The bayonet
attack by which the advanced line was broken was made at a place called
Croix Rouge, more than twenty miles away, and that night under cover of
the darkness the rifle pits were abandoned and he got his company away
without further loss.
His regiment fell back unpressed behind the fortified lines between
Namur and Sedan, entrained at a station called Mettet, and was sent
northward by Antwerp and Rotterdam to Haarlem. Hence they marched into
North Holland. It was only after the march into Holland that he began to
realise the monstrous and catastrophic nature of the struggle in which
he was playing his undistinguished part.
He describes very pleasantly the journey through the hills and open land
of Brabant, the repeated crossing of arms of the Rhine, and the change
from the undulating scenery of Belgium to the flat, rich meadows, the
sunlit dyke roads, and the countless windmills of the Dutch levels.
In those days there was unbroken land from Alkmaar and Leiden to the
Dollart. Three great provinces, South Holland, North Holland, and
Zuiderzeeland, reclaimed at various times between the early tenth
century and 1945 and all many feet below the level of the waves outside
the dykes, spread out their lush polders to the northern sun and
sustained a dense industrious population.
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