"Yes. 'E can't shoot with 'is rifles."
"No—seems to 'ave all bloomin' machine-guns."
For two hours, they kept him pinned down to one position, wiped out his one brief rush and inspired within him an unholy fear or their rifles. They watched with fierce cunning the movements of fifty or so snipers and "light" machine-gunners creeping upon them under cover of long grasses ... a bloody fire was opened for ten minutes on the figures—the grass stained red. Not one returned.
A Battalion on the Norman right fell back under the weight of enemy forces, thereby exposing a Guernsey flank.... Another retirement and again a wild scramble across fields interlaced by row after row of irrigation canals conveying water in this wide net-like system over a large area from one main source of supply. To avoid the larger excavations men were wont to crowd into the roadways, make in a body for ready gateways and openings. Upon these obvious points Jerry concentrated a continuous stream of machine-gun fire; the casualties here were heaped up hideously in small masses and the blood from one man trickled over another.
Troops from half-a-dozen regiments, scattered confusedly in all directions, moved rearwards side by side. It was almost an impossibility to rejoin Battalions—Battalions!—a mere couple of hundred men and a few officers formed what after two days of fighting constituted a Battalion. But they had to DO the work of a full Battalion—and they DID!
Wounded fell despairingly, gazed with appealing eyes at the lines of ever distancing khaki, placed their rifles to one side and awaited the onrushing enemy tide. Some few with what futile strength could be mustered by superhuman effort tottered and staggered uncertainly in the direction they dimly imagined their comrades had taken. One by one fell prey to exhaustion, dropped with a last frenzied sob unto the earth; some lay still and quiet, peppered by a second stream of lead. Others, writhing in agony, dazed, mad, waited the Jerry approach and picked off man after man until a bayonet thrust put finis to their last impotent struggles.
In secluded corners a few bled slowly undiscovered, unthought of ... there for days they remained until the bodies—lockjaw, gangrene, loss of blood—were rolled together into one great hole or perchance buried apart, and for tombstone the late owner's rifle stuck into the earth and inscribed thereon that only too frequent epitath—an unknown British soldier!
Back, ever back! The disheartening realisation that he CANNOT be stayed for any lengthy period, that his reserves are undiminished and constantly moving up to fill the gaps made in his ranks, cast a heavy shadow of pessimism over the ragged, weary figures for ever moving westward. At lengthy intervals no sign of the grey figures anywhere met the eye, but the inevitable order to retreat was obeyed—grumbling, cursing.
"Wot the 'ell are we goin' back again for? There ain't any sign of Jerry."
"No, but 'e 'as got through too far to the south."