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The guides of the right and left, or leading and rear, platoons, are the right and left, or leading and rear, guides, respectively, of the company when it is in line or in column of squads. Other guides are in the line of file closers. In platoon movements the post of the platoon guide is at the head of the platoon, if the platoon is in column, and on the guiding flank if in line.
Next day the sodden men found themselves in dripping tents, just pitched, a stage nearer the line at Dambre Farm, in the low country west of Ypres. On the 5th the battlefield was reached. All through the afternoon at five minutes' interval the platoons moved up. Heavy shells followed them all the way. At dusk the relief of the 188th Brigade in the reserve lines south of St. Julien was completed.
We were in column of platoons with section intervals. The advance was made by echelon, the 2nd Battalion in front, the 3rd a little in rear, and a company in front deployed as skirmishers. "At one hundred and fifty paces from the Austrians, wavering was evident in their lines; the first ranks threw themselves back on those in rear. At that instant the general ordered again, 'Come! Packs off.
Two weeks later the second and third platoons came through the same march even faster, although it was forty degrees below zero on three days, for it was told at Archangel that the other half of "M" Company was in imminent danger of extermination. The last instructions for the march, given in the old Smolny barracks, are typical of march orders to American soldiers: "We march tomorrow on Pinega.
We struggled out to the open air and the bright sunshine, and for the space of thirty minutes received ragged Arabs by couples, dozens and platoons, and paid them bucksheesh for services they swore and proved by each other that they had rendered, but which we had not been aware of before and as each party was paid, they dropped into the rear of the procession and in due time arrived again with a newly-invented delinquent list for liquidation.
"Now, Davies, just keep them so," he ordered, as he rode diagonally over in front of the first platoon, "while I gallop ahead and get a peep over that ridge." Another minute and, curveting with impatience even after their twenty-mile spurt, the handsome bays were dancing in one long line over the springy turf, Davies and two stalwart sergeants in front of the three platoons.
But you have bought those cambrics by the piece, and also pinas, thin, gossamer fabrics, of all degrees of color and beauty, sometimes with pattern flounces, do you hear? And you have bought Spanish table-cloths with red or blue edges, with bull-fights on them, and balloon-ascensions, and platoons of soldiery in review, and with bull-fighting and ballooning napkins to match.
About the end of the month, however, a serious misfortune befell A Company, one of whose platoons was half destroyed by a 4.2-inch, which struck the Brickfields, a dangerous and conspicuous supporting point. The men had just returned from bathing in the village, when the shell fell among them, killing five and wounding nine. At the same spot also Lance-Corpl.
"You did exactly the right thing, Lieutenant Ripley," added the captain. "I waited until you had led them at least half a mile, and then I ordered my two platoons to advance. They charged into the remainder of the company in the road. The enemy were tangled up with the loose horses; and when the officers had all fallen, the force out of the forest surrendered."
Obviously a planned community, it was dominated by a gray-walled, green-roofed railroad station which stood on its passenger-platform like a captain in front of four platoons of gray-walled, green-roofed houses and stores aligned along as many converging roads.
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