Just about then, too, the transport of the 13th Brigade, which was necessarily following the infantry over the crest towards Sermoise, were noticed by the enemy, and a few shells over them killed and disabled a number of waggon-horses and men, making a very nasty mess in the road.
There we sat all day whilst the sun came out and dried us a bit. But we were not very happy at luncheon; for though hungry and with plenty to eat now, those beastly shells came nearer and nearer us, till our bully and biscuit lost their charm entirely. At last we got up, plates in hand, and moved with dignity out of range, or, rather, more under cover.
The Cheshires had meanwhile discovered a curious cave in the hillside which sheltered the whole battalion (though, in truth, the latter was not large, only 450 men or so), whilst the other battalions were well out of sight in the folds of the ground.
The shadows grew longer and longer, and we rigged up some comfortable little shelters in the coppice for the night, thinking we should bivouac where we were. But at 6 I was sent for to Divisional Headquarters at Serches, and told to reconnoitre the road towards the Aisne—only a mile or two ahead. This I did in a motor-car, and returned in time for dinner; but we had barely got through it, about 8, when marching orders came to the effect that we were to push on and cross the Aisne by rafts to-night, and the sooner the better.
So we moved off with some difficulty in the dark, for there were no connecting roads with the halting-places of the battalions, and got on to the main road, whence all was plain sailing, down to the Moulin des Roches, an imaginary mill on the river bank. Over some sloppy pasture fields in dead silence, and we found ourselves on the bank, with a darker shadow plashing backwards and forwards over the river in our front, and some R.E. officers talking in whispers.
The actual crossing of the Brigade was a long job, and had to be carefully worked out. The raft held sixty men at a time, or thirty men and three horses; but as horses on a raft in the dead of night were likely to cause a fuss, we left them behind, to follow on in the morning, and crossed without them,—four and a half hours it took; and whilst the men were crossing we tried to get a bit of sleep on the wet bank. It was not very successful, as it was horribly cold and we had no blankets. The staff crossed last of all, and we landed in a wood on the far side, in a bog but thinly covered with cut brushwood, and full of irritating, sharp, and painful tree-stumps.
Sept. 14th.
When we were across it was difficult to discover the battalions asleep in the fields, and when we had found them and it was time to start it was difficult to wake them. However, we moved off just as it was getting light; but it was not easy to find the way, for there was no path at first. We had orders to go viâ Bucy-le-Long to Sainte Marguerite, and found the villages right enough, for they were close together. But as we moved into Sainte Marguerite, with a good many other troops in front of us, we became aware that there was an unnecessary number of bullets flying about, and that our fellows in front were being held up.
The village was held by the 12th Brigade (4th Division), and the 14th Brigade was somewhere on our right. The Dorsets were our leading battalion, and they were pushed on to help the 12th, and filled a gap in their line on the hill above the village front at the eastern end. But there we stuck for a long time. The enemy's artillery had meanwhile opened on us, and shells began to crash overhead and played the devil with the tiles and the houses. But they did not do us much harm.
We now received orders to move on to Missy (not a mile off to the right) and clear the Chivres ridge of the enemy and push on to Condé and take that if possible—rather a "large order." The difficulty was to get to Missy, for the road thither was spattered with bullets, and shells were bursting all along it. However, by dint of careful work we moved out bit by bit, cutting through the gardens and avoiding the road, and taking advantage of a slight slope in the ground by which we could sneak to the far side of the little railway embankment which led to Missy Station.