August came, the second August of the war.

The heart of England was sad and sick, torn by the losses at Gallipoli, by the great disaster of the Russian retreat, by the shortage of munitions, by the endless small fighting on the British front, which eat away the young life of our race, week by week, and brought us no further.

But the spirit of the nation was rising--and its grim task was becoming nakedly visible at last.

_Guns--men!_ Nothing else to say--nothing else to do.
George Sarratt's battalion returned to the fighting line somewhere about the middle of August.

'But we are only marking time,' he wrote to his wife.