Keep moving! ... Horse after horse in the slowly trekking columns of batteries or supply transport dropped down and fouled the wheels. Unhook or cut the traces; push the poor beast out of the road. An old pal, was he? Aye, he was a fine "wheeler," that dark bay! Remember the first time we had him in at practice camp? Nothing matters now but keeping on the move. Yes, better shoot him. He deserves a clean end.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of men got cut adrift from their regiments that day, adrift and hopelessly lost in a strange country. No house, no village was safe as sanctuary, for the tide of invasion lapped at the threshold and would presently overwhelm it. One trivial incident I heard of seems worthy of record as an instance of "individuality" in the training of the British soldier.
A man—-we will call him Headlam—got adrift by himself from the 3rd Division out on the left flank. After many hours' wandering, he came to a little farmhouse on the road. Here the good woman took him in, fed him, and gave him a shakedown. There were also there a couple of French stragglers.
A few hours later the little son of the farm came running in with the news that a patrol of the dreaded Uhlans was coming down the road. That meant murder for everyone. There was no time to hide, and the French were at their wits' end.
Headlam's first thought was for cover. Out in the yard there was a big rain-tub. Calling the two French soldiers to help, they rolled it out longways on into the road, and one of them, with Headlam, got behind with their rifles. The moment the patrol appeared, Headlam gave the Uhlans an excellent example of rapid fire, and three saddles were empty before they realised where the attack came from. Then they charged. French and British, side by side, ground away with their rifles, and when the Uhlans reached the little fortress there were only three left out of the patrol of nine. The second Frenchman, by the side of the road, accounted for another, and, with three to two, the Uhlans surrendered.
So our three musketeers found themselves with five excellent horses and a couple of prisoners; and I leave you to picture the triumphal procession which passed through the villages on the southward journey. The order of march was: Jacques and a led horse, Pierre and a led horse, two disconsolate Uhlans on foot (and hating it), and Headlam (with female escort), as G.O.C., bringing up the rear....
Keep moving! ... But oh, the inexpressible weariness of it! No torture is more refined than that of preventing a worn-out human being from sleeping; and here it was experienced to the full. The picture of the Force that night might well have created for Dante the vision of one more circle of Hell.
Hunger was long since forgotten, but a red-hot thirst remained. One could appreciate as never before how Dives thirsted when he asked for Lazarus to touch his lips with a moistened finger. On, ever on, for hour after eternal hour, riding or trudging through the inky darkness, never a halt.... Keep moving!
How the troops did it I cannot tell. It was not the triumph of will over the exhausted body, for the sense of volition had fled, and men were mere automata in their movements. The legs jerked forwards as those of a clockwork toy. Had the men halted they could never have got moving again; the clockwork would have run down.
In the saddle it was little better. Every muscle of the body ached with an intolerable dull throbbing; a deadly coma crept through the brain and dragged at the eyelids. Nerveless fingers clutched at the pommel of the saddle, and were pulled away by the drag of the heavy arms.