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Long before midnight this company was almost without ammunition. Two platoons reenforced it at midnight; but the reenforcements had no machine guns, which would have given at least temporary relief. Under the circumstances the only thing for the Territorials to do was to retreat. The Germans made that quite as perilous a venture as the advance had been.
There was no need for the Government to rely on that quibble, for the Territorials volunteered almost in mass for foreign service, and the difficulty was to impress Lord Kitchener with the value of a force with which his absence in the East had made him unfamiliar.
The small party in the motor includes a priest, and as it passes near Betz, at the northern end of the battle-field, they see a burying-party of French Territorials at work. The officer in charge beckons to the priest, and the priest goes to speak to him. "Monsieur l'Abbé, we have just buried here twenty-two French soldiers."
He was no Socialist at all, declared Schneider, he was an English aristocrat, or the next thing to it his wife had two brothers in the British Expeditionary Force, and a nephew already enlisted in the Territorials, and a visiting cousin on the point of setting out for Canada, as the quickest way of getting into the mix-up.
Maubeuge was considered as part of a line beyond which the operative corner would not have to fall before the rest of the square, the "manoeuvring mass," had swung up. Hence it was that the French General Staff and its Chief had put within the ring of its insufficient forts nothing more than a garrison of Territorials that is, of the older classes of the reserve.
Rawlinson's failure before Menin left him facing south-east, while the expulsion of the Belgians and then the French Territorials from the Houthulst forest left Haig and the French contingents facing north-east from Bixschoote to Zonnebeke; the apex of this Ypres salient was at Becelaere.
I'm a sergeant now sergent in French and I get about two francs more a day and wear a gold band on my cap, which makes old territorials think I'm an officer and occasions salutes which are some bother. We made a foolish sortie this morning. Only five of us went, the others remaining in bed thinking the weather was too bad. It was.
So the army was abolished, and the land defence of the country entrusted entirely to the Territorials, the Legion of Frontiersmen, and the Boy Scouts. But first the Territorials dropped out. The strain of being referred to on the music-hall stage as Teddy-boys was too much for them. Then the Frontiersmen were disbanded.
What had the army done for me and what had I done for the army? I don't really know. Perhaps the army knows, I don't. Then what had the army done for me? When I left I was as physically fit as anyone had the right to be, I had a short fuse and was perfectly capable of looking after myself, very different from the lad who joined the Territorials in 1939. What skills had the army given me?
Then they ran off toward the beach. What's the idea manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to " "Yes, sir," the policeman assured him promptly; "I saw them. It's manoeuvres, sir. Territorials." "They didn't look like Territorials," objected the chauffeur. "They looked like Germans." Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal a grin.
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