This splendid division has had some injustice done to it, since it was the one Regular division in France {280} in 1914 which was somewhat invidiously excluded from the very special and deserved honours which were showered upon "the first seven divisions." But even in 1914 it had done splendid work, and as to its performance in the following years, and especially in 1918, when it was annihilated twice over, it will live for ever, not only in the records of the British Army, but in that of the French, by whose side it fought in the direst crisis and darkest moment of the whole campaign. There were no further movements of importance on the front of the Eighth Corps, and the completion of their history covers the whole operation of Horne's First Army in this final phase of the war. It was indeed a strange freak of fate that this general, who commanded the guns of the right wing at Mons in that momentous opening battle, should four and a half years later be the commander who brought his victorious British Army back to that very point. [Illustration: Allied Advance in the North] {281} CHAPTER XI OPERATIONS OF THE SECOND AND FIFTH ARMIES September 28-November 11 King Albert in the field--Great Belgo-Franco-British advance--The last act on the old stage--The prophet of 1915--Renewed advance--Germans desert the coast--Relief of Douai and Lille--The final stage of the subsidiary theatres of war. We have followed the operations of the three southern British Armies from the first blow on August 8--a blow which Ludendorff has stated made him surrender the last hope of ultimate victory--through all their uninterrupted progress of victory until the final armistice. We shall now turn to the northern end of the British line, where the two remaining Armies, the Fifth in the Nieppe district and the Second in the area of Ypres, were waiting impatiently for their share in the advance. Flanders was a convalescent home for divisions, and there was not a unit there which was not stiff with half-healed wounds, but these Armies included many of the grand old formations which had borne the stress of the long fight, and they were filled with the desire to join in the final phase. Their chance came at last, though it was a belated one. [Sidenote: July.]