We followed the tail of the line down into the valley, and all that
morning long and past the food time at midday, and so till the sun
declined in the afternoon, we went with the 38th in its gradual success
from crest to crest. And still the 38th slouched by companies, and mile
after mile with checks and halts, and it never seemed to get either less
or more tired. The men had had twelve hours of it when they came at
last, and we after them, on to the critical position. They had carried
(together with all the line to left and to the right of them) a string
of villages which crowned the crest of a further plateau, and over this
further plateau they were advancing against the main body of the
resistance--the other army corps which was set up against ours, to
simulate an enemy.

A railway line ran here across the rolling hedgeless fields, and just at
the point where my companion and I struck it there was a dip in the land
and a high embankment which hid the plain beyond; but from that plain
beyond one heard the separate fire of the advancing line in its
scattered order. We climbed the embankment, and from its ridge we saw
over two miles or more of stubble, the little creeping bunches of the
attack. What was resisting, or where it lay, one could only guess. Some
hundreds of yards before us to the east, with the sloping sun full on
it, a line of thicket, one scattered wood and then another, an
imperceptible lifting of the earth here and there marked the opposing
firing line. Two pompoms could be spotted exactly, for the flashes were
clear through the underwood. And still the tide of the advance continued
to flow, and the little groups came up and fed it, one after another and
another, in the centre where we were, and far away to the north and
right away to the south the countryside was alive with it. The action
was beginning to take on something of that final movement and decision