Above Rues Vertes the spiteful fire of the remaining scattered units of the Ten Hundred impressed upon the Hun mind a fear of those riflers that was pregnant enough to force him to rapidly verge away from the spot to a safer distance of a mile or so.
The little village near the Crucifix was withdrawn from at dusk with no molestation. Shelling slackened to a mere initial salvo from Rumilly. The lull followed in which enemy reinforcement were being brought up to be thrown in large forces upon those stubborn British regiments who were clinging tenaciously, with unshaken obstinacy, to shattered trenches.
Lieut. Stone (afterwards M.C.) led a bombing raid under cover of night into Rues Vertes, originating there an uproar that startled every Fritz within a mile into a bad degree of "windy" apprehension. He fired into the air a frenzied array of Verey lights in hope of discovering the extent of the raid. Had the Ten Hundred been less war-worn they would have chuckled delightedly over this successful bluff, but they hardly commented upon it, stared wearily and disinterestedly at the flashes of bursting grenades, turned away and banged arms and hands noisily on thighs to enforce some little circulation into those cold, clammy limbs.
So utterly exhausted were a few of the youngsters that they had fallen into unsettled sleep across their rifles, startled now and again into fearful wakedness by a mind that had for days been awaiting something that would inevitably come.
Men were little more than mechanical figures, but the brain ran rampant and uncontrolled until the wild memories of furious German attacks earlier in the day surged up with acute pregnancy and the victim fell prey to poignant hallucination. The endless rows of grey figures would advance yard by yard ... five hundred range, four hundred, three hundred. God, we can't stop him. The crackle of rifles and machine-guns shrieked higher ... two hundred; one hundred. Breath comes and goes in sobs—in one minute he will be on you. Then he wavers. Now is the time; pump the lead into him ... he turns.
And the lad regaining control of his distorted imagination discovers that his rifle barrel is hot and that he has let fly a dozen rounds into the void ... a shaky hand passes slowly over a sweat-covered brow.
The Higher Command, realising that the holding of Masnières with the small remnants of troops in the sector was impossible, ordered the withdrawal to a support line of the old Hindenburg system, and thus straightening out or at least modifying the British frontage.
What remaining elements of the Ten Hundred still survived were allotted the last task of covering the Brigade's withdrawal. They stood their ground to the final stages of the movement and they only evacuated because ORDERED TO DO SO.
Middlesex, Lancs. Fusiliers, Royal Fusiliers, each Battalion badly cut up, moved away while the Normans held on, pumping lead in whining chorus to convey to the German mind that troops were plentiful and to camouflage the fact that a withdrawal was taking place.
Then they stumbled to their feet, weak from exhaustion, exposure and hunger. The wind moaned in trees in company with their uncertain footsteps, the still forms of brother Normans smiled up to the stars and bade them mute farewell as they came away from that sacred ground, sodden with their blood. The Germans in the morning would find everywhere the honoured dead and would place them in their last resting place in the damp soil for which they had willingly given of their LIVES to hold.