They were rummaging about for souvenirs in half-destroyed dugouts where dead bodies lay. They were “swapping” souvenirs⁠—taken from prisoners⁠—silver watches, tobacco-boxes, revolvers, compasses. Many of them put on German field-caps, like schoolboys with paper caps from Christmas crackers, shouting with laughter because of their German look. They thought the battle was won. After the first wild rush the shellfire, the killing, the sight of dead comrades, the smell of blood, the nightmare of that hour after dawn, they were beginning to get normal again, to be conscious of themselves, to rejoice in their luck at having got so far with whole skins. It had been a fine victory. The enemy was nowhere. He had “mizzled off.”

Some of the Scots, with the hunter’s instinct still strong, decided to go on still farther to a new objective. They straggled away in batches to one of the suburbs of Lens⁠—the Cité St. -Auguste. Very few of them came back with the tale of their comrades’ slaughter by sudden bursts of machine-gun fire which cut off all chance of retreat.⁠ ⁠…