It should be remembered, too, that he massed his main strength against the British, for there, if anywhere, he must stand, since Haig was marching straight for Namur and the one narrow door still open to his frontiers. In especial he dared not weaken his artillery on that section, and Haig had to face the bulk of the dwindling complement of German guns. The shelling in those days seemed to many who had fought through the War to be the heaviest they had encountered. The South African Field Ambulance, which, under Lieutenant-Colonel Pringle and Major M. B. Power,[27] did magnificent work at that stage (it equalled its old record, for it was not in human power to surpass it), had a difficult task because of the steady German shell fire, which searched out all the back areas. As the advance grew faster, it became hard to keep up with the infantry, and to bring back the wounded expeditiously by ruined roads and broken bridges over distances unknown in the previous history of the campaign. [Sidenote: _Nov. 2-4._] [Sidenote: _Nov. 7-9._] On 2nd November the South African Brigade moved forward from Serain. That day Valenciennes fell to the Canadians under Horne, and next day the German retreat increased its pace. By Monday the 4th, Pershing, who in three days had advanced twelve miles, had the southern railway at Montmédy and Longuyon under his fire. That bolt-hole had been closed. The time had come for Foch, as it came to Wellington on the evening of Waterloo, to give the signal for “everything to go in.” On the 4th Haig attacked on the thirty-mile front between Valenciennes and the Sambre, and by the next day the Forest of Mormal was behind him. The enemy’s resistance was finally broken, and his armies were not in retreat but in flight, with their two wings for ever separated. Through the fifty-mile pocket between Avesnes and Mézières the whole German forces in the south must squeeze if they would make good their escape, and the gap was hourly narrowing. Mangin and Guillaumat were close on Hirson, Gouraud and Pershing were approaching Mézières, and Haig had the Sambre valley as an avenue to Namur. Moreover, Foch had still his trump card to play, the encircling swing of a new American army north of Metz to cut off the enemy from his home bases. If a negotiated armistice did not come within the week, there would be a _de facto_ armistice of collapse and surrender. On the 7th Byng was in Bavai, and on the 8th in front of Maubeuge. That day Rawlinson took Avesnes, and on the 9th the Guards entered Maubeuge, while farther north Condé and Tournai were in our hands. On the 6th Gouraud was in Rethel, and on the 7th Pershing was in the western skirts of Sedan. On the 6th the German delegates, Erzberger and his colleagues, left Berlin on their embarrassed journey to Foch’s headquarters. On the 9th came the revolution in Berlin, and the formation of a Council of National Plenipotentiaries under Ebert. Next day the