After the firing had slackened we advanced again a bit, into the next
group of houses, the edge of the village proper. I can't tell you how
muddling it is. We did not know which was our front, we did not know if
our own troops had come round us on the flanks, or whether they had
stopped behind and were firing into us. And besides, a lot of German
snipers were left in the houses we had come through, and every now and
then bullets came singing by from God knows where. Four of us were
talking in the road when about a dozen bullets came with a whistle. We
all dived for the nearest door, and fell over each other, yelling with
laughter. ---- said, "I have a bullet through my new Sandon twillette
breeches." We looked, and he had; it had gone clean through. He didn't
tell us till two days after that it had gone through him too; but there
it was, like the holes you make to blow an egg, only about 4 inches
apart.

We stopped about two hours. Then the cavalry regiment on our left
retired. Then we saw a lot of Germans among the fires they had lit (they
set the houses on fire to mark their line of advance.) They were running
from house to house. We were told not to fire, for fear of our own
people on the other side. Then came a lot of them, shouting and singing
and advancing down the street, through the burning houses. One felt a
peculiar hatred for them. We heard afterward that there was a division
of infantry, at first we thought there were only a few patrols.

We retired about two miles and dismounted for action. Soon they began to
come up from three sides, and we retired again. They were pretty close,
advancing higgledy-piggledy across the fields and firing. They shot
abominably (nothing like the morning, from the houses, when they had all
the ranges marked to a yard). We lost only about 20 horses, no men
killed. "Hellfire Herbert" got his horse shot under him when they were
within about 200 yards. He was next troop in front of me. He suddenly
got complete "fou-rires" when he saw me. I got him a spare horse, and he
was still laughing, and cursing them with a sort of triumph. We only
trotted away. A man in my troop kept touching his cap to the Germans,
saying "Third-class shots, third-class shots."

The next day we went forward to another places and intrenched against a
very big German force, but we only had to face their guns. Poor ---- was
killed. They pushed us pretty hard back to our infantry. We were
supposed to have d