eventually drove us to the uninviting boards, where we slept like the Babes in the Wood. Several times during the night I woke up shivering with cold and the clammy clothes sticking to my skin, but—we were over the hills and I would not have missed that night for all the gold in Africa. _Oct. 1._ Up at 5.30 and immensely cheered to see a blue sky, although I didn’t begin to feel normally warm until about noon. Bully and biscuit for breakfast as a change from the biscuit and bully of the preceding days. Received an official note of thanks from the Brigade for our work, and orders from the C.R.E. to rejoin the company. Apparently the advance is held up for a few days until heavy guns and supplies can get forward again. I sent No. 2 Section forward to work on the new plank avoiding road and returned to meet the Major at 8 a.m. He returned to the company and sent up Nos. 1 and 4 Sections to me from reserve billets. No. 3 Section also rejoined, so I fixed the lot in billets as well as possible and then took out Nos. 1, 3, 4 to work on the road with No. 2. We have now got all our limbers and tool-carts as far as the batteries, and I am commanding all the sections—Cooper remains with the heavy transport on the other side of the mud. Rode round the work during the afternoon and met the C.R.E., who was full of congratulations. Withdrew to billets at 5 p.m. to give the men a chance to dry their clothes and have a warm meal—the first they have had since the 27th. We are without definite news, but apparently the whole show has been a great success, and the Army is only waiting until we can get the roads through. I can never forget the great change which seemed to spread like wildfire over the spirit of the Army on the evening of the 28th–29th. We were in the midst of the worst of the mud area, miles of transport wagons were bogged along our single road, it was raining hard, and few of us had eaten anything for twenty-four hours. Nobody was looking forward to the dawn. But from somewhere behind us a rumour came through that Bulgaria had asked for Peace. There was no cheering, no demonstration of any sort, but the news seemed to put new spirit into the tired troops. The weary mud-caked horses were lashed and spurred again, men put their aching shoulders to the wheels, and once more the limbers lumbered forward. All night long the wagons toiled painfully up those fateful ridges where scores of thousands of our finest infantry had died, and in the drizzling dawn they saw their reward at last—behind them lay the dull, dead plain, with its memories of misery and mud—before them, they looked down upon a new, unbroken country, and the spire of Tenbrielen church, untouched of shot or shell, beckoned like a winning post against the eastern sky. _Oct. 2._ Heavy rain again last night, but it hasn’t damped our spirits. We could meet almost any call again now.