Most valuable of all was the knowledge that, with nearly all the chances against them, they had fought the enemy to a standstill. Despite a perilous gap in the thinned line of British troops, and despite the delays in filling it, the enemy had not broken through. The line was threatened on March 25th. It was constantly, almost continuously, assailed from the East, and, where disclosed, from the South. It still held on March 31st. Mistakes unavoidable in the medley were heroically repaired. Odd pockets of men, as we have seen—a thousand from the 19th Division behind Hébuterne, another thousand from the 41st about Gommecourt—showed incomparable resourcefulness. Sudden orders were given in emergency, and were carried out unerringly under darkness. Troops confidently expected in the afternoon arrived short of their destination after nightfall, and the intervals of time and place were filled up. The whole story of these days is a lesson in how not to yield, and the whole moral of it is contained in the fact that the end of the first phase of the Second Battle of the Somme was, at best, an incomplete German victory. They had not achieved what they had hoped, and, losing hope, they would lose all. So, Bucquoy is a name that shines in the war record of the 62nd Division. We leave them now, at the beginning of April, in Divisional Reserve, with their Headquarters at Pas, enjoying a well-earned respite from active operations, though under two hours’ notice to move: and we turn next to another part of the wide field, where the 49th Division, the First Line of the West Riding Territorials, bore its separate part in the grand defensive. CHAPTER XIII WITH THE 49TH IN THE VALLEY OF THE LYS I.—FIRST PHASE We reach a confused tract of warfare, punctuated, as ever, by noble deeds, through which we must strike a careful trail. In an Order, issued by Major-General Cameron, Commanding the 49th Division, and reviewing the period from April 10th to May 5th, 1918, upon which we are now to enter, the General drew attention to the fact that his Division had not been fighting as a whole. ‘In some ways it is sad,’ he wrote; ‘but the fact that we have been separated for a great part of the time has in no way diminished the credit of your achievements. Every part of the Division in its own sphere of action has done exceptionally well, and every part has earned high praise from Commanders outside the Division.’