it what you will--brought
about the greatest catastrophe that had so far obtained in the Guernsey
ranks. Major Davey moved his party over an area--at about 11 in the
morning of a warm, sunny Sunday--coming in for a spell of shelling
extraordinary in intensity. A labour unit retired because of the
exigencies of the precarious situation. Inflexible, the Normans carried
on, then--s-i-iz-z ... kr-rupp!

The leading platoon caught it in their very midst, a ghastly heap of
mangled flesh and shattered limbs were scattered to right and left. Two
unhappy lads were blown to unrecognisable fragments. No words can convey
the heart-rending cries of those whose bodies cringe and writhe from the
hell-hot agony of searing shrapnel. There is an unmistakable appeal for
pity that stirs the depth of feeling until a wild frenzy to right
matters sends Berserk passion to the brain. Oh, you German gunners in
your serene safety, if ever my chance comes...!

Thus the first of the Ten Hundred went over the Great Divide.

An order to retire was quietly obeyed. They marched back, some shaken,
some bleeding from minor wounds: bearing the stretcher cases and dead
with them. Some gazed eastwards, faces transfigured with impotent rage,
a few white faced boys stared hypnotised before them; but the remainder,
heads erect, looked grimly ahead ... they would not forget!

A day or so later the Normans came out. Cookie, black and grimy from
head to foot--the only condition in which he really felt at
home--prepared the removal of his cookers.

"I didn't 'alf 'ave the wind up," he confided me afterwards, "about that
there last dinner; becos, you see, a Jerry shell wot burst close chucked
a great chunk of mud into one of them cockers. Wot was I to do? Couldn't
throw away the grub ... didn't 'ave no more, so I just stirred it all
up. Anyhow," reflectively, "it made it thicker, and they sez it was
'tray bun.'"

And so they came away with out farewell glance across that tragic
countryside, lonely and desolate as if God-forsaken in its very
devastation. The eye took in the reflected light in a myriad pools, the
white crosses, sinister wire treking right away to where a few solitary
tree stumps stood up madly against the skyline. They thought with a pang
of those who slept the long last sleep in the clinging wet soil, whose
footsteps would no longer ring on the hard road in rythmic chorus with
the old Ten Hundred, whose voices would ne'er again swell the
Bat