ers were believed to be, while
the voice of the guns grew louder. They turned out to be those of
another division, which was busy getting ready to cross the river. Then
the dark fell, and while airplanes flew west into the sunset there was
a redder sunset in the east, where the unceasing flashes of gunfire
were pale against the angry glow of burning dumps. The sight of the
bonnet-badge of a Scots Fusilier made me halt, and the man turned out
to belong to my division. Half an hour later I was taking over from the
much-relieved Masterton in the ruins of what had once been a sugar-beet
factory.

There to my surprise I found Lefroy. The Boche had held him prisoner
for precisely eight hours. During that time he had been so interested
in watching the way the enemy handled an attack that he had forgotten
the miseries of his position. He described with blasphemous admiration
the endless wheel by which supplies and reserve troops move up, the
silence, the smoothness, the perfect discipline. Then he had realized
that he was a captive and unwounded, and had gone mad. Being a
heavy-weight boxer of note, he had sent his two guards spinning into a
ditch, dodged the ensuing shots, and found shelter in the lee of a
blazing ammunition dump where his pursuers hesitated to follow. Then he
had spent an anxious hour trying to get through an outpost line, which
he thought was Boche. Only by overhearing an exchange of oaths in the
accents of Dundee did he realize that it was our own ... It was a
comfort to have Lefroy back, for he was both stout-hearted and
resourceful. But I found that I had a division only on paper. It was
about the strength of a brigade, the brigades battalions, and the
battalions companies.

* * * * *

This is not the place to write the story of the week that followed. I
could not write it even if I wanted to, for I don't know it. There was
a plan somewhere, which you will find in the history books, but with me
it was blank chaos. Orders came, but long before they arrived the
situation had changed, and I could no more obey them than fly to the
moon. Often I had lost touch with the divisions on both flanks.
Intelligence arrived erratically out of the void, and for the most part
we worried along without it. I heard we were under the French--first it
was said to be Foch, and then Fayolle, whom I had met in Paris. But the
higher command seemed a million miles away, and we were left to us