rry about Peter. Archie and I swallowed breakfast
and I had a pow-wow with my brigadiers. By this time I had got through
to Corps H.Q. and got news of the French. It was worse than I expected.
General Peguy would arrive about ten o'clock, but his men couldn't take
over till well after midday. The Corps gave me their whereabouts and I
found it on the map. They had a long way to cover yet, and then there
would be the slow business of relieving. I looked at my watch. There
were still six hours before us when the Boche might knock us to blazes,
six hours of maddening anxiety ... Lefroy announced that all was quiet
on the front, and that the new wiring at the Bois de la Bruyere had
been completed. Patrols had reported that during the night a fresh
German division seemed to have relieved that which we had punished so
stoutly yesterday. I asked him if he could stick it out against another
attack. 'No,' he said without hesitation. 'We're too few and too shaky
on our pins to stand any more. I've only a man to every three yards.'
That impressed me, for Lefroy was usually the most devil-may-care
optimist.

'Curse it, there's the sun,' I heard Archie cry. It was true, for the
clouds were rolling back and the centre of the heavens was a patch of
blue. The storm was coming--I could smell it in the air--but probably
it wouldn't break till the evening. Where, I wondered, would we be by
that time?

It was now nine o'clock, and I was keeping tight hold on myself, for I
saw that I was going to have hell for the next hours. I am a pretty
stolid fellow in some ways, but I have always found patience and
standing still the most difficult job to tackle, and my nerves were all
tattered from the long strain of the retreat. I went up to the line and
saw the battalion commanders. Everything was unwholesomely quiet there.
Then I came back to my headquarters to study the reports that were
coming in from the air patrols. They all said the same thing--abnormal
activity in the German back areas. Things seemed shaping for a new 21st
of March, and, if our luck were out, my poor little remnant would have
to take the shock. I telephoned to the Corps and found them as nervous
as me. I gave them the details of my strength and heard an agonized
whistle at the other end of the line. I was rather glad I had
companions in the same purgatory.

I found I couldn't sit still. If there had been any work to do I would
have buried myself in it, but there was none. O