So the Yeomanry, too, before war’s end, had their fill of fighting in the front line, and, alike in honours and casualties, through all the phases of their experience, as Divisional Cavalry, as Corps Cavalry, and as Dismounted Troops, they bore themselves with conspicuous bravery and with not less conspicuous self-sacrifice. They were content to do the task set before them, when, owing to causes beyond control, they could not do the task for which they had been trained, and neither in the West Riding nor beyond it will their splendid record be allowed to fade. Not inappropriately it happened that the IInd Corps of the Second Army[124] was chosen to form part of the Army of the Rhine. The Yorkshire Dragoons were detailed to act as Advance Guard to the Infantry of the 9th, 29th and 41st Divisions; and ‘consequently,’ we read, ‘in most of the towns and villages through which they passed, they were the first British troops which the inhabitants saw. The march through Belgium was a triumphal progress.’ But we must not anticipate the day of triumph, amply as the Yeomen had contributed to it. The battles of 1918 have still to be won, and we return at this point to the interval called by exhaustion after the First Battle of the Lys. CHAPTER XV THE LAST HUNDRED DAYS I.—THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE The force of the German onslaughts of March 21st and April 9th, 1918, had been spent beyond hope of renewal on the fronts in which they occurred. On the Lys, as, a month earlier, on the Somme, and more necessarily because of the further month’s exhaustion, time had to be taken to reorganize, to recuperate, and to recommence; and the time taken by the enemy was time given to the Allies. How admirably they employed it in May, June and the first part of July does not fall within the province of the present chronicler. It happened that it was not till July 20th that the Territorial Infantry from the West Riding entered into action since May on any considerable scale. Accordingly, we may pass over the interval. We may pass over the dispatch of the IXth Corps, commanded by Sir A. Hamilton Gordon, and consisting of the 8th, 21st, 25th and 50th Divisions, all of which had had their full share of fighting, to join the Sixth French Army on the Aisne. The intention was, to give them a chance of rest in a section unlikely to be busy; the effect was to give them a worse experience in the sudden battles about Reims than they had endured on the Somme or on the Lys. How they acquitted themselves is best told in the noble language of the French Army Commander, General Maistre, in his farewell letter (July 3rd) to General Hamilton Gordon: