"Had many casualties?" I asked again.

"No! only a few from snipers. We weren't in the counter-attack."

They swung round and passed over the railway bridge, making west. On
the bridge stood a keen-eyed, small-featured sapper major. I talked to
him.

"No!" he informed me, "there's no intention of making a stand here.
We've blown up all the canal bridges except one." A muffled boom! "Ah,
there goes the last one. All our infantry are over by now."

A few German 4.2's were coming over now, mostly on the western side of
the railway cutting. They helped to put a bit of ginger into the
withdrawal of the guns. A section of each battery had now pulled out;
the teams "walked out," crossing the bridge and heading down the road.
There was no trotting. The batteries went out heads high.

7 A.M.: On the telephone I learned that the last two sections were
waiting the arrival of mounted orderlies to tell them to pull out.
Right! I disconnected the wires, told the signallers to report to B
Battery where I would pick them up, and not to waste time getting
there. Then I sought a copse on the other side of the bridge, where I
knew my horses would be waiting.

The sentry and the sappers who waited to blow up the bridge remained at
their posts silent and still. Forty yards after passing them I was
alone. I stopped in the road and turned to look back. The sun was
breaking through the mist, but it was a mournful landscape--dull,
soulless. All at once I felt chilled and tired, and for the first time
my thoughts turned seriously and intently towards what the
newly-arrived day had in store for myself, for the Brigade, for
England.

From the other side of the canal the "putt-puttr-putt" of machine-guns!
I turned westwards and went in search of my horses.

V. A GUNNER'S V.C.

Not even on this twenty-second of March did we realise fully the vast
conception and the extent of the German swoop, and that our Brigade was
as jetsam and as flotsam carried along on the mightiest part of the
storm flood.

7.30 A.M.: The last sections of our batteries to pull out from behind
the railway embankment passed me on the road, the horses walking
grandly, the men tired but in high enough spirits. The enemy long-range
guns were waking up now and playing a damnable tattoo on the main
routes leading west. I saw one limber-waggon belonging to the Engineers
blown sky-high, and three maimed horses had to be shot.

At the cross-roads east of the wood