No account of the battle of the Lys can close without a word as to the splendid work done by General Plumer, never wearied, never flurried, during {311} those fateful days. Hardly less arduous was the experience of General Horne in the southern sector. The three corps commanders, too, who bore the brunt, and very especially General de Lisle, who only took over his command on the second day of the battle, will always be associated with one of the most desperate incidents of the war. But above and behind all is the commanding and heroic figure of Douglas Haig, impassive, serene, still working as he had worked four years before, at the mending of broken lines and the bracing of weak ones, until the hour should strike for his tremendous revenge. {312} CHAPTER XI THE BATTLES OF THE CHEMIN DES DAMES AND OF THE ARDRES May 27-June 2 The rest cure of the Aisne--Attack upon the Fiftieth Division--Upon the Eighth--Upon the Twenty-first--5th Battery R.F.A.--Glorious Devons--Adventure of General Rees--Retreat across the Aisne--Over the Vesle--Arrival of Nineteenth Division--Desperate fighting--Success of 4th Shropshires--General Pellé's tribute--General prospect of the Allies midway through 1918. It had been determined to rest four of the crippled British divisions which had been heavily engaged first on the Somme and then in the battle of the Lys. These divisions were the Twenty-fifth (Bainbridge), Twenty-first (Campbell), Eighth (Heneker), and Fiftieth (Jackson), all forming the Ninth Corps (Hamilton-Gordon). Each of them had been cut to pieces twice in the course of little more than a month, and should by every pre-war precept have been incapable of exertion for a long time to come. They were reconstituted with numbers of recruits under fresh officers, both leaders and men with slight experience of actual warfare. They were then sent, via the outskirts of Paris, the direct route being under fire from the German guns in front of Amiens, and they were thrust into the French line just north {313} of the Aisne in the region of the Chemin des Dames. The intention was to give them repose, but the change was looked upon with misgiving by the divisional generals, one of whom wrote to the present chronicler at the time saying, "They think it will be a rest cure, but to my mind it is more likely to be a fresh centre of storm."