CHAPTER XI
WEDNESDAY, THE 26TH OF AUGUST
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
WESTMORELAND. Of fighting men they have full three-score thousand.
EXETER. There's five to one; besides, they all are fresh.
SALISBURY. God's arm strike with us! 'tis a fearful odds.
The night attack which the First Corps had so magnificently repulsed was but the prelude to the greater attack of August 26th. So imminent did the danger appear to the Commander-in-chief, so tense was the anxiety, that immediately after the firing had died away at midnight orders were issued to the First Corps to march again at daybreak. I cannot attempt to dwell upon the condition of the men after the battle of Sunday, the fighting and marching of Monday and Tuesday, and, finally, the great fight of Tuesday night. One can but quote the words of Sir John French: "They were too exhausted to be placed in the fighting line," and "were at the moment incapable of movement," and so leave the rest to the imagination.
To that extent, then, had von Kluck succeeded in his scheme. The First Corps were temporarily out of action; the French, as the Commander-in-Chief remarks, "were unable to afford any support on the most critical day of all"; and to the Second Corps was left the task of withstanding the whole German attack, designed to outflank them on the left and roll them up. And the odds against them were, as at Agincourt, "five to one"; in guns, more than six to one.
Apart from his 3rd and 5th Divisions, General Smith-Dorrien had taken under his command the detached 19th Infantry Brigade (composed of the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 1st Scottish Rifles, 1st Middlesex, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders), the infantry and some of the R.F.A. of the 4th Division, and two brigades of cavalry, out by Cambrai.
The line of the Second Corps on the Tuesday night extended, roughly, from Le Cateau on the east to a little south of Cambrai on the west, or a front of about fifteen miles. Trenches had been hastily dug since the previous afternoon. East of Le Cateau was a big gap between the two Corps. This could not be bridged owing to the exhausted condition of the regiments in the 2nd Division.