In five days we retired from Mons to Noyon, a distance of about 130
miles, fighting day and night, with no proper meals. We had to live
on the country. I ate nothing but fruit and turnips. At last I was
hit by a piece of shrapnel, which has taken away the use of the toes
of my right foot and fractured three or four small bones. At the time
it simply felt like a scald, and I marched seven miles before I found
my foot was bleeding. Whilst trying to close the men up I suffered a
second accident to my foot, a wagon-wheel passing over it owing to a
skid: _Colour-Sergeant Barling_.