days to prevent the enemy from returning while the blockhouses were being repaired and reprovisioned.

Thus Tetuán was saved. Its delighted population received the returning troops with wild demonstrations of joy. But a silence fell upon the throng when the long convoy of wounded appeared. Trainload after trainload of them were shipped back to Ceuta. Only those too seriously wounded to travel remained in Tetuán. But the people were never allowed to see the dead, for they were hastily buried before the natives could discover at what a heavy price the victory had been bought. Among these were about one hundred Germans.

As a reward for our 'victory' we were given a day free from service, after our return, and allowed to visit the city. It is divided into two parts, a European and an Arab town, and is very picturesque. Two railways connect it with the ports of Ceuta and Rio Martin respectively, and automobile lines run to Tangier and Larache. The European quarter has broad asphalt avenues and handsome buildings provided with every modern convenience, where one might easily forget that he was in Spanish Morocco and not in Europe if it were not for the Oriental aspect of the street traffic. Plaza d'España is a handsome square, beautifully kept and shaded by magnificent palm trees, where the aristocracy of the town promenades after sunset. Just beyond lies the native quarter, surrounded by a lofty wall and accessible only through richly ornamented gates. Here the wide streets give place to narrow, poorly paved, but clean alleys, where pack trains often block the way. Peddlers cry their wares and beggars lift shrill pleas for alms. In this quarter is the barracks of the Third Regiment of Regulars, which consists entirely of native troops. They wear khaki uni

forms with green-silk sashes and red fezzes, and make a good impression.

We Legionaries spent a most interesting holiday taking in these novel sights, but the next morning came another most ominous order. Shishawen, a native city lying nearly forty miles inland from Tetuán, had been cut off by the enemy, and its garrison of some eight thousand men was in imminent danger of capture. So we were rushed to the rescue, for the troops there were already hard pressed and dependent upon supplies dropped by airplanes. We reached Ben Karrich, the first halting-place in the road, without difficulty. But here we entered a canyon, where we came in touch with the enemy. At Zinat we found fifty wrecked auto-trucks, all that was left of a provision and munition column which had been captured by the Riffi and its members slaughtered to a man. As we advanced we fortified new positions and garrisoned them with fresh troops, in order to protect our communications. This retarded our progress, and it was four days before we reached Zoco Arba, a large encampment. The troops here had been able to repulse the attacks of the enemy, and received us with great joy as their liberators. They had already slaughtered their pack animals for food.

But we must press on without pausing. Just beyond the camp we stumbled upon some two hundred dead mules in a canyon where the Riffi had captured another provision column. The nauseating stench of corpses infected the whole country. At Dara Koba we relieved another half-starved garrison, and on October 10 reached Shishawen itself. But all our road thither was marked by little mounds.

the graves of our fallen comrades. The native population of Shishawen was on the verge of starvation, and greeted our arrival jubilantly. But our

long line of communications was under constant attack. Provision and munition columns were frequently stopped, and our rations were speedily reduced to a minimum. Often the only food we received during an entire day would be a small roll and a watery soup in which you could count the beans. We ate whatever fruit we could find in the locality, and stilled our hunger with algaroba pods. Yet, notwithstanding our scanty fare, we were almost constantly on the march, going out to meet supply trains which as often as not never came through.

Finally our commanders decided to evacuate the city, and everything was a-bustle getting ready for our march back to Tetuán. Long processions of pack animals and automobiles were dispatched daily, carrying munitions, provisions, and war materials to points down the line. One day a cannon-shot sounded in the mountains above us, and a shell smashed through the wall of the quarters of the commanding general. But it proved to be a dud and did no further damage. We were tremendously astonished to discover, however, that the Riffi had artillery and were able to hit their mark the first time they fired. A few minutes later a second shell struck a barracks and killed several men. Flyers were immediately dispatched to discover the gun's position, and eventually silenced it. On November 10 all troops were withdrawn from the advance post and blockhouses beyond Shishawen.

Our retreat began at 3 A.M. on November 12. The wooden barracks were set afire and threw a lurid glow over the scene. The Riffi were already on the alert. A wild rattle of rifle shots crashed from the hillsides. Aviators dropped bombs. The last laggards hurried through the streets, where every now and then a man dropped motionless in his tracks. My company lay in

reserve in the thickets to the right of the highway, together with a detachment of the Regulars and native troops. Suddenly we saw the First and Third Banderas of the Legion retreating, closely pursued by the enemy. Those who fell lay in their tracks, for no one stopped to help a comrade. It was every man for himself.

A few minutes later we were under fire from ahead and from the right flank, and could see clouds of the enemy pushing past us through the mountains, regardless of our bombing planes and artillery. Officers stood in the depressions of the valley, pistol in hand, to drive any slacker back to the firingline. Little by little the Regulars on our left began to move back, having already lost several men. Our situation was desperate. Suddenly someone ordered: 'Retire slowly.' In a minute everyone took to his heels and ran at his utmost speed through a gully to the next elevation, hotly pursued by the enemy. Our first thought was not to fall into their hands alive. We reached the little hill breathless and

exhausted.

exhausted. Machine-guns began to rattle on our right. I heard somebody shout: 'Comrade, help me, I'm hit.' Two men turned back to aid him. The next moment all three lay dead in a heap. Finally we got behind temporary shelter and could catch our breath, but our ranks were already sadly thinned. Most of us had thrown away our blankets and knapsacks in order to run faster. They remained a booty for the Riffi. The Fourth Bandera covered our retreat.

Late that afternoon we finally reached Dara Koba. Our losses had been appalling. Our wounded had been left behind to be slaughtered by the enemy. A few companies of the Legion garrisoned the blockhouses around Dara Koba to protect the camp. We of the Seventeenth Company were excused

from guard duty and allowed to sleep. But heavy firing continued all night long. Innumerable camp-fires of the enemy gleamed through the darkness from the surrounding heights, and we could hear his monotonous chants of victory in the distance.

At daybreak we pushed on. A battery was stationed on a height to cover our retreat. We lay close by to protect it. Already there was heavy fighting around the blockhouses. We could see hordes of the enemy pouring down from the mountains in the first glow of dawn. It seemed increasingly likely that the garrisons of the blockhouses would be cut off. Artillery and bombing planes failed to check the onrush of the enemy. All at once the garrisons left their positions and rushed headlong after our retiring column. We could see their men moving like tiny dots across the level valley-bottom. Many fell with the enemy close at their heels to finish off the wounded. A cluster of Riffi gathered around a blockhouse. A moment later a huge column of smoke and dust rose with a throbbing boom and the blockhouse completely vanished, blown to pieces by an aviator's bomb.

The enemy now turned against us, and we were soon under fire from all directions. It was impossible to withdraw the battery, for the enemy was rapidly cutting us off. When our captain mounted his horse to seek safety in flight, nothing could hold us. We too rushed on like madmen. The shrieks of the wounded rose shrilly above the noise of battle. One man who had been hit, beside himself with fear, clutched at a passing comrade. The latter knocked the man senseless with the butt of his rifle and rushed on. No one took any thought of another. The Riffi were at our very heels, and their bullets were whistling past our ears. Men dropped faster with every yard that we advanced. Those were moments of

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horror too dreadful to describe. We ran, as men only can run when in deadly terror of a barbarous foe, for about three kilometres over hills and down gullies.

Suddenly we heard a command of 'Halt!' Several officers and sergeants confronted us with weapons in their hands and forced us to form a semblance of a battle line. One Legionary who kept on running was shot dead by an officer. We received the first volley of the enemy before we were in position. So we lay there, about one hundred and fifty men, until we had used up our ammunition, our number growing less every moment. About fifty men rushed up from the left all that remained of two companies of Regulars. I saw an expression of deadly terror on their blanched faces as they ran past us. Immediately afterward an order came to retreat. When we rushed down the next canyon the enemy already held the heights on either side, and poured a deadly fire into us from three directions. A German named Borges running by my side fell wounded in the right foot. 'Don't leave me here. Help me! Take me with you, friend,' he begged. Bitterly as I hated to leave him, I had to hurry on. To have stopped a moment would have been suicide. In fact, we were never out of hearing of such supplications. Finally we reached a point where we were covered by the First and Third Banderas and the artillery. I collapsed with exhaustion. I thought my head and breast would burst. Except for the short interruption when we turned on the enemy, we had run for our lives almost three miles. My company had lost more than half its members in that distance.

At this point the retreating troops made camp. We were given a little rice and bacon and sent out on sentry duty for the night. I crouched half-frozen on the damp ground, for I had long since thrown away my blanket and other

coverings. A heavy, steady rain began to fall, for the wet season had begun. In a few minutes the ground was a thick, gluey mass. In our light khaki uniforms, and without any protection against the descending torrent, we soldiers on outpost duty lay shivering on the ground.

The next day we had to retreat some twelve miles to the larger camp at Zoco Arba, over roads that were by this time almost fathomless morasses. Our company was hardly in position on the left flank before we found ourselves again under fire. The Riffi were now ahead of us as well as on both flanks, and our morale was rapidly crumbling. Again it was a race with death. We ran at full speed for something over a mile, until we reached a sheltered stretch in the road where we were in comparative security for a short distance. Suddenly an order came to halt. We lined up beside the road in the pouring rain while a detachment of bedraggled Regulars marched past. Then came the order: 'Present arms!' We were saluting the corpse of the commanding general, who had fallen in battle.

Two batteries of artillery were now behind us, and we were ordered to cover their retirement. The moment they attempted to move the guns a horrible spectacle ensued. The enemy had crept up unobserved to close range and poured volley after volley into the remaining troops with deadly effect. We were trying to reply when we heard someone shout in Spanish: 'Don't shoot, friends.' About one hundred natives came hurrying toward us. We supposed they were men in the Spanish service. Suddenly they lay down when about a hundred yards away and poured a volley into us. There was no holding those of us who survived. We took to our heels, and the two batteries and their munitions and supplies fell into the hands of the Riffi.

Abd-el-Krim had concentrated his main forces at a narrow gully through which we had to pass just before entering Zoco Arba. When our column, crowded into dense masses by the narrowing of the way, reached this point, the Riffi simply mowed our ranks down with rifle fire. The officers no longer had any control whatever of their troops. It was each man for himself. Many soldiers cut the baggage from the pack mules and, mounting the animals, charged through the infantry regardless of everything but flight. The ground was literally paved with abandoned rifles, ammunition, knapsacks, blankets, bales, boxes, and baggage of every kind, interspersed with corpses, wounded men, and fallen horses and animals, all half-submerged in slime. I followed the example of several of my comrades and waded down a brook in order to make quicker progress. An hour later I was lucky enough to reach Zoco Arba, drenched to the skin.

At this point we were protected by a rampart. Exhausted and half-frozen, I hunted up my company. It was still raining as hard as ever. Our forces were in such a state of abject disorganization that it took more than three hours to get the different units together. Only forty-eight men were left of my company. Tents were pitched in the rain in order to afford a little protection. We crawled under them, and that night lay shivering without blankets on some wet straw. The camp was completely encircled by the enemy, and we could not move forward until the weather cleared.

When we left our tents to get our rations we sank up to our knees in mud. Even the Riffi had withdrawn to the surrounding villages for protection against the storm.

We were held here nearly three weeks. Every fourth day we were on sentry duty, where we were exposed to

the elements all night long in the open parapetto without any protection against the wet and cold. Many of the Legionaries fell ill with fever and other illnesses. Finally we were issued new shoes, for most of us were barefoot. All heart had gone out of the troops. Our officers tried to encourage us with promises of monetary rewards: every Legionary in the expedition was to be given a bounty of one hundred pesetas. But this promise was never kept.

We were now halfway back to Tetuán, and shuddered at the thought of what still lay ahead of us. On the day before we moved on, Colonel Franco, the commander of the Legion, held a review. About fifteen hundred men remained of our five banderas. More than half had fallen since we left Shishawen. We set out at dawn, and the rest of the march was a repetition of

what had gone before. More than one hundred thousand men were lost in killed and wounded on this retreat. About six thousand were supposed to have fallen into the hands of the Riffi and to be employed at forced labor in the neighborhood of Shishawen.

When we reached Tetuán the commanding officers and the Dictator, General Primo de Rivera, reviewed the remnants of the army. We were so ragged and dirty and verminous that we looked more like a band of harried outlaws than regular troops. After a few days' repose, during which we were issued new uniforms and equipment, we were sent to Zoco Zerata to evacuate the garrison there and to relinquish that territory to the enemy. The Spaniards now withdrew to a heavily fortified defensive line, giving up all attempt to hold more than half the area that they had occupied a few weeks before.

Out of the immensity of the Castilian steppe, there rises, just on the confines of Estremadura and Toledo, an old, brown town crowned by a feudal castle with its crenelated walls. The town must have grown round the castle, as the Dukes of Frias and of Escalona, Counts of Oropesa and of Haro, settled their vassals for protection in the long feud with the neighboring Counts of Maqueda, just such another little town crowned by a castle, now mouldering to decay.

1 From the Saturday Review (London Tory weekly), November 7

Time has swallowed up their rivalry; but the Castilian plain has defied time, and in the autumn still keeps the character given to it in ages past in the old saying, 'Even a lark when it goes to Castile must take its food with it.' Little is altered on the great plain on which the sun plays like a fire. When all the waving wheat-fields are cut and threshed, it is converted into a European Sahara. Dried thistles and the stalks of mullein desiccated in the fierce heat alone stand up to break its surface, taking on strange, fantastic shapes and looming up like