When a fight took place it was a chivalrous excursion, such as
Sir Walter Manny would have liked, between thirty or forty men on one
side against somewhat the same number on the other.
Our men used to steal out along the causeway which crossed the marsh--
a pathway about four feet wide, broadening out in the middle, so that
a little redoubt or blockhouse was established there, then across a
narrow drawbridge, then along the path again until they came to the
thicket which screened the German village of Curlu.
It sometimes happened that a party of Germans were creeping forward
from the other direction, in just the same way, disguised in party-
colored clothes splashed with greens and reds and browns to make them
invisible between the trees, with brown masks over their faces. Then
suddenly contact was made.
Into the silence of the wood came the sharp crack of rifles, the zip-
zip of bullets, the shouts of men who had given up the game of
invisibility. It was a sharp encounter one night when the Loyal North
Lancashires held the village of Vaux, and our men brought back many
German helmets and other trophies as proofs of victory.
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