We marched away that day, leaving one battery behind. As it happened, it didn’t go into the line again but rejoined us a week later.
The third phase of the retreat, marching back to the British area—we were far south into the French area at Chevrincourt, which is near Compiègne, and all its signboards showed Paris so many kilometres away—gave us an impression of the backwash of war. The roads were full, not of troops, but of refugees, women, old men, girls and children, with what possessions they could load into a farm wagon piled sky high. They pulled their cattle along by chains or ropes tied round their horns. Some of them pushed perambulators full of packages and carried their babies. Others staggered under bundles. Grief marked their faces. The hope of return kept them going. The French have deeper roots in the soil than we. To them their “patelin” is the world and all the beauty thereof. It was a terrible sight to see those poor women trudging the endless roads, void of a goal as long as they kept away from the pursuing death, half starved, sleeping unwashed in leaky barns, regardless of sex, begging milk from the inhabited villages they passed through to satisfy their unhappy babies, managing somehow to help the aged and infirm who mumbled bitter curses at the “sale Boche” and “soixante-dix.” I heard one woman say “Nous savons c’qu c’est que la guerre! Nous avons tout fait excepté les tranchées.” “We know what war is. We have done everything except the trenches.” Bombarded with gas and long-range guns, bombed by aeroplanes, homeless, half starved, the graves of their dead pillaged by ghoul-like Huns, their sons, husbands, and lovers killed, indeed they knew the meaning of war.
England has been left in merciful ignorance of this side of war, but woe unto her if she ever forgets that these women of France are her blood-sisters, these peasant women who later gave food to the emaciated Tommies who staggered back starving after the armistice, food of which they denied themselves and their children.
On the third day we reached Poix where only three months previously we had spent a merry Christmas and drunk the New Year in, the third day of ceaseless marching and finding billets in the middle of the night in villages crowded with refugees. The whole area was full, British and French elbowing each other, the unfortunate refugees being compelled to move on.
Here we exchanged old guns for new, received reinforcements of men and horses, drew new equipment in place of that which was destroyed and lost, found time to ride over to Bergicourt to pay our respects to the little Abbé, still unshaved, who was now billeting Moroccan troops, and who kissed us on both cheeks before all the world, and in three more days were on our way to their firing line again.
It was here that the runaway servants were dealt with; here, too, that my brother came rolling up in his car to satisfy himself that I was still this side of eternity or capture. And very good it was to see him. He gave us the number of divisions engaged against us, and we marvelled again that any of us were still alive.
We went north this time for the defence of Amiens, having been joined by our fourth battery, and relieved a brigade in action behind the village of Gentelles. The Anzacs were in the line from Villers Brettoneux to Hangard where their flank touched the French. The spire of Amiens cathedral peeped up behind us and all day long-range shells whizzed over our heads into the stricken city.
Some one was dissatisfied with our positions behind the village. The range was considered too long. Accordingly we were ordered to go forward and relieve some other batteries down the slope in front of Gentelles. The weather had broken. It rained ceaselessly. The whole area was a mud patch broken by shell holes. The Major, who had remained behind at Chevrincourt, and I went forward together to locate the forward batteries. Dead horses everywhere, and fresh graves of men marked our path. Never have I seen such joy on any faces as on those of the officers whom we were coming to relieve.
On our return we reported unfavourably, urging strongly that we should remain where we were. The order was inexorable. That night we went in.
We stayed there three days, at the end of which time we were withdrawn behind the village again. Our dead were three officers—one of whom was the Babe—half the gunners, and several drivers. Our wounded were one officer and half the remaining gunners. Of the guns themselves about six in the brigade were knocked out by direct hits.