I handed over the battery and went forward. At Death Corner I was met by a sight which I shall not easily forget. In the middle of the crossroads the dead lay in mounds. Many of them were men whom I recognised. The place was strewn with horses. The first to catch my eyes was old Fury, the Major’s rusty charger; his hind-legs had been shot away from under him and he sat with his front-legs thrust out like poles, balancing himself and swaying his head. Pressed flat behind a tree I saw the Major, peering out across the waving corn, where the cavalry were charging death at the gallop. Crouching low and dodging the shells, I gained his place of hiding. “Some picnic, isn’t it?” were his first words. He was as happy and excited as if he were the spectator of a gigantic football match. How he had been able to survive at Death Corner for so long was a marvel. I looked at the picnic. All I could see was men creeping back on their hands and knees, riderless horses writhing and drowning in the sea of yellow, stranded tanks, smouldering heaps marking the spots where aeroplanes had crashed incandescent as comets and, across the plain of wheat, a wall of fire where our shells were falling and columns of suffocating smoke were curling above the funeral pyres of towns. “Some picnic, all right,” I said. The Major laughed at me out of the corner of his eyes. “It’s the real thing—open warfare, what we always wanted. See here, Chris, I’ve collected some of these infantry chaps; their officers have been nearly all wiped out. I’m going to lead them forward to clean up some of those enemy machine-gun nests. They’ve got to be cleaned up, because, they’re cutting us off from our troops who are in Fouquescourt. God knows what’s happening up there. Someone’s got to fight his way through and find out. I want you to stop here and watch for any messages I send back.” His eye caught Fury. “I can’t leave him like that.” At the risk of his life he dodged across the open space to where his old companion sat swaying his head forlornly. I saw him pat the velvet neck and then fumble for his revolver. He looked at the revolver and then at the horse. He came back to me slowly, “I can’t. You do it when I’m gone.” Along the edge of the wheat the infantry were lying waiting for him; they were the stragglers and survivors of the first two attacks. As he reached them he fell on his hands and knees and crawled away, while they followed him at intervals through the golden stalks.