The retirement began at 10 p.m. on the night of May 3. The arrangement was that, first, part of the infantry should withdraw, followed after an interval by a portion of the remainder, each battalion leaving behind twenty picked shots to man the parapet and pick off any German that showed himself. It was a most delicate undertaking. The least mistake would have betrayed our move to the Germans. At some places--for instance, at Broodseinde--the trenches were only ten yards apart. Talking and smoking were forbidden. Our men just slipped away in silence through the darkness, the officers hoping in their hearts that they might get away undiscovered. With a muttered “Good-night and good luck” to the lonely figures left at the parapet, looking out over the dreary expanse between the trenches, where spasmodic flares vouchsafed a glimpse from time to time of gaping shell-holes, a wild tangle of barbed wire and dead in uniforms brown and green, the first batch of troops silently filed out of the trenches. What a crew they were, with an eight-days’ beard, unwashed and unkempt, their faces and uniforms smeared with clay! With that peculiar hitch that Tommy gives to his pack behind when he starts off, they trudged out into the black night, their backs turned to the enemy. Thus to turn the back on danger and face the unknown, worn out with fatigue and hunger, shaken by the loss of many dear comrades--what a test of discipline! The men were admirable; their officers were magnificent. The success of the withdrawal was, first and last, the work of the Regimental Officer, as those most qualified to speak readily attest. With most of the field officers killed or wounded or gassed, it was primarily the subaltern, the boy fresh from a public school or the Varsity, from Sandhurst or the O.T.C., or, in the Territorials, the young clerk or business man, who led his men down over unreconnoitred ground through the rain and the darkness, steeling them against the danger that always threatened by a fine display of nonchalance and good-humour. Nothing was left behind. All the arms and ammunition and supplies that could not be taken away were destroyed. They tell of a Colonel who did away with a box of kippers rather than let them fall into the hands of the Germans. To his surprise at breakfast the next morning in the new line the kippers appeared on the breakfast-table (an ammunition-box on the bottom of a trench). The Regimental Sergeant-Major confessed that the sacrifice had been too great. He could not bring himself to take any chance of making a present of the kippers to the Germans. So he had clandestinely rescued them.