le to estimate their number, line followed line in such rapid
sequence that the eye was bewildered.

They were up against the 29th. The Division wiped out, not partially but
completely, row after row. Rifles and machine-guns mingled in hasty
chorus, incessant, rapid, accurate. Fritz fell back.

The glasses swept over to the right: the heart gave one wild leap of
anxiety. The Division on the right had to face an advance it was unable
to stem, a first line had fallen and a bunch of khaki figures were being
hurried away into the German rear. Beneath pressure too heavy the line
gave, retired rapidly, and the 29th's flank was exposed at a mere
HALF-MILE'S distance.

A call was given for a Guernsey scout ... from the passage an inferno of
shells were visible bursting every few yards, instantaneously the mind
formed: "Impossible to go through alive." One wild frenzied run across
the vibrating yard, hearing everywhere the thunderous bursts, fumes
fouling the nostrils, breath coming and going in gasps; running like
Hades, bent almost double: any second the singing pieces of shrapnel
flying past will get you. Into the Brigade Headquarters with a wild
laugh! You're through, but you have got to get BACK.

In response to that message the Ten Hundred turned out.

They swung out into Masnieres' cobbled hill, rifles slung, and marched
with all the nonchalance in the world towards the bridge, cigarettes and
pipes going, laughing and joking--thus have I a hundred times watched
them go on parade.

That march, a classic; let it go down into history as an emblem of the
old Ten Hundred. Their last march together, their last foot chorus on
the long trails. Square of shoulder, upright, I see even now those
figures that have long since been still. Every yard a man crumpled up,
any yard it might be YOU. And they laughed and smoked, went forth to
call "Halt!" to those waves of grey, advancing some hundred yards away,
as if they had a hundred lives to give. Let coming generations marvel.
The Farewell March of the First Ten Hundred. Before the sun had reached
its noon many had crossed the Groat Divide and passed the portals of
Valhalla to swell the throng of their Viking forefathers.

The enemy advance had continued with remarkable rapidity towards Rues
Vertes and Marcoing. Rear Brigade Headquarters, in Rues Vertes, or at
least above that village, had been seized, and the R.E.'s, a portion of
the N.C.O. staff, all rations and ammunition capt