d
was able to limp home. In civil life our Company Sergeant-Major is one
of the directors of the Corporate Banking Company Ltd., and drives into
town in his own motor.

Then I came on Haines, wandering by himself on a sandhill. He was
swearing viciously. It was, indeed, the sound of his oaths which led
me to him. They were not loud, but they were uttered with an intensity
which gave them the power of piercing through the tumult of the storm.
He and I and the Company Sergeant-Major stuck together, and at
1 a.m.--we took the time from Haines' luminous-faced wrist watch--we
suddenly tumbled into the trench.

We found the whole four platoons waiting for us; but they would not
have waited much longer. The senior Second Lieutenant--a very well-known
solicitor--had taken command of the company, assuming, as he said, that
Haines had become a casualty accidentally. His idea was to march the
men home, and then send the Ambulance Brigade to search for Haines, the
Company Sergeant-Major, and me.

"That's the sort of thing," he said, "an ambulance is for. The men in
the fighting line can't be expected to do it."

We marched home in pretty good order, considering that we were all very
wet, greatly exhausted, and many of us bruised in various parts of
our bodies. Our spirit was quite unbroken, and Haines, writing up the
official diary afterwards, said that our moral was excellent. He did us
no more than bare justice. There was not a man among us--except perhaps
the Company Sergeant-Major, whose ankle was swelling up--who would not
have welcomed a German attack.

We got back to the golf pavilion, and found the whole place in an
uproar. Women, all of them very wet, were rushing about. Tompkins
was giving confused and contradictory orders to the twelve stretcher
bearers, who looked cowed and miserable. Mrs. Cotter was sitting on the
floor in a corner of the room crying bitterly. We got the explanation
out of Tompkins at last.

Three of the casualties had, it appeared, been successfully picked
up and carried home. The stretcher bearers had somehow missed Cotter.
Search parties had been sent out Tompkins himself had felt his way round
each of the fifteen bathing-boxes. The nursing section of the Ambulance
Brigade had waved electric torches and stable lanterns up and down the
beach from the edge of the sea to the sandhills. The stretcher bearers,
scourged by the remarks Tompkins made about their incompetence, had gone
shouting throu