The mien of these unfortunates was wonderful. Here and there a woman sobbed as she walked, a man cursed his chance. For the most part, about the most incongruous of these little cavalcades there was the high dignity of sorrow and suffering stoically and nobly borne. In the course of the mid-day halt, details were as far as possible sent to their own units. In the 107th Brigade the 2nd Rifles, which had disappeared at Cugny, was reformed at about the strength of a large platoon. A company of the 15th Rifles, under Captain Miller, which had been a part of the first-formed battalion of details, was attached to the Brigade. The 109th Brigade formed small companies from the remnants of the 1st and 2nd Inniskillings. The fighting of March the 25th exhibited in lamentable fashion the difficulties that occur in a retreat when two armies, using different methods, speaking different languages, based upon different lines of communication, with different apprehensions preoccupying the minds of their commanders, are being forced back before a victorious and more powerful enemy. The French were retiring south-west; the British west. Sooner or later a gap was inevitable. It occurred on this evening, at Roye. The 62nd French Division, covered by the Potter and Eley Groups under General Brock, fought an admirable delaying action. The Germans did not reach Libermont till 4 p.m., nor was the Canal crossed by them till about 6 p.m. Thereafter the 62nd Division, its left flank turned by the German advance at Nesle, withdrew to the line of the Roye-Noyon Road. During the remainder of the retreat the 36th Division saw no more of the artillery which had been attached to it, nor of its own C.R.A. and staff. An account of their action with the French must be left till a little later in this narrative. The gap had formed, and in the early hours of the morning the enemy poured through Roye from the north-east, scarcely checked by the efforts of a French Cavalry Division, flung out upon a front of six miles. New French Divisions were about to detrain upon the Amiens-Montdidier Railway. If the Germans should strike home at that, a disaster far greater than any which the Allies had yet suffered would ensue. To close the gap there remained nothing but the remnants of the two original southern Divisions of the XVIII. Corps, the 36th and the 30th.