the German
reserves were numberless while ours scarcely existed.

CHAPTER TWO

Most of the time while we were dragging our exhausted, diminishing numbers
ahead of the German wave of shot and steel, I was on scout duty. For a
while, I was "connecting file" between the Black Watch and the Munster
Fusiliers who were in rear of us and _almost constantly_ in touch with the
enemy. I had more than one narrow escape from capture or death.

On one occasion the regiment had been deployed to beat off a flank attack.
When we resumed the march I was sent back to get in touch with the
Fusiliers. My orders were to go to the rear until I got in touch with
them. I was proceeding cautiously along the road when suddenly around a
curve something appeared before me. My rifle was at my shoulder ready to
fire. Then I recognized what had been a uniform of the Fusiliers.

Have you ever read Kipling's "Man Who Came Back"? If you have, you will
have a better idea than I can give you of what this human being looked
like. His face was covered with blood. One arm hung limply. Just as he
made toward me, he fell exhausted by the roadside, like a dog that is
spent. Literally, his tongue hung from his mouth. His shoes were cut up
and his clothes dangled in ribbons beneath which red gashes showed in his
flesh where he had torn it in the barbed-wire fences he had encountered,
crossing fields.

I asked him what had happened. His lips moved and his breath came in more
difficult gasps, but no word could he utter. I wiped his face, and then I
recognized in him an officer who had been a crack athlete when the
Munsters were in India and against whom I had competed more than once. I
pressed my water bottle to his lips. After a few moments he was able to
speak.

"They are gone!" he gasped; "all of them are gone! By God, they died like
men; but--they--died."

"Let me understand you, sir," I begged him. "Tell me just what happened."

"Where are you going?" he almost shouted.

"I am going back to get in touch with the Munster Fusiliers," I said.

"You can't make the journey," he panted. "You'd have to go to heaven--or
to hell. They caught them in a pocket. Shrapnel and machine-guns. _There
are no Munster Fusiliers any more._"

He was right, practically. The Germans had caught them between fires and
the regiment was cut to pieces.

Helping the officer as best I could, I hurried forward to catch up with my
own regiment. When I got in touch with