There was no respite. The French
Foreign Legion have a grim saying, 'March or die.' Here the word was
'March or be captured,' and even when every other conscious feeling but
that of utter exhaustion seemed dead, somewhere deep down in their
hearts the will to endure urged them on.
Is there no painter, no poet, who can enshrine for future generations
the memory of this historic scene? We have here a sudden glimpse of
Britain at her best. Hot sun, torment of burning feet on the cruel,
white, and endless roads, the odour and sight and sound of death and
wounds, pressure of pressing men, and love of life and the horrid
loneliness of fear--all that was Giant Circumstance; but he could not
extinguish the souls of men made in the image of God for suffering and
endurance and triumph. English and Irish and Scottish--but brothers in
hatred of retreat and in their determination to push on until they could
turn and strike--the glamour of great names hung round all those
tattered battalions; and the very essence of it was in the oldest of
them all, in history and in campaigns, this famous Lowland regiment.
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