goes the Gordon to a fight) They're up through the fire-zone, not to be denied; (Bayonets! and charge! by the right!) Thirty bullets straight where the rest went wide, And thirty lads are lying on the bare hillside; But they passed in the hour of the Gordons' pride, To the skirl of the pipers' playing. [1] This Corps is always regarded in Germany as the finest in the German Army. CHAPTER XIII THE RETREAT CONTINUES _We are but warriors for the working-day; Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd With rainy marching in the painful field; There's not a piece of feather in our host, * * * * * And time hath worn us into slovenry; But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim._ The following days saw no rest for the exhausted troops, and they were compelled to plod on ever farther and farther south. If the rapidity of the German advance was so astonishing, even more so was the speed at which the British retired before them. For it is a hundred times more easy to do the advancing than the retiring. In the former case there is the confidence of success, with the feeling that at any moment the coveted prize may be snapped up. In the latter there is the inevitable feeling that things are going wrong, that the army is suffering defeat, and the constant dread that the troops may not stand the tremendous strain upon their powers of endurance.