'When we got under the bank we lay down and I looked round ... there was not a man to be seen. I shouted, but at first nothing happened. And, I tell you, I was glad.... Some of the men who had gone back, not seeing me anywhere, had melted away home.... I don't blame _them_.... Then a few drifted along from further down the bank.... By degrees most of the party turned up ... there must have been between thirty and forty of them in the end....
'And then, you see, I knew I should have to go on again ... get past the corner somehow.... And----
'And I couldn't.... I simply couldn't face it.... Peters (the N.C.O.) said something about "Going to have another shot, sir?" He was pretty shaken himself--they all were ... but he'd have gone.... We _ought_ to have gone on.... I know that.... But.... Anyhow, I told him I didn't think we should ever get by at present, and said we'd better go back a bit and wait under cover ... some yarn or other.... So we started back down the road.... The Boche was still doing the up and down game on the road, only about twice as much.... By this time I can tell you there was no shame between those men and me ... we understood each other ... every time we heard that damned shriek we fell into shell-holes and prayed.... They were following us down the road, getting nearer and nearer.... You know that dug-out in the bank where Headquarters used to be. Well, just when it looked as if the next lot must come right on top of us, I saw a light coming from the dug-out, and most of us ran hell for leather for the door. Some one was standing at the entrance as we dashed in ... just in time ... we nearly knocked him over.... And guess who it was,' said Harry, with a horrible kind of hysterical laugh, 'guess who it was ... it was Burnett--Burnett of all people.... He had been sent up to find out what had happened. Well, he asked what the hell I was doing, and said I was to go on at once.... I said I was going to wait a bit, there was too much of a barrage.... Then he said, very offensively, he couldn't help that ... my orders were to go on at once.... That annoyed me, and I said I'd see him damned first, and told him if it was so urgent he could take the party up himself if he liked.... But he didn't, naturally ... no reason why he should.... Then he rang up Philpott and told him that he had seen the officer in charge and some of the party _running down the road--demoralized_. So he had, of course,--he saw me running for the dug-out ... though the joke of it is--the joke of it is ... _he was sheltering there himself_!' And at the enormity of that joke Harry went off into that hideous laughter again. 'He said I refused to obey orders, and asked for instructions. Philpott said it was too late now, the stuff had been wanted by midnight.... He told Burnett to put me under arrest ... and come back.