“I am going back to get in touch with the Munster Fusiliers,” I said.
“You can’t make the journey,” he panted. “You’d have to go to heaven—or to hell. They caught them in a pocket. Shrapnel and machine-guns. There are no Munster Fusiliers any more.”
He was right, practically. The Germans had caught them between fires and the regiment was cut to pieces.
Helping the officer as best I could, I hurried forward to catch up with my own regiment. When I got in touch with it I left the Fusilier officer with the commander of the first company I met. Then I hurried to the Company commander.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I am here, to report, sir,” I said. “There is no use trying to get in touch with the Fusiliers. They have been cut off.”
“Your orders were to go back until you got in touch with them,” he said gruffly. “Consider yourself under arrest.”
A non-commissioned officer and two men, with fixed bayonets, were put on guard over me. I had disobeyed orders, technically, and during those first days in France many a stern act was necessary, for the army had to learn the discipline of war.
I would have been tied to a spare wheel at the back of an artillery caisson, but as they were leading me away I asked to speak to my sergeant. I explained to him what had happened and he told my company commander, who found the officer of the Fusiliers. The latter, meanwhile, had been taken care of by our officers and was now in condition to talk. He spoke to the colonel (Col. Grant Duff), explaining just what had happened and telling him that he had directed me to return to my regiment. I was liberated, but it was a mighty close escape from disgrace, which, after all, is worse than death, especially to a soldier.
After that I was sent out to scout on the left flank with my partner, Troolen, who was of a daredevil disposition and worked in a noisy fashion, and so when I saw something moving in the brushwood on a ridge we were approaching, and heard a sound like the trample of horses on the other side, I cautioned him to remain where he was while I explored it. Troolen swore he could hear nothing and was for muddling ahead and running into anything that might be there, but I was in command and I ordered him to wait. Sneaking from stone to stone and from tree to tree, I worked myself to a little pocket which seemed scalloped out of the crest of the ridge and found the ground there all freshly trampled, with other signs that horses had left it recently. There were no wheel marks, so I knew that it was cavalry, not artillery. From the marks of the iron shoes I could tell that they were of a different type from ours.