“On one occasion seven of us were left to cover a Maxim gun while it was being limbered up to take some other position farther back. We had to take up the position of the gun, and we kept firing rapid so as to make it appear that the Maxim gun was still there. The Germans were shelling the position on both sides of us. Then we had to go at the double for about five miles to catch up to the others. It was a hard jog-trot all the way.” It was during this skilful retreat that there came the first of those wonderful duels in the air which established, as Sir John French so well put it, the personal supremacy of our flying men, and proved that they are quicker and sharper in the air than those of the enemy: “Our man got above the German, who tried his hardest to escape,” wrote an eye-witness. “The Englishman was firing his revolver, and the German seemed to plane down in good order, but when he got to the ground he was dead.” Little by little, in some cases not for many weeks, came through stories of the daring and quenchless heroism which illumined the dark night of the great retreat. A solitary grave, each day strewn with fresh flowers, is the last resting-place of an English soldier who, quite alone, fought his last fight till overwhelmed by numbers. During the first rearguard action he had strayed from his comrades, and fallen exhausted from fatigue. Unable to find them, he took up his quarters in a deserted carriage. Thirty-six hours later the Germans appeared and fired at him. Undeterred by the fact that he was utterly alone, he replied, and such was his determination and accuracy of aim that he accounted for six German officers, one of them a general, before he fell under a volley. The French from a village near by buried him where he had fought, erected a cross, and in honour of his gallantry, laid fresh flowers each day on his grave. His name was David M. Kay, and he belonged to the 5th Lancers. Hearken to another exploit, of which the hero was Corporal Shaw, who for three years was the twelve-stone wrestling champion of the Army in Ireland. He saw a comrade in difficulty with his horse in the first retirement from Mons. The pack had slipped round to its side, and the rider was endeavouring to straighten it. Shaw dashed up and helped the soldier to straighten the pack. Bullets rained round the plucky champion, one darted into the soft part of his shoulder, another killed one of his comrades near by, but the man he was helping rode off clear. CHAPTER VI CAMBRAI, LANDRÉCIES, ST. QUENTIN