title="King's Own Scottish Borderers">K.O.S.B.'s. We turned Beilby, our veterinary officer, on to "first aid" for many of them and sent them on; but some of the shrapnel wounds were appalling. One man I remember lying across a pony; I literally took him for a Frenchman, for his trousers were drenched red with blood, and not a patch of khaki showing. Another man had the whole of the back of his thigh torn away; yet, after being bandaged, he hobbled gaily off, smoking a pipe. What struck me as curious was the large number of men hit in the face or below the knee,—there seemed few body wounds in comparison; but that may of course have been because those badly hit in the body were killed or unmovable. But one would see men apparently at their last gasp, with gruesome wounds on them and no more stretchers available, and yet five minutes afterwards they had disappeared.

Time was getting on, and the thunder and rain of German shells seemed unceasing; they appeared to come now not only from all along the front and the right front, but from our right as well, and our guns were replying less and less. Reports began to come in from the right of batteries wiped out (the 28th R.F.A. Brigade lost nearly all their guns here, for nearly all the detachments and horses were killed), and of a crushing attack on the 19th Brigade and penetration of our line thereabouts. And soon afterwards the movement itself became visible, for the 14th Brigade, and then the 13th, began to give way, and one could see the trenches being evacuated on the right. The Norfolks stuck well to it on the right, and covered the retirement that was beginning; but they were taken out of my hands by Sir C. F., and told off to act as rear-guard for the brigades on their right.