han the untouched.

Weary Normans, knowing that YOUR turn would not be long acoming--and you
would not be sorry when it did--knowing, too, that behind was no relief
force. You had to HOLD, there was no alternative. And each face lifted
earnestly in the light was set of jaw. God grant them life and they
would hold until the Hun himself called "Halt!"

Ammunition had come up ... therefore was there only one factor by which
they might fail--no men to use the rifles. They spoke sometimes in the
pauses.

"Wonder wot they'll say at 'ome about all these yere dead?"

"Dunno."

"Anyhow, we ain't done bad work."

"No; an' we'll hang on yere like 'ell, even if they brings the ole
bloomin' German army."

"Sure. If Jerry thinks 'e can show us 'ow to shoot 'e has made a 'ell of
a outer."

"D'you know," shyly, "we 'ave done somethin' big!"

"Yes; I s'pose we 'ave."

The very men who had fought on and made good in face of odds that no man
in his senses would have bet on at a thousand to one chance, opined that
they had "done something big," or at least they "s'posed so."

No Regiment in the Empire, or out of it, could have done more. They had
to "hang on" at any cost. They did: simply, doggedly.

The Guards--rushed up to the southern portion of the sector and launched
against the German advance--with a determination and tenacity of purpose
against which the offered opposition was futile, turned the enemy flank
and forced them back in the direction of their original (November 30th)
line through Cambrai.

A strong detachment fell back on the Masnieres-Rumilly sector, thereby
enforcing on the small Norman remnant a further infliction of bloody
fighting and casualties. The Guards swept back the waves of grey upon
the Guernseys, who could not retreat--for a few hundred yards behind
them the rest of the Brigade were holding up a further enemy element.

Our own artillery, harassing the Fritz retreat, sent over a number of
shells into Masnieres. Fritz batteries, in response to the urgency of
the situation, hailed down shrapnel on a scale only equalled on the
morning of their onslaught. The Normans came in for the thick of it.

The men holding the far end of the little town found themselves swamped
down in the overwhelming rush of an entire retreating Battalion. They
were prisoners before the abrupt alteration in the direction of the
German movement had dawned on them.

Above Rues Vertes the spiteful fire of the remaining sc