MORNING SERIAL

WE marched through Mormal Forest, where, so the civilians had told us, British prisoners had been working for years cutting down trees. There was a railway running through it and also good roads. We crossed the Sambre River over a pontoon bridge our engineers had built. The enemy were still retiring back in a soldier-like manner. All bridges had been destroyed and all cross roads were now mine craters. We arrived at a place named Aulnoye. There was a railway junction at this place and hundreds of small mines had been dug up from underneath the metals. Not very far from the railway station had been a huge German workshop, which was now in ruins. The civilians told us that during the early part of the night three weeks previously our big bombing planes had come over and dropped their bombs on it and also on a German leave train which was getting ready to leave: train, troops and workshop had been destroyed and the explosions had been so terrific that hardly a pane of glass was left in the village. CHAPTER XXVII: THE ARMISTICE ON the morning of November 11th, just before we left the house we were staying in, a small enemy shell crashed through the roof, but nobody was hit. We advanced about a mile out of the village and were halted behind some banks. On the right of us on the road was a cooker which had been badly knocked about, and laying alongside of it were the two dead cooks of another battalion in the Division. One of the last shells that the enemy had fired on this part of the Front had burst by them as they were moving along the road that morning.

We were ordered back to the village, where I met the architect, who was now a full corporal and attached to the Brigade Staff. He told me that all manner of yarns were flying around Brigade (where Colonel Cockburn who had recovered from his wound was now acting Brigadier) about Peace being proclaimed. He said that he knew for a fact that orders had been given to our artillery to cease fire and await orders. Shortly after, the official news came through that the Armistice had been proclaimed.