day to G.H.Q., asking them to send a car to meet the boat. Whether
_they_ had received _my_ message in time I did not know--anyway I could
not find it, so, that night, I stayed at Boulogne, and the following
evening proceeded to G.H.Q. to receive instructions.

Here I collected my apparatus and stood by for instructions. News of our
continued pressure on the German line of retreat was penetrating
through. First one village, then another fell into our hands. The fall
of Peronne was imminent. My instructions were to proceed to Peronne, or
rather the nearest point that it was possible to operate from.

I journeyed that night as far as Amiens, and arriving there about
midnight, dog tired, went to my previous billet in the Rue l'Amiral
Cambet, and turned in. Early next morning I reported to a major of the
Intelligence Department, who told me our troops had entered Peronne the
previous night. Rather disappointed that I had not been there to obtain
the entry, I made tracks for that town.

I took by-roads, thinking that they would be more negotiable than the
main ones, and, reaching the outskirts of the village of Biaches, I left
the car there and prepared to walk into Peronne. I could see in the
distance that the place was still burning; columns of smoke were pouring
upwards and splashing the sky with patches of villainous-looking black
clouds.

Strapping my camera upon my back, and bidding my man follow with my
tripod, I started off down the hill into Biaches. Then the signs of the
German retreat began to fully reveal themselves. The ground was
absolutely littered with the horrible wastage of war; roads were torn
open, leaving great yawning gaps that looked for all the world like
huge jagged wounds. On my right lay the Chateau of La Maisonnette. The
ground there was a shambles, for numerous bodies in various stages of
putrefaction lay about as they had fallen.

I left this section of blood-soaked earth, and, turning to my left,
entered the village, or rather the site of what had once been Biaches. I
will not attempt to describe it; my pen is not equal to the task of
conveying even the merest idea of the state of the place. It was as if a
human skeleton had been torn asunder, bone by bone, and then flung in
all directions. Then, look around and say--this was once a man. You
could say the same thing of Biaches--this was once a village. I stayed
awhile and filmed various scenes, including the huge engineers' dump
left by