June 16th.
Forty-eight hours after the relieving battalions went in they in turn were relieved. For two days and two nights they had been subjected to a terrific hammering, and few of either officers or men had had a moment's sleep. When the respite came, many of them on the way back sank down in the mud of what three days before had been No Man's Land and slept peacefully, utterly worn out. Several told me that, when they awoke, it was to find an equally exhausted slumbering Boche a few paces away. These stragglers continue to come in, some of them, wholly unwounded, having been for days wandering about, virtually without food, and drinking only such water as they find in the rain-drenched ditches.
A leading article in the Times, which has just come in, truly says:--
"It was undoubtedly the hardest action fought on Belgian soil since the Second Battle of Ypres, more than a year ago."
As for our men, a day has made a wonderful difference to those who have emerged unscathed from the shock of battle. Not soon shall I forget the spectacle which greeted me an hour ago when one Scottish Canadian battalion passed me in the road on the way to neighbouring rest billets. A stalwart band of pipers marched behind a sleek regimental goat, who ever and anon shook his horns in conscious pride. The pipers droned "Bonnie Dundee," and on came the long column of troopers, still unkempt and unshorn and in strangely fitting headgear--for scarce a man had kept the bonnet he had gone out in--but each with a dogged, invincible air that those forty-eight hours' hell in the trenches had failed to subdue. There was a terrible thinning of the ranks, and there were some chargers without riders. I followed them to their new camp. One other battalion had already arrived, and some of the officers, taking advantage of the sudden spell of sunshine, were already playing tennis. It was a strange scene. Our aeroplanes had come out to reconnoitre, and numerous puffs of smoke high overhead showed that they were the target for the German anti-aircraft guns. Other guns boomed forth in the distance, but otherwise amidst these green and peaceful surroundings there was little enough to suggest the tragedy of war.
"Thirty--love!" called out Colonel Rattray, of the 10th Battalion, lowering his racquet at the end of a fine rally. You would never imagine that this clean-cut, debonair figure had just emerged from the jaws of death and the mouth of hell.
The kilted Canadians were in sight of their billets when a slim young officer, pushing a bicycle, stepped off the road with his companion to allow them, their triumphant goat and their pipers, to pass. Not a man of these battle-scarred heroes recognised him. I am sure they would have raised a cheer if they had known.
For this slender young officer, his breast covered with many-hued bits of ribbon, was His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, a captain in the Guards.
VII.
June 23rd.