The large outlines of it are as follows: The entire British Force, First and Second Army Corps, fell back to Bavai--the First without serious difficulty, the Second fighting rear-guard actions through the day. At Bavai the two Corps diverged, not to unite again till they should reach Betz on the 1st September. The Second Army Corps, reinforced by the Fourth Division, took the roads through Le Quesnoy, Solesme, Le Cateau, St. Quentin, Ham, Nesle, Noyon, and Crépy-en-Valois; the First paralleling them, roughly, through Landrecies, Vadencourt, La Fère, Pasly by Soissons, and Villers-Cotterêts.
_The RETREAT from MONS_ 1914 _Northern Section_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON
At 2 o’clock in the morning of August 24 the Battalion, “having covered the retirement of all the other troops,” retired through the position which the 2nd and 3rd Coldstream Guards had taken up, to Quevy le Petit, where it was ordered, with the 2nd Grenadiers, to entrench another position north of Quevy le Petit (from the third kilometre-stone on the Genly-Quevy le Petit road to the tenth kilometre-stone on the Mons-Bettignies road). This it did while the whole of the Second Division retired through the position at 4 P. M., the Battalion acting as rear-guard. Their notion of “digging-in” was to cut fire-steps in the side of the handy bank of any road. At nine o’clock that night the Battalion “came out of Belgium by the same road that it had marched into Belgium” through Blaregnies, past Bavai where the First and Second Army Corps diverged, and through La Longueville to Malgarni, where they bivouacked in an orchard “having been forty-four hours under arms.” Here the first mail from England arrived, and was distributed by torchlight under the apple-trees in the warm night.
On the afternoon of August 25 the Battalion reached Landrecies, an unlovely, long-streeted town in closely cultivated country. The German pressure was heavy behind them, and that evening the 3rd Coldstream Guards on outpost duty to the north-west of Landrecies, on the Mormal road, were attacked, and, as history shows, beat off that attack in a night-fight of some splendour. The Battalion turned out and blocked the pavé entrance to the town with improvised barricades, which they lined, of stones, tables, chairs, carts, and pianos; relieved the Coldstream at 1.30 A. M., August 26; and once again covered the retirement of the Brigade out of the town towards Etreux. The men were very tired, so weary indeed that many of them slept by the roadside while waiting to relieve the Coldstreams at Landrecies fight. That night was the first they heard wounded men scream. A couple of Irish Guards officers, sleeping so deeply that only the demolition by shell-fire of the house next door waked them, were left behind here, but after twenty-four hours of fantastic and, at that time, almost incredible adventures, rejoined safely next day. It was recorded also that one of the regimental drums was seen and heard going down Landrecies main street in the darkness, strung on the fore-leg of a gun-horse who had stepped into it as a battery went south. A battalion cooker, the sparks flying from it, passed like a fire-engine hastening to a fire, and men found time to laugh and point at the strange thing.
