, &c., &c. It sounds very complicated, and still more so
when you have to fit in not only your own brigade but all the
miscellaneous troops of your "Brigade Area." But Weatherby had reduced
this to a fine art, and, after all, we had had heaps of practice at
it; so orders were short and to the point, and issued in really an
extraordinarily short time.

To return. Our march that day was through pretty country, with
fighting always going on just ahead of us or on both flanks, but we
were never actually engaged. At Doue we halted for an hour or so, and
then received orders to push out a battalion to hold the high ground
in front. But when we had got there we only found a panorama
stretching out all round, dotted with troops, and our guns firing from
all sorts of unseen hiding-places, with the enemy well on the run in
front of us. Soon the order came for us to push on, and we moved
forward through Mauroy, down a steep hill into St Cyr and St Ouen,
pretty little villages in a cleft in the ground, across the Petit
Morin river and up a beastly steep hill on the other side.

Then came a "pow-wow" in a stiff shower of rain, and on again slowly
over the plateau, in a curious position, for there was a big fight
going on amid some burning villages in the plain far on our left--I
don't know what Division--probably the 4th--and a smaller fight
parallel to us on the right, not two miles off; and we were marching
calmly along the road in column.

Then a longer halt, whilst we got closer touch with the 14th Brigade
on our right. It was a tangled fight there; for when we pushed forward
some cyclists in that direction they were unintentionally fired on by
the East Surrey; and the latter, who had rounded up and taken about
100 of the enemy prisoners, mostly cavalry, were just resting whilst
they counted them, when some of our own guns lobbed some shells right
into the crowd, and five German officers and about fifty of the
prisoners escaped in the confusion.

A little farther on, near Charnesseuil, we got orders to billet for
the night there, and the Brigade Headquarters moved on to Montapeine
cross-roads. Here there was a good deal of confusion, stray units of
several divisions trying to find their friends, and the cross-roads
blocked by a small body of sixty-three German prisoners. We got the
place cleared at last, and the Staff occupied an untidy, dirty,
unfurnished house and grounds at the corner. It had been used by the
enemy the n