On November the 2nd, Divisional Headquarters and the 107th Brigade moved to Mouscron, practically a suburb of Tourcoing, but on the other side of the frontier, in Belgium. Training and reorganization were carried out. Ranks filled up, and the troops, in splendid billets, speedily threw off their fatigue. Another turn in the line was still expected. But that was not required. If the 36th Division was not actually "in at the death," it had afterwards the satisfaction of knowing that the war was really won when it left the firing-line. The very day after, October the 28th, the German communiqué was signed by the "Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army"—Hindenburg—instead of the "First Quarter-Master General"—Ludendorff. The meaning of that was instantly grasped. Ludendorff, the great gambler, whose final throws had brought him so near success, had resigned. A day later, and it was announced that Austria had thrown up the sponge. On the 7th of November the German parlementaires passed through the French lines at Guise, on their way to interview Marshal Foch. Then came the news of the Armistice.

It was celebrated by the troops in France without that wild hilarity, wild almost to hysteria, that greeted it in London. Perhaps the man who had been trudging forward, week by week, facing the machine-guns, if in front, sniffing for gas, and, by night, listening anxiously for the purr of the Gotha, if in rear, hardly realized that it was all over. The men were, none the less, intensely happy. Everywhere they were fêted and acclaimed by the civilians whom they had freed from four long years of bondage. Best of all, after years of discomfort and exposure, they slept softly, undisturbed by the crash of bombs.

And so, as Lord Fisher afterwards put it, "at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month," the war came to its end.

[View Larger Image Here.]

Map VII.

The Final Advances, 1918.

This History contains few of those Special Orders of the Day which, long after the events that gave them birth, are inclined to appear heavy, and sometimes fail to accord with present sentiment. That of General Jacob has been quoted because it was under his fine leadership that the men of the 36th Division marched to final victory. It would not be fitting to conclude this chapter without recalling that issued at the end of hostilities to all the Allied Armies by the Marshal in supreme command, who inherits from his teacher, the greatest soldier his country and the modern world ever produced, the gift of making a few words majestic and ever-memorable. Amidst our present discontents some of the glory of these words of Marshal Foch may appear tarnished, but, like the words of Napoleon to his troops in Egypt, they will endure, when immediate sorrows and disappointments are forgotten, perhaps when the very causes for which men laid down their lives by millions have become obscure.