remember now the darkness of villages behind the
lines through which our cars crawled, until we reached the edge of the
battlefields and saw the sky rent by incessant flames of gun-fire, while
red tongues of flames leaped up from burning villages. Longueval was
on fire, and the two Bazentins, and another belt of land in France, so
beautiful to see, even as I had seen it first between the sand-bags of
our parapets, was being delivered to the charcoal-burners.

I have described that night scene elsewhere, in all its deviltry, but
one picture which I passed on the way to the battlefield could not then
be told. Yet it was significant of the mentality of our High Command, as
was afterward pointed out derisively by Sixte von Arnim. It proved the
strange unreasoning optimism which still lingered in the breasts of
old-fashioned generals in spite of what had happened on the left on the
first day of July, and their study of trench maps, and their knowledge
of German machine-guns. By an old mill-house called the Moulin Vivier,
outside the village of Meaulte, were masses of cavalry--Indian cavalry
and Dragoons--drawn up densely to leave a narrow passageway for
field-guns and horse-transport moving through the village, which was
in utter darkness. The Indians sat like statues on their horses,
motionless, dead silent. Now and again there was a jangle of bits. Here
and there a British soldier lit a cigarette and for a second the little
flame of his match revealed a bronzed face or glinted on steel helmets.

Cavalry!... So even now there was a serious purpose behind the joke of
English soldiers who had gone forward on the first day, shouting, "This
way to the gap!" and in the conversation of some of those who actually
did ride through Bazentin that day.

A troop or two made their way over the cratered ground and skirted
Delville Wood; the Dragoon Guards charged a machine-gun in a cornfield,
and killed the gunners. Germans rounded up by them clung to their
stirrup leathers crying: "Pity! Pity!" The Indians lowered their lances,
but took prisoners to show their chivalry. But it was nothing more than
a beau geste. It was as futile and absurd as Don Quixote's charge of the
windmill. They were brought to a dead halt by the nature of the ground
and machine-gun fire which killed their horses, and lay out that night
with German shells searching for their bodies.

One of the most disappointed men in the army was on General Haldane's
staff.