November 8^ igr, 
LAND & WATER 
15 
The General led him gently to the side of the road, and made 
him sit down. He sat there, and a man of the 2nd Welsh 
handed him a ''woodbine." He took it and put it uncertainly 
between Ms hps. Then he struck a match. He tried to apply 
it to the cigarette, but the match danced in his hand like a 
wiU-o'-the-wisp, and went out. He struck another, but the 
distance between the match and the cigarette was insur- 
mountable, and he dropped it. 
" Shell shock. I've seen cases like it before " said the 
General laconically. " C Company of the Gordon- had a devil 
of a time on Thiusday, and he's one of the relics of it." And 
with a word to the A. P.M. to get the stricken man to the 
chateau in the wood he turned to liis brigade-major. The 
captain looked after the man, following his quivering move- 
ments with a strange fascination. He had seen his gunners 
blown to pieces by his side, and the horses of his teams fright-, 
fully mangled, but to this day the remembrance of that con- 
vulsive figure remains with him as a symbol of the hell in which 
the infantry fought and died. 
" He wass blown up " said a survivor of the ist Welsh 
Fusiliers, whose, face was pitted with the blue marks that 
betray the collier. " By a coal box. My butty wass buried 
by one, and all his section. I wass dig him out, but he 
wass dead. .\nd his face wass'swell up Hke the fire-damp. 
There's swelled up it wass ! " 
" Aye," said a man of the ist Queen's, as though dismissing 
a platitude. " I tell you what, mate, this isn't war." 
" Ho ! I don't think " said his neighbour. " What is 
it, then ? We've been outflanked and enfiladed on both sides ; 
outflanked we have. All our officers is gone, and there aren't 
seventy of us have got back. If that ain't war, what is it?" 
" It's b murder," said the other. 
No one seemed inclined to dispute this proposition. The 
little group was not talkative. Tlie nervous jocularity which 
precedes action, the almost sub-conscious profanity which 
carries men through it, the riotous gaiety which follows after 
it — all these were ajjsent. They were worn out with want of 
sleep, parched with thirst, stunned with concussion, and their 
speech was thick and slow like that of a drunken man. But 
the Welshman, with the volubihty of his race, talked on, no 
one heeding him. 
'■ But we wass give Fritz hell, boys. They come on like 
a football crowd — a bloke couldn't miss them, even if he wass 
only just oft the square. And they fire from the hip ! But 
Dini' anwyl ! they're eight to one in machine gims, and their 
coal-boxes is something cruel. I heard their chaps singing 
last night— singing splendid,- look you— like the Rhondda 
Male \'oice Choir it was. But we give them a funeral to-day, 
yes, indeed." 
" F^h in " said an N.CO. whom the A. P.M. had impounded. 
" Fr-r-om the left, number ! " They numbered off from one 
to twenty. " Four paces to the right ex-tend ! One to ten 
right half section. Eleven to twenty left half section ! Right 
turn. Sections right wheel^ Quick march ! " And he 
marched them off to a farm in the wood. The captain looked 
after them for a moment. They were going back into the hell 
from which they came, and they knew it. But they betrayed no 
more consciousness of this than if they had been marching back 
into billets. The captain remembered that the Welsh Fusiliers 
had Nee aspera terrenl for their motto and that " Albuera " 
was blazoned on their colours. " It's the same breed " he 
said to himself reflectively. While he waited the Brigade- 
Major returned from the telephone with his instructions 
from Divisional H.Q. He was to withdraw both sections of 
his battery to D without delay. He galloped back, 
foUowed by the trumpeter, and putting his horse at the ditch, 
leaped it and tore up through a clearing. A branch overhead 
whipped his cap oft and just shaved his head as he ducked ; 
he dashed on. He drew rein by the teams and was relieved 
to find there had been no more casualties. 
" We arc going to retire " he said, curtly. " Take the teams 
up at once and hook in." And leaving the orderly to 
bring them up, he rode on to the guns and gave his orders to 
the section commanders. One gun was in action, firing 
shrapnel at short range ; the others were already being dug 
out, in readiness for limbering up. He stepped forward to the 
edge of the wood where it broke away into ploughed land 
and looked over his left shoulder in the direction of the north- 
west. A battalion was coming up in gun " groups," moving 
steadily forward under a hail of shrapnel and thinning as it 
went. It was obvious that they were going to hurl them- 
selves into the breach. It was the last throw of the die and 
the fate of Europe hung upon it. I le did not know at the time 
the name of the unit ; he was to learn afterwards that it was 
the 2nd Worcesters. He left th<' section commander in 
rharge of his guns, and rode back along the lane to the cross 
roads. He found a Field Battery Commander looking down 
tlie road with his glasses,and right in the centre of it an eighteen 
pounder was in position, with the gun-layer on the left of the 
t-'un. the loader behind her, and her nonchalant subaltern 
smoking a cigarette under the enemy's shrapnel. It seemed 
a miracle that he was not hit, and the captain stopped in mild 
astonishment to ask the battery commander what the gun was 
doing there. 
"Doing?" said the latter laconically. "Firing. We've 
got word that the Germans have driven in the W'elsh and are 
coming down that road in mass formation. Well, we're 
ready for them. That's all. What a target, eh? " And putting 
his glasses back in their case, he rubbed his hands as though 
he were having the time of his life. Which he was. 
The captain crossed the road and turned down a lane, and 
in a few minutes had returned to his battery. The guns were 
dug out. the teams brought up to the left of the carriages, 
the rings were slipped on the poles, and the gunners fastened 
the wheel-traces. 
Shells were crashing through the wood, bursting all round 
the battery, but the drivers sat motionless on their horses. 
■■ Walk ! March ! " said the battery commander. 
The drivers eased the reins and closing their legs each to 
his riding horse, they rested their whips across the neck of eacli 
off-horse. There was a " hwit ! hwit ! " overhead and a 
shower of broken leaves and crackling twigs. The rattle of 
musketry was strangely near and there seemed to be voices 
in the wood. There was another crack and No. r leader of 
the team fell like a stone bringing her driver down with her. 
He was up in an instant and stooping over the dead horse 
he unhooked the " quick release " and mounted the off horse. 
The captain looked back over his shoulder as he eased the reins 
of his horse. At that moment he sighted something over the 
top of the hedge, and he rose in his stirrups. He saw at a glance 
a number of spiked helmets and heard the push of bodies 
through the bracken. 
" Gallop !" he shouted. And then the blow fell. Some- 
thing seemed to snap in his head and he felt himself soaring 
up and up into space, as though propelled by some tremen- 
dous force. 
Then the pace gradually slackened, the impenetrable black- 
ness was stabbed with points of light, he saw the face of one 
he loved, and he wondered whether he was in this world 
or the next. Objects suddenly became distinct, trees took 
shape before his eyes, he was conscious of his own body, and 
tried to move. But he seemed to be held in a vice. In his 
agony he dug his heels into the soil, and he saw that his right 
arm was gone. A face was bendina over him. It was the. 
shoeing-smith. 
" Are you alive, sir ? " 
He turned liis head. "Am I alive?" he asked hims„>lf. 
" I — I think so " he gasped. " But my number's up. Leave 
me ! " 
Some one got a stretcher and they took him tlirough the 
undergrowth to the cross-roads. There a doctor injected 
morphia into his arm and they took him to the dressing-station 
at Hooge. He was in the trance of morphia; but could hear 
the doctors, apparently a long way off, saying that he was a bad 
case. At Ypres they put him under chloroform, and he knew 
no more till he woke at Boulogne. 
His case was grave. He had lost a great deal of blood, and 
his woimds were septic. Rest, mental as well as physical, 
was vital ; but he could not rest. The exhortations of the 
doctor were lost upon him : he seemed to have something on 
his mind. He was allowed no newspapers on the ground that 
they might excite him, which was a mistake. A box of cigarettes 
by his bedside he loft untouched. At length he called the 
doctor to him. 
" Look here, doctor, will you do me a favour ? . Well, I 
want you to find out what's become of my battery. Did 
they get the guns away ? I want to know ; I want an 
official answer." 
The doctor promised to do what he could. The Divisional 
H.Q., who had their hands full, were somewhat annoyed 
when they got a telephone message from a Base Hospital, 
asking for information about a battery. But they gave it. 
The doctor retiu-ncd. 
" Your battery's all right. All your guns are in action at 
Z-. ." 
'' Thank you, doctor," said the captain, and they lit his 
first cigarette. 
From that hour he began to mend. Three years have 
passed ; the captain still lives, but he is a cripple for life. 
His fighting days are done ; he will never give the word 
" Action Front ! " again. The battery,;itself is but a memory ; 
near the grave of the sergeant-major lie a subaltern, g\mneVs, 
drivers and the horses wliom they loved so wisely and so well. 
Their graves iiave long ago been pounded into dust by guns 
of whose calibre they never dreamed ; old things are passed 
away and all things have become new ; the very wood in which 
they fell has long since disappearerl from off the face of the 
earth. But these mortals in dying put on immortahty, 
being dead they live; being silent they speak, and leaving 
behind them an imperishable memory they need no memorial. 
