Sir John French wasted no time. Saturday night, September
12, 1914, was a night of labor for engineers and gunners. The bridge
trains belonging to the First and Second Army Corps were ordered
to the edge of the river at daybreak, and as soon as the first
gleam of dawn appeared in the sky, the heroic effort began.
At the risk of seeming a little detailed, in order to understand
the somewhat involved maneuvers by which the British won the crossing
of the Aisne, instead of dealing with the advance of the British army
as a unit, in the manner that was done in discussing the battles of
the Marne, their activities will be shown as army corps: the Third
Army Corps to the westward, under General Pulteney; the Second Army
Corps, under Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, and the First Army Corps
to the eastward, under Sir Douglas Haig, all, of course, under
the general direction of Sir John French.
The British had no means of knowing what was in front of them.
There was only one way to find out--a way, alas, often costly,
a way that in every campaign costs thousands of lives apparently
fruitlessly, and that is a frontal attack. Down over the slopes of
the southern bank, into the bright, smiling river valley, where the
little white villages in the distance were hiding their dilapidated
state, marched the British army. Not a sign of activity showed
itself upon the farther shore. A summer haze obscured objects at
a distance, but, shortly before nine o'clock, the German batteries
opened fire with a roar that was appalling.
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