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The next morning Carter, Quainton and I were having breakfast just below the Gouzeaucourt Ridge by the edge of the wood. A gun limber with two panicky horses came over the ridge and raced towards us. “Looks as if someone's in trouble – lost his limber for good I would think.” We went on with our breakfast.
I began to feel that something was wrong with the morning. It was rather like a bad dream without a dream. “Do you know”, I said to the others, “I keep on thinking I hear machine-guns. Like having goose flesh –”
Gatehouse appeared from his tent.
“I think something's up sir”, said Carter. “Why, what's …” Before he had finished his sentence an all too familiar sound froze us into silence.
“By God! You're right!” Carter said to me. “You are hearing guns.”
We listened, taut, to the slow unmistakable pulse of a German machine-gun. The whine of bullets overhead clinched it.
“But the Line is a good ten miles away!”
Carter was grim. “The Line is now here. Back to where we started from – or further.”
The news, when we got it during the next hour or so, was this: the enemy had attacked the Salient formed by the successful attack on the 20th. After bitter fighting the Prussian Guard at Bourlon Wood had held our advance. His counter-attack was expected and his main attack on our left had been bloodily repulsed. His feint attack on our right had broken through our flimsy defence and what we were now watching as helpless unarmed spectators – we had two men, no tanks and the four of us – was the clever exploitation by the enemy of our disaster.