As on the day before, in getting clear away from the enemy, the Company had to pass a large stretch of ground which was being literally peppered with shrapnel.  The noise was louder than it had seemed on the previous day.  Thunder seemed muffled beside it.  Moreover, thunder rolled—­seemed to spread itself into space—­but not so with bursting shells.  The clap of sound caused by one is more confined, more localised, more intense.  The earth seems to quiver under it.  It suggests splitting, a terrible splitting.  Only the nerves of the young and healthy can stand it.  It would not be so bad if one could see the thing whistling through the air, or even when it bursts; but one cannot.  After the crash a man may scream or moan, totter and fall, but for all one can see he might have been struck down by the wrath of God.

The road safely reached, the retreat was continued, but under very trying circumstances for the Company.  The Brigadier in charge of the rear-guard action, not having sufficient cavalry at his disposal, ordered the Company to take up the role of flank-guard to the retreating column.  The Company, extended over a long front, had to move across rough country, intersected with all sorts of obstacles, at the same rate as the infantry on the road, “which,” as Euclid says, “is impossible.”  In war, however, the logically “impossible” is not impossible really, only very fatiguing.

Things grew from bad to worse.  The men could no longer keep their places in the ranks.  If one had seen them and not known the spirit of the British Army, one would have thought that they were a dispirited, defeated rabble.  Yet, in their own minds, the Officers and men had no doubts about what was going to happen:  they were going to fight even though they might not sleep; and their determination was shaken not one whit.

There was a very welcome halt for an hour in the town, for the men to fill their water-bottles and rest.

The men’s feet were beginning to suffer terribly, for the road along which they were marching had been cobbled—­cobbles, not as we know them in England, but rounded on the surface—­cobbles that turned one’s ankles, cobbles that the nails of one’s boots slipped on, that were metallic, that “gave” not the fraction of a millimetre.  The hob-nails in the Subaltern’s boots began to press through the soles.  To put his feet to the ground was an agony, and they swelled with the pain and heat.  The bones of them ached with bearing his weight.  They longed for air, to be dangling in some cool, babbling stream.  The mental strain of the morning’s action was as nothing compared to the physical pain of the afternoon.  The Colonel, seeing his plight, offered to lend him his horse, but he thanked him and declined, as there is a sort of grim pride in “sticking it.”  The men, too, took an unreasonable objection to seeing their Officers avail themselves of these lifts.  Then the heavens were kind, and it rained; they turned faces to the clouds and let the drops fall on their features, unshaven, glazed with the sun, and clammy with sweat.  They took off their hats and extended the palms of their hands.  It was refreshing, invigorating, a tonic.