ight before, and they had luckily brought great masses of
straw into the house.

I stowed away the prisoners in the stables--great big, docile,
sheepish-looking men of the Garde-Schuetzen-Bataillon (2nd and 4th
companies) and machine-gun battery attached. I talked to several of
them, and they said that the battalion had lost very heavily and there
were hardly any officers left. One of the latter, Fritz Wrede by name,
I found wounded and lying on the straw in a dark room in the basement.
Other wounded were being brought in here, and all complained of
feeling very cold, although the evening was quite warm. I made some
men heap straw on them, which was an improvement--but I believe that
wounded always do feel cold.

Wrede had a bullet through the shoulder, but was not bad, so I got him
to sign a paper to say he would not try to escape--otherwise he might
have made trouble. Our men, as usual, were more than kind to the
prisoners, and insisted on giving them their own bread and jam--though
the Germans had already been given a lot of biscuit. I remember being
struck with the extreme mild-seemingness of all the prisoners, and
wondering how such men could have been capable of such frightful
brutalities as they had been in Belgium--they looked and behaved as if
they wouldn't have hurt a fly.

_Sept. 9th._

Next morning we moved off at 7.30 and went _via_ Saacy across the
Marne to Merz, and thence up an extremely steep and bad road through
the woods. It was a very hot day, and as there was no prospect of
getting the transport up I left it behind at Merz, meaning to send it
round another way when the road was clear. Firing was going on to the
left front, and we halted for a council of war with the Divisional
Staff, which was immediately in front of us.

The 14th Brigade was apparently hung up somewhere to our left front
and couldn't get on, so we were sent on to help them take the high
ground towards the Montreuil road. They were, we were told, already in
possession of Hill 189; but when we emerged from the woods there was a
Prussian battery on the hill. There did not seem to be any men with
it, as far as we could see, and it was not firing. But we made a good
target, and not more than a battalion had got clear when the
"deserted" battery opened fire and lobbed a shell or two into the
Bedfords and Cheshires.

They only lost a man or two killed and wounded; but a Howitzer battery
with us, which was already on the lookout,