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Updated: June 1, 2025
What happened I do not quite know. All I remember was that at a given order a battery would gallop off the road into action against an enemy we could not see. So to Bavai, where I was sent off with an important despatch for D.H.Q. I had to ride past the column, and scarcely had I gone half a mile when my back tyre burst. There was no time to repair it, so on I bumped, slipping all over the road.
To such conclusions had he come at the end of his life. The white horse meanwhile slouched; Bavai grew somewhat nearer as we sat in silence after his last sentence. He was turning many things over in his mind. He veered off on to political economy.
By nightfall the British contingent, including now the 19th Brigade of infantry, lay in the positions from Maubeuge westward, with the 1st Corps next to Maubeuge, the 2nd Corps beyond Bavai, the 1st being commanded by Sir Douglas Haig, the 2nd by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien; while the Germans lay more or less as the dotted shaded markings are.
By the night of that Monday, the 24th of August, however, the whole of the British Army was again in line, and stretched from Maubeuge, which protected its right, through Bavai, on to the fields between the villages of Jenlain and Bry, where the fresh 19th Infantry Brigade had newly arrived before the evening, while beyond this extreme left again was the cavalry.
At D.H.Q., which of course was on the road, I borrowed some one else's bicycle and rode back by another road. On the way I came across Huggie filling up from an abandoned motor-lorry. I did likewise, and then tore into Bavai. A shell or two was bursting over the town, and I was nearly slaughtered by some infantrymen, who thought they were firing at an aeroplane.
The Duke, and he was very poor. Anyhow, I can write about him freely, for he is not rich, and, what is more, the laws of his country permit the telling of the truth about our fellow-men, even when they are rich. Mr. The Duke was of some years, and his colour was that of cedar wood. I met him in his farmyard, and I said to him: "Is it you, sir, that drive travellers to Bavai?" "No," said he.
Dodging their bullets, I left the town, and eventually caught up the H.Q. of the rear-guard. It was now about 10.30. Until five the troops tramped on, in a scorching sun, on roads covered with clouds of dust. And most pitiful of all, between the rear-guard and the main body shuffled the wounded; for we had been forced to evacuate our hospital at Bavai. Our men were mad at retreating.
Go out north-westward from Vermand and walk perhaps five miles, or seven: there is no trace of a road, only the rare country lanes winding in and out, and the open plough of the rolling land. And so it is throughout the province and its neighbourhood. Here and there, as at Bavai, a great capital has decayed.
On the 7th Bavai was captured, and Condé during the following night; on the 8th our troops were twelve miles east of Landrecies in Avesnes and on the outskirts of Maubeuge, which fell on the 9th. On that day also Tournai was occupied, and the Second Army crossing the Scheldt on a wide fronting reached Renaix.
That evening Huggie and I rode back to Bavai and beyond in search of an errant ammunition column. Eventually we found it and brought news of it back to H.Q. I shall never forget the captain reading my despatch by the light of my lamp, the waggons guarded by Dorsets with fixed bayonets appearing to disappear shadowy in the darkness.
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