They
did not weep, nor say much, but were wonderfully brave. I remember a
little family in Robecq whom I packed into my car when shells began to
fall among the houses. A pretty girl, with a little invalid brother in
her arms, and a mother by her side, pointed the way to a cottage in a
wood some miles away. She was gay and smiling when she said, "Au
revoir et merci!" A few days later the cottage and the wood were
behind the German lines.
The northern defense, by the 55th Lancashires, 51st Highlanders (who
had been all through the Somme retreat), the 25th Division of
Cheshires, Wiltshires and Lancashire Fusiliers, and the 9th Scottish
Division, and others, who fought "with their backs to the wall," as
Sir Douglas Haig demanded of them, without reliefs, until they were
worn thin, was heroic and tragic in its ordeal, until Foch sent up his
cavalry (I saw them riding in clouds of dust and heard the panting of
their horses), followed by divisions of blue men in hundreds of blue
lorries tearing up the roads, and forming a strong blue line behind
our thin brown line.
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