ds of the ground.

The shadows grew longer and longer, and we rigged up some comfortable
little shelters in the coppice for the night, thinking we should
bivouac where we were. But at 6 I was sent for to Divisional
Headquarters at Serches, and told to reconnoitre the road towards the
Aisne--only a mile or two ahead. This I did in a motor-car, and
returned in time for dinner; but we had barely got through it, about
8, when marching orders came to the effect that we were to push on and
cross the Aisne by rafts to-night, and the sooner the better.

So we moved off with some difficulty in the dark, for there were no
connecting roads with the halting-places of the battalions, and got on
to the main road, whence all was plain sailing, down to the Moulin des
Roches, an imaginary mill on the river bank. Over some sloppy pasture
fields in dead silence, and we found ourselves on the bank, with a
darker shadow plashing backwards and forwards over the river in our
front, and some R.E. officers talking in whispers.

The actual crossing of the Brigade was a long job, and had to be
carefully worked out. The raft held sixty men at a time, or thirty men
and three horses; but as horses on a raft in the dead of night were
likely to cause a fuss, we left them behind, to follow on in the
morning, and crossed without them,--four and a half hours it took;
and whilst the men were crossing we tried to get a bit of sleep on the
wet bank. It was not very successful, as it was horribly cold and we
had no blankets. The staff crossed last of all, and we landed in a
wood on the far side, in a bog but thinly covered with cut brushwood,
and full of irritating, sharp, and painful tree-stumps.

_Sept. 14th._

When we were across it was difficult to discover the battalions asleep
in the fields, and when we had found them and it was time to start it
was difficult to wake them. However, we moved off just as it was
getting light; but it was not easy to find the way, for there was no
path at first. We had orders to go _via_ Bucy-le-Long to Sainte
Marguerite, and found the villages right enough, for they were close
together. But as we moved into Sainte Marguerite, with a good many
other troops in front of us, we became aware that there was an
unnecessary number of bullets flying about, and that our fellows in
front were being held up.

The village was held by the 12th Brigade (4th Division), and the 14th
Brigade was somewhere on our right. The Dorsets