bersome way
past smaller branches to where it splashed into the canal.

Into an advanced dressing station about Rues Vertes one of the Duo
stumbled, bleeding profusely from several wounds, dripping with slimy
mud and water, features covered with the grey black dust that comes from
close contact with a shell. Ozanne stared at him.

"Gawd," he said, "'ow'd you get that?"

"Scrap--with a Fritz outpost--got a stretcher?" He bent down in a
half-faint, was carried to a stretcher and his wounds in body and arm
bound. Fag in mouth he dozed, was startled into wakefulness by a call
from the Padre.

"Boys," he was saying, "this village will be evacuated shortly--can't
possibly hold on. Those wounded who can had better walk to Marcoing."

To Marcoing! Two and a half miles. The Norman moved dizzily out of his
stretcher, stood up, and tottered to the entrance.

"Here, kid," a Corporal (R.A.M.C.) advised, "You can't do it."

"I can."

"You'll peg out on the way."

"Sooner that than--be--a prisoner. But I can--do it." He did!

Dawn! And with it an intensity of shelling over the whole area. Earth,
limbs, trees were constantly somewhere in the air. Bodies of yesterday
were torn asunder again and the wounded who had lasted out the night
shrank and writhed in the fiery hail of shrapnel. Fritz came over again.
He is a courageous warrior, not afraid of his own skin, but is at best
when fighting in numbers. A lone fight, back to the wall, is not his
metier; he, if at all threatened, retreats.

Rues Vertes fell.

It was a physical impossibility for the Ten Hundred to hold on. The
casualties already exceeded three hundred, every man was utterly worn,
hungry, had existed for twenty-four hours in a state of the highest
nerve tension. Not one was there who had not missed death a dozen times
by the merest of escapes. They had for ten or eleven days been engaged
in an offensive and what meagre rest had been theirs was woefully
insufficient to counteract the heavy demands made upon the stamina.

Out-numbered by twenty to one, completely out-gunned. No reserves, no
supports, and only one small line of retreat. No aerial observation, no
adequate cover, and an enemy who was aware that a mere shattered
Battalion stood between them and the capitulation of one or more
Divisions. They were half famished, tired out ... his troops were fresh.
He had no doubts as to the result.

Again the 29th Division repelled an attack on its original front