a retreat
that the major issued orders for the Brigade to move forward three
miles. We marched steadily down the valley through which Judd and
Pottinger had passed on their forward-section adventure, skirted the
wood that they had assisted the Divisional Infantry to recapture, and
halted for further instructions west of a deserted colony of battered
Nissen huts, gaping holes and broken bricks shovelled into piles, still
entered on the maps as the village of Guillemont. It would have been a
truer description to paint on the sign-boards, "This was Villers
Carbonnel," as has been done at one desolate spot between Peronne and
Villers Bretonneux. Along the valley we had passed were row after row
of solidly-built stables left uncleaned and smelly by the fleeing Hun;
rotting horses smothered with flies; abandoned trucks marooned on the
few stretches of the narrow-gauge railway left whole by our shell-fire.
In the wood stood numerous Boche-built huts, most of them put up since
the March onslaught. The Boche, dirty cur that he is, had deliberately
fouled them before departing. The undulating waste land east of Trones
Wood, hallowed by memories of fierce battles in 1916, had remained
untroubled until the last few weeks; and the hundreds of shell-holes,
relics of 1916, had become grass-grown. The hummocky greenness reminded
one of nothing so much as a seaside golf-course.

IX. DOWN THE ROAD TO COMBLES

A Battery had been ordered to move about half a mile beyond Guillemont,
and to come into action off the road that led towards the extensive,
low-lying village of Combles, through which the enemy front line now
ran. Major Mallaby-Kelby had gone forward and the three remaining
batteries awaited his return.

I clambered my horse over the shell-holes and rubbish heaps of
Guillemont, a preliminary to a short reconnaissance of the roads and
tracks in the neighbourhood. Old Silvertail, having become a confirmed
wind-sucker, had been deported to the Mobile Veterinary Section; Tommy,
the shapely bay I was now riding, had been transferred to me by our
ex-adjutant, Castle, who had trained him to be well-mannered and
adaptable. "A handy little horse," was Castle's stock description,
until his increasing weight made Tommy too small for him. I had ridden
about six hundred yards past the sunken road in which A Battery's
ammunition waggons were waiting, when half a dozen 5.9's crashed round
and about them. I turned back and saw more she