We lounged about the place until a cavalry brigade came through.  The General commandeered me to find his transport.  This I did, and on the way back waited for the brigade to pass.  Then for the first time I saw that many riderless horses were being led, that some of the horses and many of the men were wounded, and that one regiment of lancers was pathetically small.  It was the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, that had charged the enemy’s guns, to find them protected by barbed wire.

Sick at heart I rode back into Villers-Pol, and found the Signal Company hastily harnessing up.  Headquarters had been compelled to go farther back still—­to St Waast, and there was nobody, so far as we knew, between us and the Germans.  The order caught George with his gear down.  We made a marvellously rapid repair, then went off at the trot.  A mile out, and I was sent back to pick up our quartermaster and three others who were supposed to have been left behind.  It was now quite dark.  In the village I could not find our men, but discovered a field ambulance that did not know what to do.  Their horses were dead tired, but I advised them strongly to get on.  They took my advice, and I heard at Serches that they left Villers-Pol as the Germans[7] entered it.  They were pursued, but somehow got away in the darkness.

I went on, and at some cross-roads in a black forest came across a regiment of hussars.  I told them where their B.H.Q. was, and their Colonel muttered resignedly,

“It’s a long way, but we shall never get our wounded horses there to-morrow.”  I put two more companies right, then came across a little body of men who were vainly trying to get a horse attached to a S.A.A. limber out of the ditch.  It was a pitch-black night, and they were bravely endeavouring to do it without catching a glimpse of the horse.  I gave them the benefit of my lamp until they had got the brute out.  Two more bodies of stragglers I directed, and then pushed on rapidly to St Waast, where I found all the other motor-cyclists safe except Johnson.  Two had come on carts, having been compelled to abandon their motor-cycles.

George had been attached to the 14th.  He had gone with them to the canal, and had been left there with the Cornwalls when the 14th had retired to its second position.  At last nobody remained with him except a section.  They were together in a hut, and outside he could hear the bullets singing.  He noticed some queer-looking explosives in a corner, and asked what they were for.  He was told they were to blow up the bridge over the canal, so decided it was time for him to quit, and did so with some rapidity under a considerable rifle fire.  Then he was sent up to the Manchesters, who were holding a ready-made trench across the main road.  As he rode up he tells me men shouted at him, “Don’t go that way, it’s dangerous,” until he grew quite frightened; but he managed to get to the trench all right, slipped in, and was shown how to crawl along until he reached the colonel.