Ciry--and watched dim columns of Germans crawling like grey worms up the
slopes the other side of the valley. We were certain that the old
Division was still in hot cry on the heels of a rapidly retreating foe.
News came--I don't know how: you never do--that our transport and
ammunition were being delayed by the fearsome and lamentable state of
the roads. But the cavalry was pushing on ahead, and tired infantry were
stumbling in extended order through the soaked fields on either side of
us. There was hard gunnery well into the red dusk. Right down the valley
came the thunder of it, and we began to realise that divisions, perhaps
even corps, had come up on either flank.

The ancient captain of cuirassiers, who had hauled me out of my shrine
into the rain that afternoon, made me understand there was a great and
unknown number of French on our left. From the Order before the Marne I
had learnt that a French Army had turned the German right, but the first
news I had had of French on our own right was when one staff-officer
said in front of me that the French away to the east had been held up.
That was at Doué.

Our retreat had been solitary. The French, everybody thought, had left
us in the lurch at Mons and again at Le Cateau, when the cavalry we knew
to be there refused to help us. For all we knew the French Army had been
swept off the face of the earth. We were just retiring, and retiring
before three or four times our own numbers. We were not even supported
by the 1st Corps on our right. It was smashed, and had all it could do
to get itself away. We might have been the Ten Thousand.

But the isolation of our desperate retreat dismayed nobody, for we all
had an unconquerable belief in the future. There must be some French
somewhere, and in spite--as we thought then--of our better judgments, we