The general command of the retiring line in this section, including the Ninth, Twenty-first, and Thirty-fifth Divisions had for the time fallen to General Franks, who handed his own division over to General Pollard. The position was exceedingly critical, as not only were the units weak, but ammunition had run low. The line was still falling back, and the enemy was pressing on behind it with mounted scouts in the van. In this retreat tanks were found of the greatest service in holding the German advance. The route was through Morlancourt and Ville-sur-Ancre to a defensive position upon the right bank of the Ancre in the Dernancourt area, the orders being to hold the line between that village and Buire. Both villages were attacked that evening, but the Thirty-fifth Division on the right and the 26th {127} Brigade on the left, drove back the enemy. By the morning of March 28 the line seemed to have reached equilibrium in this part, and the welcome sight was seen of large bodies of troops moving up from the rear. This was the head of the Australian reinforcements. During the day the enemy got into Dernancourt, but was thrown out again by the 19th Northumberland Fusiliers Pioneer Battalion. The 104th Brigade also drove back an attack in front of Treux Wood. It was clear that the moving hordes were losing impetus and momentum. That same evening the Australians were engaged upon the right and inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. On the night of March 30 the Thirty-fifth Division, which had lost nearly half its numbers, was relieved by the Third Australians. [Sidenote: Nineteenth Corps. March 23.] We shall now follow the Nineteenth Corps in its perilous retreat. It will be remembered that on the evening of the first day of the battle it had been badly outflanked to the north, where the Sixty-sixth Division had made so stout a resistance, and had also lost a great deal of the battle zone in the south, which was made more disastrous by the fall of Le Verguier at nine on the morning of March 22. The supporting line formed by the Fiftieth Division had also been pushed in at Pœuilly and other points, and it was with no little difficulty that the depleted and exhausted corps was able to get across the Somme on the morning of March 23, where they were ordered to hold the whole front of the river, including the important crossings at Brie. This, as a glance at the map will show, was a very considerable retreat, amounting to no less than ten miles in two days, but it was of the first importance to get a line {128} of defence, and also to lessen the distance between the sorely tried army and its reserves. It was hard indeed to give up ground and to be back on the line of Peronne, but there was at least the small solace that this was the ravaged ground which the Germans had themselves turned into a waste land, and that there was no town of any consequence nor any military point of importance in its whole extent.