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Transport and stores, for extricating which credit was due to Abraham and Murray, alone came out complete. Effects of the German offensive. The Battalion amalgamated with the Bucks. Entrainment for the Merville area. A dramatic journey. The enemy break-through on the Lys. The Battalion marches into action. The defence of Robecq. Operations of April 12, 13, 14. The fight for Baquerolle Farm.
After the inspection we sent a large party, six officers and 230 N.C.O.'s and men, to Sailly Labourse, to carry gas cylinders and other material to trenches, but except for this we were spared all fatigues during our period of rest. A week later we marched through Béthune and Robecq to Calonne sur la Lys, a little village outside Merville, where we remained another week before going to the line.
For the rest of April and during May the Battalion continued to do tours in the Robecq sector, which, owing to its proximity to Givenchy and Béthune, was never quiet so long as the enemy was planning to attack those places.
Palissot produced his comedy to please the devout at the expense of the philosophers . Madame de Robecq, daughter of Rousseau's marshal of Luxembourg, instigated and protected him, for Diderot had offended her. Morellet replied in a piece in which the keen vision of feminine spite detected a reference to Madame de Robecq.
From Robecq, which was steadily being shelled to ruins and through which one passed with reluctance, a disinterested salvage party, consisting of Stanley and the officers of B Company, brought a piano, which was destined to be an historic instrument. On more than one occasion the Battalion returned from its spell in the front line to the St.
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.
My company was furthest south and almost in Robecq itself; my headquarters were in a comfortable house with an artesian well bubbling up in its front garden.
The predictions of the French billet-keepers were realised at the end of October, when the 2/4th Oxfords were relieved in the trenches by a battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and prepared to march southwards to the Somme. Departure from Laventie. At Robecq. The march southwards. Rest at Neuvillette. Contay Wood. Albert. New trenches. Battle conditions. Relieving the front line. Desire Trench.
I remember a little family in Robecq whom I packed into my car when shells began to fall among the houses. A pretty girl, with a little invalid brother in her arms, and a mother by her side, pointed the way to a cottage in a wood some miles away. She was gay and smiling when she said, "Au revoir et merci!" A few days later the cottage and the wood were behind the German lines.
The appearance of the Battalion, which could easily have passed for a Brigade of Infantry as it issued, about 10 a.m., from among the trees of Les Amusoires, may have been a moral factor in itself sufficient to indispose the German outposts to remain longer upon the outskirts of Robecq.
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