Captain Picton-Warlow came up and whispered the order to retire. We had lain for many hours in front of our trench with bayonets fixed, expecting an attack at any moment, finding alarm in every shadow and fear in the rustling of night breezes.
There was safety for a time on the main road, and relief in the companionable formation of fours from the isolation and responsibility of trenches.
During the few moments' halt before marching down the road we heard how C Company had suffered heavy casualties. Major Simpson—reported mortally wounded. Lieut. Richmond—killed.
A few hundred yards down the road a machine-gun flashed red in the darkness; just before reaching it we turned down a side road to the right and joined on to the rest of the battalion. Here, by the roadside, close up against a grassy bank, a number of men were resting, some huddled up, others lying quite still. Almost at once the battalion moved on again, leaving the kilted figures by the roadside.
Less than an hour after leaving the main road we halted on a steep hillside meadow. The order was given to lie down, and for the two or three hours of the remaining night the companies slept on the field in column of fours.
The sloping hillside where we had spent the night breaks at its crest and drops steeply down to the village of Nouvelle, and the rich pasture-land with tall poplar-trees in ordered array. Beyond the ground rises suddenly, with patches of cultivation sloping up to the skyline in gentle undulations. Twenty yards below the crest of the hill, three hundred yards from a small plantation, two field-guns lay abandoned in the open. D Company, posted two hundred yards from the village, were scraping into some sort of cover by the roadside, when a well-timed shell burst right between the two guns, followed by half a dozen more along the ridge of the hill. The enemy was ranging the village, and soon two shells burst among the poplar-trees close to our "trenches," now six inches deep into the hard chalk rock.
We left the village just in time. Marching through the empty street between the shuttered houses I caught a glimpse of the two abandoned field-guns, and of a team of horses galloping along the ridge under the blazing shells. The guns were saved, but I never heard if the two gallant riders obtained recognition of their gallant deed.
For several miles our road ran alongside the railway and through open country. Pleasant in the cool morning air, and peaceful until about 9 A.M., when the enemy began to shell the road from the wooded hills on our right flank. The battalion then crossed the railway, and two companies entrenched across a wide stretch of open pasture, facing the direction in which we had been marching, protected from the right to some extent by the railway embankment.
The enemy occupied a position among slag-heaps and factory chimneys about 4000 yards to our front, and as our own guns were only 200 yards behind, the noise of the artillery duel was prodigious. On this occasion the heavy guns from Maubeuge did very useful work. The big shells could actually be seen sailing along like monster torpedoes, and at each explosion among the slag-heaps an enormous cloud of dust rose into the air.
Our trenches possessed few of the desiderata carefully laid down in the Field Service pocket-book. The parapet was far from bullet-proof, the bright yellow clay against the green must have been visible for more than a mile, and the average depth of the trench was certainly not more than a foot. Shells were bursting here and there, sometimes far in front, now far behind, along the railway line and only occasionally over the trench, for the Huns had not yet succeeded in locating our battery. Probably they were somewhat disturbed by the "Jack Johnsons" from Maubeuge. At eleven o'clock our guns retired and we followed suit, each platoon retiring independently. While No. 13 re-formed along a high wall surrounding the woods and garden of a small chateau about a quarter of a mile behind the trench, we had a narrow escape from disaster, as a shell landed just beyond the wall, killing two men and some horses.