A few peasants, with their carts standing by, were at the grim labour of interring the dead; charring the horses with fire before dragging them into the holes. Broken harness and accoutrements lay in little heaps, for removal. The old peasant women, with their brown, immobile faces tied round with coloured handkerchiefs, sat in the carts or helped. It is a grim task for many reasons; but the kindly rain has come to help. Bad for the men ahead of us, this rain, it will be worse for the Germans, in a hostile country, with more limited means of protection or remedy to be obtained from their base. And fever is beginning. The peasants could naturally give little information as to the regiments or happenings. Only the broad facts could be followed. Near Ocquere, the ruts of advance and retirement of the German batteries, a shattered gun marking the firing position. East of Cocherel a mitrailleuse car, overturned, too broken up to be worth capture. But a couple of cheerful R.A. mechanics were at work on it, hopefully. Round a much-perforated cottage, just to the north of St. Aulde, a fierce fight must have taken place. The furniture had been dragged out as cover, and on the summit of a trench, a hollow scraped in the hard soil, stood a large china crock, evidently set there by some cheerful trooper in derision of the German rifle-fire. The sound of firing grew heavier towards Torcy, to our north-east, during the afternoon. Clearly a great battle was in progress. Impossible to approach nearer. We were already between our line in action and the French reserves who were holding the country behind, and forwarding up lines of munition wagons and supplies. There were wounded in the cottages, the jetsam of the battle in front. But the line of the British communications was to our east, towards the Marne at Charly. We could get no news of the happenings in front. We were constantly challenged, constantly headed to the rear in some new direction. The men who passed us had the "battle look," the look on the face of Michael Angelo's "Dawn." I had enough to do to look after the personal factor in such an atmosphere. And now we know what was going on there, across those little tributaries of the Clignon, at Torcy, a few blocked miles ahead. A thousand prisoners! Fifteen guns or more! The Germans fairly matched and beaten! This has been no mere "blind," this rolling up of the German right, which we have watched with such anxiety. If their right was weakened, as I assume, to reinforce the armies in Prussia, they have paid for it. For they have lost, and lost heavily and badly; and at the corner, and against the little army which it was their desperate concern to break and overwhelm.