The Germans got perilously near to Compiègne, and the Breakspeare Unit was ordered to retire. Its base was now at a ruined château on the outskirts of an insignificant village, yet not so very insignificant either—it was stuffed to the neck with ammunition. Nearly all the hours that were spent off duty must be passed in the gloomy, damp-smelling dug-outs which consisted of cellars, partly destroyed but protected by sandbags on heavy timbers. Like foxes creeping out of their holes, the members of the Unit would creep into the daylight, their uniforms covered with mould and rubble, their eyes blinking, their hands cold and numb from the dampness—so cold and so numb that the starting up of motors would often present a real problem. At this time there occurred one or two small mishaps; Bless broke her wrist while cranking her engine; Blakeney and three others at a Poste de Secours, were met by a truly terrific bombardment and took cover in what had once been a brick-field, crawling into the disused furnace. There they squatted for something over eight hours, while the German gunners played hit as hit can with the tall and conspicuous chimney. When at last they emerged, half stifled by brick-dust, Blakeney had got something into her eye, which she rubbed; the result was acute inflammation. Howard had begun to be irritating, with her passion for tending her beautiful hair. She would sit in the corner of her dug-out as calmly as though she were sitting at a Bond Street hairdresser’s; and having completed the ritual brushing, she would gaze at herself in a pocket mirror. With a bandage over her unfortunate eye, Blakeney looked more like a monkey than ever, a sick monkey, and her strictly curtailed conversation was not calculated to enliven the Unit. She seemed almost entirely bereft of speech these days, as though reverting to species. Her one comment on life was: ‘Oh, I dunno . . .’ always said with a jaunty, rising inflexion. It meant everything or nothing as you chose to take it, and had long been her panacea for the ills of what she considered a stupid Creation. ‘Oh, I dunno. . . .’ And indeed she did not; poor, old, sensitive, monosyllabic Blakeney. The Poilu who served out the Unit’s rations—cold meat, sardines, bread and sour red Pinard—was discovered by Stephen in the very act of attempting to unload an aerial bomb. He explained with a smile that the Germans were sly in their methods of loading: ‘I cannot discover just how it is done.’ Then he showed his left hand—it was minus one of the fingers: ‘That,’ he told her, still smiling, ‘was caused by a shell, a quite little shell, which I was also unloading.’ And when she remonstrated none too gently, he sulked: ‘But I wish to give this one to Maman!’