I turned and followed him to the ruinous cowshed which was my divisional headquarters.  Wake, as I heard later, had swum the river opposite to Mitchinson’s right, and reached the other shore safely, though the current was whipped with bullets.  But he had scarcely landed before he was badly hit by shrapnel in the groin.  Walking at first with support and then carried on a stretcher, he managed to struggle on to the divisional headquarters, where he gave my message and explained the situation.  He would not let his wound be looked to till his job was done.  Mitchinson told me afterwards that with a face grey from pain he drew for him a sketch of our position and told him exactly how near we were to our end . . .  After that he asked to be sent back to me, and they got him down to Loisy in a crowded ambulance, and then up to us in a returning empty.  The M.O. who looked at his wound saw that the thing was hopeless, and did not expect him to live beyond Loisy.  He was bleeding internally and no surgeon on earth could have saved him.

When he reached us he was almost pulseless, but he recovered for a moment and asked for me.

I found him, with blue lips and a face drained of blood, lying on my camp bed.  His voice was very small and far away.

‘How goes it?’ he asked.

‘Please God, we’ll pull through . . . thanks to you, old man.’

‘Good,’ he said and his eyes shut.

He opened them once again.

’Funny thing life.  A year ago I was preaching peace . . .  I’m still preaching it . . .  I’m not sorry.’

I held his hand till two minutes later he died.

* * * * *

In the press of a fight one scarcely realizes death, even the death of a friend.  It was up to me to make good my assurance to Wake, and presently I was off to Masterton.  There in that shambles of La Bruyere, while the light faded, there was a desperate and most bloody struggle.  It was the last lap of the contest.  Twelve hours now, I kept telling myself, and the French will be here and we’ll have done our task.  Alas! how many of us would go back to rest? . . .  Hardly able to totter, our counter-attacking companies went in again.  They had gone far beyond the limits of mortal endurance, but the human spirit can defy all natural laws.  The balance trembled, hung, and then dropped the right way.  The enemy impetus weakened, stopped, and the ebb began.

I wanted to complete the job.  Our artillery put up a sharp barrage, and the little I had left comparatively fresh I sent in for a counter-stroke.  Most of the men were untrained, but there was that in our ranks which dispensed with training, and we had caught the enemy at the moment of lowest vitality.  We pushed him out of La Bruyere, we pushed him back to our old forward zone, we pushed him out of that zone to the position from which he had begun the day.