held by seventy men of the Sixteenth Division, and pushed on in the most daring way south-west to Lamotte and Bayonvillers. They were right across the rear of the Nineteenth Corps, and a great disaster seemed inevitable, but weary as the {139} men were, and tired as were their leaders, they were still capable of clear decision and swift action. The river was for the moment abandoned, the left of the line was swung south, and early upon March 28 they faced north in this sector, along the track of the Amiens-La Fère railway. Roughly, the new position may be traced as follows: Vrely. Gillancourt. Warvillers. Caix. Wiencourt. Marcelcave. +---------------------+ _R._ 24 8 60 66 39 _L._ [Sidenote: Nineteenth Corps. March 28.] This very difficult and remarkable disengagement was particularly trying for the Thirty-ninth Division since it had farthest to go and was in close contact with the enemy. It was carried out in broad daylight in the morning of March 28, and with such skill that there was no great loss in the 118th Brigade which covered it, but so close was the enemy that both General Bellingham and his brigade-major, Major F. Gunner, were captured while personally supervising the withdrawal. After this operation the remains of the Thirty-ninth Division were occupying the line from Marcelcave to Wiencourt inclusive, along the railway track. Germans were found in Wiencourt, and the two brigades, now reduced to two composite battalions under Colonel Saint, attacked them with success, but eventually occupied a line to the west. All the guns had been saved and were in action once more. On the occasion of the reforming of the line as already described on March 28, the Fiftieth Division had fallen back upon Caix, where it held fast to the important bridge across the River Luce upon which a number of troops from various units were converging. Many of these were disorganised, and some, {140} to use the expression of a spectator, "stone-cold"; but the same witness has recorded the splendid moral effect produced by one battalion which, marching in fours and with everything in most precise order, came swinging down the road, with no change after its seven days of purgatory save that two-thirds of its personnel had disappeared. This was Colonel Hancock's 1st Battalion of Royal Fusiliers from the Twenty-fourth Division--an object-lesson to all who saw it as to how discipline can outlast the most terrific tests which a soldier can be asked to endure. [Sidenote: Nineteenth Corps. March 28.]