For the moment there was just one clear line of vision, straight from where I sat to the nearest infantry.

I could see about fifty yards of the line and perhaps that many men; and they were blazing away furiously over a low earthwork, although I couldn't see a sign of the French.

There was hardly any artillery firing at that time.
Suddenly without any obvious reason the men whose backs I was watching broke and ran.

The mist obscured them instantly and the line of vision shifted, so that bit by bit I saw I dare say a mile of the firing line.
The whole lot were running for their lives and, look where I would, there wasn't a sign of a Frenchman anywhere.
I should say it took about ten minutes for the first of them to reach the dirt road, where our autos stood hub-deep in mud, and by that time we had shoved and pulley-hauled them into movement, our engines making as much row as a nest of machine-guns as they struggled against the strain.

We didn't want to be swamped under that tide of fugitives.
But they took no notice of us.