mber 12, 1914, was a night of labor
for engineers and gunners. The bridge trains belonging to the First and
Second Army Corps were ordered to the edge of the river at daybreak, and
as soon as the first gleam of dawn appeared in the sky, the heroic
effort began.

At the risk of seeming a little detailed, in order to understand the
somewhat involved maneuvers by which the British won the crossing of the
Aisne, instead of dealing with the advance of the British army as a
unit, in the manner that was done in discussing the battles of the
Marne, their activities will be shown as army corps: the Third Army
Corps to the westward, under General Pulteney; the Second Army Corps,
under Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, and the First Army Corps to the
eastward, under Sir Douglas Haig, all, of course, under the general
direction of Sir John French.

The British had no means of knowing what was in front of them. There was
only one way to find out--a way, alas, often costly, a way that in every
campaign costs thousands of lives apparently fruitlessly, and that is a
frontal attack. Down over the slopes of the southern bank, into the
bright, smiling river valley, where the little white villages in the
distance were hiding their dilapidated state, marched the British army.
Not a sign of activity showed itself upon the farther shore. A summer
haze obscured objects at a distance, but, shortly before nine o'clock,
the German batteries opened fire with a roar that was appalling.

The Third Army Corps, after a brief artillery duel, advanced on Soissons
to cover the work of the engineers who were building a pontoon bridge
for the French troops. The German fire was deadly, yet though more than
half their men fell, the engineers put the pontoon bridge across. German
howitzer fire, from behind the ridge, however, soon destroyed the
bridge. The Turcos crossed the river in rowboats and had a fierce but
indecisive struggle in the streets of the medieval city. Meanwhile, with
the failure of the pontoon bridge at Soissons, General Pulteney struck
to the northeast along the road to Venizel. The bridge at that point had
been blown up, but the British sappers repaired it sufficiently to set
the Eleventh Brigade across, and even, despite the lurid hail of shot
and shell, four regiments gathered at Bucy-de-Long by one o'clock on
that Sunday, September 13, 1914. Over the heads of these courageous
regiments towered the great hill of Vregny, a veritable Gibraltar o