It was terrible work on our way to the Aisne; but the hardships were lightened for us in many little ways that counted a lot. Some of our officers would carry two rifles, when men became too weary to carry their own; the colonel would jump off his horse and give an exhausted man a lift in the saddle, and he would take apples from his pockets and pass them along the ranks to the men. These acts of kindness helped us all enormously. And we were helped on the way by smoking--what a joy it was to get a fag, especially when cigarettes ran so short that one would go round a dozen times, passed from man to man, and a chap was sorely tempted to take a pull that was almost enough to fill him with smoke. When we hadn’t a scrap of tobacco of any sort we would roll a fag of dried tea-leaves which had been used for making tea--and that was better than nothing. It was fighting all the way to the Aisne, heavy rearguard actions most of the time, though in a lesser war many of these affairs would have been reckoned proper battles. One night, at about ten o’clock, after a hard march, we had reached a town, and had thankfully gone into our billets--houses, barns, any sort of place that came handy, and we were expecting a peaceful time; but we were no sooner settling down than we got the alarm to dress and fall in. Getting dressed was the work of seconds only, because undressing was merely a case of putting the pack and equipment and rifle down and resting on the flags or earth, or, if we were lucky, hay or straw; and so, when the alarm was given, we very soon fell in, and with fixed bayonets we rushed for a bridge across the river that we had been ordered to take. At the point of the bayonet the bridge was carried with a splendid rush, then we had to hold it while our transport and ammunition column got out of the town, and there we were till seven o’clock next morning. The main body of the troops retired and left us as a rearguard; but they had not gone from the town more than ten minutes when we saw the Germans coming towards the bridge in swarms. There was no help for it--we had to get away from the bridge which we had held throughout the night. We began to retire in good order, fighting desperately, and our men falling killed and wounded. Yard by yard we fell back from the bridge, firing as furiously as we could at the German masses, and for half a mile we kept up an unequal rearguard struggle. It seemed that we should be hopelessly outnumbered and that there was little hope; then we saw two divisions of the French advancing, and knew that we should pull through. The French came on and gave us help, and, covering our retirement, enabled us to get away from the bridge.