United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Under these conditions there was plentiful work for despatch riders. I am going to try and describe it for you. When D.H.Q. are stationary, the work of despatch riders is of two kinds. First of all you have to find the positions of the units to which you are sent. Often the Signal Office gives you the most exiguous information. "The 105th Brigade is somewhere near Ciry," or "The Div.
He was a man of uncertain temper and accurate shooting, for in the first place he would shell Ciry for a few minutes at any odd time, and in the second he knocked a gun out in three shells and registered accurately, when he pleased, upon the road that led up a precipitous hill to the edge of the Serches hollow.
On into Acy, where I decided to head off the Division at Ciry, instead of crossing the Aisne and riding straight to Vailly, our proposed H.Q. for that night. The decision saved my life, or at least my liberty. I rode to Sermoise, a bright little village where the people were actually making bread. At the station there was a solitary cavalry man. In Ciry itself there was no one.
Half-way up the Ciry hill, a sort of dry watercourse, I ran into some cavalry and learnt that the Germans were holding the Aisne in unexpected strength. I had all but ridden round and in front of our own cavalry outposts. Two miles farther back I found Huggie and one of our brigades.
We had no carbide, and my carburetter had jibbed, so we decided to stop at Ciry for the night. At the inn we found many drinks particularly some wonderful cherry brandy and a friendly motor-cyclist who told us of a billet that an officer was probably going to leave. We went there.
On the hills opposite little points of flame showed that the Germans were replying. On our right some infantry were slowly advancing in extended order through a dripping turnip-field. The Battle of the Aisne had begun. We were wondering what to do when we were commandeered to take a message down that precipitous hill of Ciry to some cavalry. It was now quite dark and still raining.
The night that Huggie and I slept down at Ciry, the rest of the despatch riders, certain that we were taken, encamped at Ferme d'Epitaphe, for the flooded roads were impassable. There we found them in the morning, and discovered they had prepared the most gorgeous stew of all my recollection.
Afterwards the brigade emigrated to a hillside above Ciry, and remained there. Now the German gunner in whose sector Ciry was included should not be dismissed with a word.
You will remember how the night we arrived on the Aisne Huggie and I stretched ourselves on a sand-heap at the side of the road just above 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.
Word Of The Day