The men themselves took it differently. ‘That shut-eye done me good,’ said one. ‘If I’d a decent wash now I’d be as good as ever.’
‘Glad we’re goin’ to ’old ’em up here,’ said another. ‘This retreatin’ game don’t suit me none. I’d sooner stop an’ fight it out.’
‘Dunno wot the blank we retreated for at all,’ grumbled a third. ‘They couldn’t ’ave pushed us out o’ that last position in a month.’
‘They do say the Frenchies on the right broke,’ said a corporal, the man with the smattering of French, ‘an’ we had to fall back ’cause they’d left our flank open. Fancy it must ha’ been something o’ that sort too.’
They were hastily buckling on their kits when Papa came in to them. ‘Cheer up, Daddy,’ they told him. ‘We’re not letting ’em come any further. But there’s goin’ to be a scrap here an’ you’d better keep your tuppenny tucked well in or you may get hurt by a stray lump o’ lead.’
‘Noos restey ici—compronney?’ said the corporal, and Papa nodded his understanding. ‘Mais not posseebl’ for to make victoire,’ he demurred. ‘Anglais ver’ few; Allemands plenty, ver’ plenty.’
‘Don’t you believe it, Daddy,’ said the corporal heartily. ‘Beaucoo Anglaise to stop—haltey les Allemong. You’ll see,’ and he got his men together and hurried off.
Papa had to admire the smart and business-like fashion in which the town was set in a state of defence, the houses commanding the roads loopholed, the street entrances blocked with barricades of transport wagons, the men distributed to the various vantage-points. But he had little or no hope of the result, because he saw how few the men were, how they had to be split up into small companies to cover all the many points which might be attacked. It was true that the defenders held the advantage of cover in the houses, but that would avail little against artillery; and the enemy had the advantage of being able to choose their point of attack and mass on it against the weakness of the distributed defence. Papa gave the defence half an hour at most to hold out after the real attack developed. As it happened, he was perfectly right in his surmise that a mere section of the defence would have to bear the full brunt of the attack, although he was quite wrong as to how long they could withstand it.
The attack came soon after the early darkness had fallen.
At first there was a quick rumour running round that a mistake had been made, that it was a French column that was approaching. It may have been this that deceived the defenders into allowing the enemy to come almost to hand-grips before the fighting began, and anyhow it is certain that the first sounds of conflict that Papa heard were not, as he had expected, a long-drawn rapid rifle fire, but one single and then a few scattered shots, shoutings, and the clash of steel on steel. For the moment it looked as if the first rush was to swamp the defence and break through it, since a seething mass of men fighting fiercely with butt and bayonet eddied slowly back and actually into the street of the town. Rifles began to blaze and bang from some of the upper windows, and then with a wild cheer a rush of khaki swept out from a side street and plunged into the fight. The fresh weight told, and although the defence was still outnumbered by two to one it was the stronger at close-quarter work, and the attack was driven slowly back and back until at last it broke and ran, leaving the street and the road about the outside of the town heaped with dead and wounded.