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Both flanks being now uncertain, the Battalion was withdrawn towards Merville, under very heavy machine-gun fire. A stand was made on the outskirts of the town, but before night the fighting was taking place in the streets of the town. The next day the retirement continued towards the Forêt de Nieppe, and a line was taken up near Le Sart.
On the 12th they got into Merris and Merville and advanced to the La Bassée canal, threatening to cross it and outflank Béthune on the north-west. Here, however, they were held up in front of Robecq, between the canal and the forest of Nieppe, and turned to exploit their advantage farther north.
Having got my 100 francs all right I made the best of my short time on earth by walking about and having a good look at the town. A squalid, uninteresting place, Nieppe; a dirty red-brick town with a good sprinkling of factory chimneys and orange peel; rather the same tone as one of the Potteries towns in England.
They desired a bath as the hart panteth for the water brooks, and baths were but a mirage of the brain to men in Flanders fields and beyond the Somme, until here and there, as at Nieppe, officers with human sympathy organized a system by which battalions of men could wash their bodies.
Quite a cheery, interesting march we had, too, along the road from Armentières to Neuve Eglise. We were told that we were to march past General Sir Horace Smith Dorrien, whom we should find waiting for us near the Pont de Nieppe a place we had to pass en route. Every one braced up at this, and keenly looked forward to reaching Nieppe.
At the end of a peaceful day we reached our little French home town, glad to have seen our friends in their new area by the famous old city of the Flemish weavers. Springtime had come in truth; the hedges of Northern France were beginning to bloom white, and the wild flowers were quite thick in the forest of Nieppe near Merville.
However, as I neared the outskirts of Nieppe, and saw the flood of interlacing traffic, I decided to leave well alone to tie this quadruped of mine up at some outlying hostelry and walk the short remaining distance into the town where the cashier had his office. I found a suitable place and, letting myself down to the ground, strode off with a stiff bandy-legged action to the office.
That was all; but I knew it was the voice of the guns, and in that moment I realized that here was the war, and that I was in it. I ploughed along for about four miles down uninteresting mud canals known on maps as roads until, finally, I entered Nieppe. The battalion, I heard from a passing soldier, was having its last day in billets prior to going into the trenches again.
In front of Nieppe Forest there were now a hopeless crowding of the pieces, moves aimlessly made from square to square, and the reckless calling of 'check, which to a good opponent means time and renewed chances to escape defeat.
After we had finished our first tour in the Nieppe Forest sector, both the Berks and Gloucester were sent forward against the enemy, who was rightly suspected by the staff to be on the point of retreating from the Lys salient. The attack had to cross the Plate Becque, whose eastern bank the enemy was fighting hard to hold.
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