THE GREAT RETREAT.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 245, 26 January 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE GREAT RETREAT.

THE STORY OF MONS AND ITS HEROES.

Mons I It sounds a very long time ago. Liretimes of suspense, of doubt, and ot hope have been lived through since those clays of th? Great Retreat. It is well that tliev should be recalled to us, and recalled as they are Ey Major A. Corbett-Smith in his human, moving narrative. "The Retreat from Mons,'' a series of glimpses into the Mood and welter of one of the great heroic epochs of our history. When? can you rival the human foolishness of this beautiful little incident: One man, at least, I knew (1 never learned his name) who at the tears of two tiny mites, clambered into the ruins of a burning outhouse then being shelled, to fetch something thev wanted, he could not understand what. He found a terrorstricken cat and brought it out safeiy. No, not pussy, something else hs .well. Rack lie went again, and after a little search discovered on the floor in a corner a wicker cage, in it a blackbird. Yes, that was it. And, oh, the joy of the girl mite at finding it still alive I •'Weil, you see, sir," lie said after wards, "I've got two kiddies the image of them. And it was no trouble, anyway." HOW THEY CAME IX.

The Retreat was far from an orderly procession. "You picture, perhaps, the various units retiring along routes carefully assigned by gilded staff officers," says Major Corbett-Smith. This is the reality as it occurred in on'e village : Four soldiers—two Scots, a Dorset, and a Bedford man—black with grime, three days' growth of beard, hollow-eyed, and limping painfully, appeared in front of Pierre, and tskad where they were to go. A captain of the Guards, riding a tired farm horse, with a colonel walking by his side, one hand on the horse's ilank. came behind, and, tackling the A.S.C. captain, asked for something •o eat. "We've been on the trudge for twelve hours," said the colonel, "and could get nothing. No one knows wliero anyone is. The regiment« Radly cut up last night and all scattered, heaven knows wliero." Later in the night more troops straggle in: Hero marches a battalion of the Guards. Two days ago it went into action perhaps 1100 strong. Uncover your head once again as it pt sses. for these men, too, have looked Death in the face. At tho head there paces slowly an ammunition mule. On it, wearing a peasant's slouch hat, with breeches cut off ahove the knees, and with left arm hold close by a rough bandage, there rides the coloi.el. Count the men as they march past in fours: 80, 120, 160, W, 220. No, that is the next regiment you are counting in. Just 200! That is the, tale of them. Blackened by dust and powder, bearded, breeches cut short like those of their commanding officer, the tew puttees that are left to them wrapped round their feet for boots —olhenviso bits of sacking or cloth, bloody bandages round heads or arm*, some with hats like the colonel's, most with none at all. slowly they limp by. And? as they pass, the A.S.C. drivers silently offer such biscuits or bread as they have. God, how they wolf the food! The colonel turns round on his "charges," and in a hoarse shout: "Battalion; Tention! Pull yourselves together, lads: a French village !"

The click of rifles coming tn the slope runs down the ranks. The fours line bv magic as the men straighten themselves; it is a new regiment, marching into action,

which the French villagers see pass before them.