All through these operations it is worthy of note that an important part was played by reorganised bodies of men, so mixed and broken that no name can be assigned to them. Officers stationed in the rear collected these stragglers, and led them back into gaps of the line, where their presence was sometimes of vital importance. A divisional general, {75} speaking of these curious and irregular formations, says: "There was no panic of any kind. The men of all divisions were quite willing to halt and fight, but as the difficulty of orders reaching them made them uncertain as to their correct action, they came back slowly and in good order. Once they received some definite orders they fell into line and dug themselves in at once." At one point 4000 men were collected in this fashion. In the Australian area the enemy occupied Dernancourt, but otherwise the whole line was intact. It was still necessary, however, to keep a defensive line thrown back along the north bank of the Somme, as the situation to the south, especially at Marcelcave, was very dangerous. Thus, the Seventh Corps covered this flank from Corbie to Sailly, and then ran north to Treux on the Albert-Amiens Railway. The arrival of the cavalry to the south of the river had spliced the weak section, so that on the morning of March 29 the British commanders from north to south had every cause to be easier in their minds. An inactive day was the best proof of the severity of the rebuff which the Germans had sustained the day before, nor were matters improved from their point of view when upon March 30 they attacked the Australians near Dernancourt and lost some thousands of men without a yard of gain, or when the New Zealanders countered them, with the capture of 250 prisoners and many machine-guns. This small chronicle of huge events has now brought the southern half of the Third Army to the same date already reached in the previous chapter by the northern half. The narrative has by no means reached the limit of the fighting carried on {76} by this portion of the line, but equilibrium has roughly been attained, and if the story be now continued it leaves too wide a gap for the reader to cross when he has to return to the history of the Fifth Army upon the 21st of March. Therefore we shall leave the Third Army for the time and only return to it when we have followed the resistance of the Fifth Army up to the same date. [Sidenote: Third Army. March 28.]