exceedingly steep and narrow road. Guns firing in the open can be seen.
If the Germans were to spot us, we shuddered to think what would become
of the column behind us on the road.

That afternoon I had nothing more to do, so, returning to the common, I
dozed there for a couple of hours, knowing that I should have little
sleep that night. At dusk we bivouacked in the garden of the chateau at
Méry. We arrived at the chateau before the Staff and picked up some
wine.

In the evening I heard that a certain captain in the gunners went
reconnoitring and found the battery--it was only one--that had held up
our advance. He returned to the General, put up his eyeglass and
drawled, "I say, General, I've found that battery. I shall now deal with
it." He did. In five minutes it was silenced, and the 14th attacked up
the Valley of Death, as the men called it. They were repulsed with very
heavy losses; their reinforcements, which had arrived the day before,
were practically annihilated.

It was a bad day.

That night it was showery, and I combined vain attempts to get to sleep
between the showers with a despatch to 2nd Corps at Saacy and another to
the Division Ammunition Column the other side of Charnesseuil.

Towards morning the rain became heavier, so I took up my bed--_i.e._, my
greatcoat and ground-sheet--and, finding four free square feet in the
S.O., had an hour's troubled sleep before I was woken up half an hour
before dawn to get ready to take an urgent message as soon as it was
light.