The temporary pontoon bridge the Engineers had put up, further down the river, had just been blown up by a shell, and the only way for me was the canvas raft which, by chance, might still be intact.
Captain Robert Dolbey – describing his passage across the Aisne.
At 4.30am on 11 September, after completing their mammoth task of bridging the Marne at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, the officers and men of 9/Field Company together with their weary contemporaries in 7/Field Company were told to lift their bridging equipment and move to the head of the 4th Division column in order to be available to bridge the Aisne should it be necessary. It was another case of divisional staff officers writing out orders and expecting them to take effect immediately. The sappers were quite used to this by now, during the retreat orders and counter-orders had, on more than one occasion, placed them in some considerable danger. More to the point perhaps, was that often many of these orders were very confusing and despite the high level of complaints from senior RE officers, the staff at divisional level still failed to align the vital work of bridging with the movement of troops.
As Lieutenant Bernard Young and his colleagues well knew, marching with all their equipment to catch up with and then attempt to pass the divisional column was ‘no light undertaking’. Not only did they have to share the road with numerous motorised supply columns, which inevitably overtook them and then met them again on their return journey, but also there were also ambulance convoys to pass before they came into contact with the main body of marching troops which made up the 4th Division. A division on the march in 1914 occupied some 15 miles of road and included over 5,000 horses and seventy or more artillery pieces – and that was without including the slow-moving divisional ammunition column which took up another one and a half miles of road. Add to this sundry other forms of transport which seemed to attach itself to divisional columns and which contributed to, ‘making life extremely difficult for everyone’ and some perception of the task facing the engineers begins to emerge. Is it any wonder that Young later suggested – rather politely in the circumstances – that the bright spark who had opined that, ‘bridging equipment should be kept well to the rear and rushed up in lorries when wanted,’ should have tried the exercise for himself, particularly as lorries never seemed to be available!
Young’s exasperation at finding himself at the rear of the column was not an experience generally shared by the cavalry. During the advance to the Aisne the cavalry corps was usually at the forefront of any action and in the bad weather preceding the crossing of the Aisne itself – with the RFC effectively grounded at Saponay– the cavalry was the only means GHQ had of knowing exactly where the enemy were. William Read recorded his frustration at being grounded by poor weather, ‘low heavy clouds all day, heavy rain from 1pm onwards’. Twenty four hours later he described the damage caused to the squadron’s aircraft after a particularly violent storm on the night of the 12 September. ‘A sudden squall got up and turned over five BE’s and two Henri’s. They were all badly smashed up. Sheckleton’s [Second Lieutenant Alexander Sheckleton] machine was making love to Fuller’s – one was found leaning against the other’. Four aircraft of 5 Squadron were completely destroyed and over half the machines belonging to 3 Squadron ‘turned turtle’ and were badly damaged. One Henri Farman was blown 30 feet into the air and deposited on top of another and Lieutenant Louis Strange only saved his Henri Farman by pushing it up against a haystack, laying a ladder over the front skids, and piling large stones on the ladder. When daylight eventually dawned there were probably not more than ten machines serviceable.
Bad weather or not, as the BEF pressed ever closer towards the Aisne valley it was essential to have good intelligence on the state of the numerous known crossing points over the river ahead. Along the front facing the BEF – from Bourg to Vénizel – there were seven road bridges, an aqueduct and a railway bridge. Unbelievably none of the divisional staffs, apart from that of the 1st Division, appear to have ordered a technical reconnaissance to be carried out by RE officers ahead of the main body of troops. RE officers did carry out a token reconnaissance of the Bourg bridges on 13 September on orders from 1st Division HQ, not that that made a shred of difference to the overall bridging strategy which subsequently evolved. It is true there was a field squadron with the cavalry division – and this could have been used more effectively – but this hardly exonerates the lack of foresight. Had there been more forethought and consultation with senior RE officers, the heavy bridging equipment could have been directed to the crossing points where they were most needed. As it was it was a further twenty-four hours after the first troops arrived on the Aisne before the first bridging train arrived – more of which later.
Pressed into a 15 mile front, the Cavalry Division and Douglas Haig’s I Corps were allocated the crossings at Bourg, Pont Arcy and Chavonne, General Gough’s Cavalry Brigade and II Corps at Vailly, Condé and Missy and III Corps at Vénizel and Soissons. Apart from the realization that most, if not all, of these bridging points would inevitably be targeted by German demolition teams, the British sappers would have immediately recognized the difficulties posed by the Canal Latéral which ran parallel to a good deal of the river’s course on its southern bank. To cross the river east of Condé, the crossings over the canal had first to be secured – providing of course they had not been demolished. The passage of the Aisne was not going to be easy.
Although some of the units of the BEF now heading towards the Aisne valley would have already had a fleeting introduction to its geography during the retreat, it would have been the steep march in the August heat which took them out of the valley towards the Marne that most of the men would have remembered. Now, with the boot on the other foot, there was a fresh opportunity to assess the task which confronted them. Major John Mowbray, the brigade major of the 2nd Divisional Artillery had no illusions about the difficulties which the BEF faced:
‘The country on both sides of the river between Soissons and Craonne consists of high ground some 250 – 300 feet above the valley bottom. The direction of the Aisne is east to west – the main valley being about 1 mile in width. The valley bottoms are partly wooded and the slopes are almost entirely wooded with dense copses in which progress is difficult. One notable feature is a layer of limestone running at a height of about 200 feet above the valley which had been drawn upon for building stone resulting in numerous quarries and natural caves. The Aisne is about the size of the Thames at Oxford and unfordable. A feature is the canal running along the valley with a branch to the Oise at Bourg, passing the ridge north of the Aisne through a tunnel. The canal is also an unfordable obstacle. The watershed between the valley and the country further north is a continuous ridge of about 300 feet above the valley stretching from Soissons to Craonne along which runs the Chemin de Dames. From this ridge the plateau extends down in fingers.’42
The fingers were in fact a series of spurs projecting south towards the river from the Chemin des Dames ridge. Running left to right from Crouy to Bourg – a linear distance of approximately 15 miles – some nine spurs of varying size projected down towards the river. It was these spurs which were the key to gaining the Chemin des Dames ridge as Mowbray’s professional eye was quick to establish. His diary betrays his concerns as to the difficulties this valley would pose should the Germans decide to make a stand on the northern heights along the Chemin des Dames. In estimating the distance between the two ridges on either side of the valley as about 6 miles, he recognized that, ‘any point in the valley can be observed from the Chemin de Dames ridge, as can most of the spurs and valleys and be very exposed to artillery fire. The whole position on the river lends itself to artillery fire from the northern side.’ In addition he quickly and correctly weighed up the difficulties infantry and artillery would have in advancing up the numerous spurs and side valleys, ‘all of these positions’, he felt, ‘were exposed to cross fire’ and were, ‘tenable only with great difficulty.’
It would very soon become clear that the width of the valley and the wooded nature of the slopes severely handicapped artillery batteries in finding suitable positions from which to mount any form of counter-battery fire or indeed support the advancing infantry. The standard 18-pounder gun used by the Royal Field Artillery found the German guns beyond range and the thickly-wooded slopes prevented artillery observers from spotting German batteries with any degree of accuracy, or, in some cases, the British infantry formations they were attempting to support. Initially it was only the heavy 60-pounder guns which could make an impression until the field artillery batteries were able to cross the river behind the infantry. Even then the difficulty in locating suitable firing positions proved a continual headache for battery commanders.
In the absence of the RFC, intelligence on the river crossings was left largely to cavalry reconnaissance, one such patrol of the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars (4/Hussars) which was dispatched on 12 September to gather information on the Vailly and Condé river bridges, found themselves up against a German rearguard still on the south bank of the river. The Hussars were now under the leadership of Major Phillip Howell who had assumed command after Lieutenant Colonel Ian Hogg had been fatally wounded during the rearguard action in the forest north of Villers-Cotterêts eleven days previously.43 Hard pressed by the pursuing Germans, the regiment was forced to leave its mortally wounded commanding officer behind in the care of the regimental medical officer near the hamlet of Haramont.
Here, as had happened at Villers-Cotterêts, the Hussars found themselves up against a larger force, but this time they were in no mood to retire. Galloping under shell fire along the narrow approach road to the bridge at Vailly they came under fire on their right flank from German cavalry ensconced in the nearby Château de Bois Morin. With the question as to whether the bridge and its immediate area was occupied now answered, and never one to avoid a fight, Captain John Gatacre led C Squadron in a spirited attack down the length of the winding road to the chateau effectively driving off the Germans who vanished in the direction of the bridge. Howell was later able to report to brigade HQ that:
‘Gatacre’s squadron (‘C’) comfortably established north end of wood near bridge with two maxims. Bridge appears to be intact and is only about 500 yards from Gatacre. Uhlan patrols attempting to cross have been driven back and except a few men cut off and still wandering about woods, I doubt if any Germans are south of the river in this quarter.’44
The bridge observed by Gatacre’s men was most likely the canal bridge, as the road bridge spanning the river was certainly not intact by that time as 56/Field Company was soon to discover. However Gatacre’s assessment of the Condé Bridge – a mile and a half downstream of Vailly – was correct. The bridge was found to be intact and very strongly held at the northern end, to which any approach was greeted with a hail of well directed machine-gun fire. As darkness fell that night Gatacre and his men were bivouacked on the banks of the river but it would be another day before the marching columns of I and II Corps heading north in the pouring rain would arrive.
Nevertheless, on the left flank of the BEF, the advance guard of the 4th Division had already arrived. At 1.00pm on 12 September Brigadier General Aylmer Haldane and 10 Infantry Brigade were directed to take the high ground above Septmonts and reconnoitre the bridge at Vénizel. According to Haldane’s diary the bridge was approached by a patrol of 16/Lancers who reported it had been damaged by the enemy – exactly how and to what extent was unclear. This was reported to Brigadier General Wilson, the acting divisional commander, who, at the time, was standing with Haldane on the heights above Septmonts watching, ‘a considerable body of German troops and transport moving northeast along the Laon road’.
That evening the daylight faded quickly as a canopy of rain cloaked the river valley, masking the arrival of the forward units of the 4th Division into Billy-sur-Aisne. Working on his own initiative, Major Charles Wilding, commanding 2/Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, sent two of his rifle companies down to the bridge at Vénizel, their appearance prompting the German engineers to blow the charges they had prepared on the bridge. The Inniskilling war diary does not note the exact time of this incident but it was after dark and there is a note that the detonation was only partially successful and that a second attempt to blow the remaining charges by the German unit on the bridge was prevented. After this encounter the battalion moved back north of Billy.
There is understandably some confusion as to when the various movements on and around the bridge took place. The three brigades of Wilson’s 4th Division were being funnelled into the Aisne crossing at Vénizel in the pouring rain, each brigade ostensibly undertaking its own reconnaissance of the bridge and divisional staff clearly not getting to grips with the logistics of movement.45 Haldane’s record of the 16/Lancers reporting the bridge damaged during the late afternoon on 12 September does conflict somewhat with the Inniskilling war diary account but fortunately the Royal Engineers’ historian is a little more precise and places Captain Francis Westland of 9/Field Company on the bridge sometime after 8.00pm on 12 September.
Westland found that only two of the demolition charges had gone off and, in his opinion, the bridge would take the weight of an infantry brigade providing they crossed in single file, thus suggesting the encounter on the bridge by Wilding’s men occurred a little earlier. The Official History also tells us that ‘after dark’ Captain Roe of the Inniskillings removed the remaining fuses by torchlight and that German units were entrenched on the opposite bank. Whether this was actually undertaken by Roe or by Westland is not known but what is not in doubt is that by dawn on 13 September Hunter-Weston’s 11 Infantry Brigade had received its orders, crossed the Aisne using the Vénizel bridge and was in position above Bucy-le-Long.
The main body of 9/Field Company arrived at Septmonts at 9.00am on 13 September, ‘We had considerable trouble getting the pontoons up to Septmonts’, recalled Bernard Young, ‘the mud had begun to give us a foretaste of what the winter of 14/15 was to be, and our horses were pretty much done up’. His new commanding officer, Major Desmond Hoysted, having joined the unit on the road near Montigny, was now faced with the task of building a pontoon bridge over the now swollen Aisne. Hoysted was replacing Major John Barstow who had been killed during the retreat whilst attempting to blow the bridge at Bailly on 30 August. Killed during an ambush by a cavalry patrol from the German Guard Cavalry Division, Barstow’s body had been left behind as the sappers had beat a hasty retreat. Hoysted was an experienced engineer and no stranger to active service – he had commanded 26/Field Company in South Africa during the Second Boer War – and realizing the urgency of establishing a safe crossing over the river – he and his sappers set about constructing a pontoon bridge alongside the damaged one. Bernard Young recalled that the bridge was:
‘Started at noon and finished at 5.00pm; 190 feet in all, three trestles, four pontoons and the remainder made with barrel piers from a convenient oil depot nearby and a superstructure from the village … As far as we could tell we were in sight of the enemy; in any case, the bridge proper, 50 yards upstream, was on the map; nevertheless these bridges were never hit by the enemy, though he was sufficiently persistent in all his attempts to hit them.’46
The road bridge was made safe and repaired in time for 12 Infantry Brigade to cross on the morning of 13 September by Lieutenant Giffard Le Quesey Martel and a troop of sappers using, ‘a few Heath Robinson iron flats and bolts and a handy steel-work telegraph pole’.
Three miles upstream at Missy-sur-Aisne, Major George Walker and the sappers of 59/Field Company were faced with a far more difficult task. The company arrived at Serches early on 13 September and after successfully descending the long hill down to Ciry without attracting fire from the opposite bank, Walker despatched Lieutenant James Pennycuick ahead to reconnoitre the road bridge. Walker then continued on to the railway station with the remainder of the company to forage for material which might be of use in rebuilding the bridge at Missy should it be required. At 3.00pm Walker was contacted by Lieutenant Colonel Arundel Martyn commanding the 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Royal West Kents (1/RWK), who had arrived with the battalion the previous evening. Martyn explained that his battalion had been ordered to attack and cross the bridge at all costs which was believed to be intact. This information had apparently been provided by a party of 4th Divisional Cyclists which it seemed, had seized the bridge at 1.00am but had been driven off by superior numbers soon afterwards. The cyclists were plainly working in isolation from the patrol of West Kents, led by Lieutenant Moulton-Barrett, which had succeeded in getting to within 150 yards of the bridge sometime during the early hours of 13 September and despite losing a senior NCO had at least ascertained that both banks were being held by a German rearguard but could shed no further light on the material state of the bridge.
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before Lieutenant Pennycuick’s reconnaissance of the bridge – which had been carried out using field glasses in daylight – served to confirm Walker’s initial fears. Two of the three spans of the bridge had been demolished and the river was too deep to ford. It was, commented Walker drily, ‘a nice job for a field company with nothing but what they carried in tool carts’. Conveying this information to Colonel Martyn, the West Kent’s had little alternative but to push on to the river as ordered and see for themselves. In what was described as, ‘a bad day for us’ by Lieutenant William Palmer, the OC of C Company, Colonel Martyn deployed B and C Companies in the woods on either side of the road leading to the bridge in support of D Company which had the task of taking the bridge if it was indeed intact. William Palmer watched with some apprehension from the cover of the wooded bank as D Company advanced over the flat, featureless ground which led to the bridge. With no indication of the strength of the enemy rearguard, Captain Frank Fisher and Lance Corporal William Atkins went on ahead but were met with a fusillade of rifle and machine-gun fire, Fisher was cut down immediately and Atkins only narrowly escaped a similar fate.
Despite the loss of their company commander, the advance continued in the face of heavy fire from the far bank – but not without casualties. No. 6 Platoon not only lost their officer, Lieutenant Horatio Vicat, but also their platoon NCO, Sergeant William Burr. Frank Fisher had only been promoted to captain a few weeks earlier on 5 August and had survived Mons, Le Cateau and the retreat, whereas 29-year-old Horatio Vicat, who had only joined the battalion at Tournan on 4 September, served just nine days before losing his life.47 Their loss was a grievous blow to the battalion and merely added to the lengthening casualty list of twelve officers already killed or wounded in the four weeks since the battalion had embarked for France. That evening saw the battalion in control of the southern bank which enabled Major Matthew Buckle of the West Kents and Major Walker to examine the bridge in more detail. As Walker wrote after the war, with one complete span of the bridge destroyed, ‘nothing could be done to make it fit to cross in under two or three days’.
With the bridging train still a day’s march away, and faced with the urgency of getting troops across the river, there was little alternative but to try and get the infantry across the river using makeshift rafts. By 5.00pm the German rearguard had been driven off the damaged bridge by the West Kents and 59/Field Company began ferrying the men of 13 Brigade across the river, an operation which took most of the night to accomplish. It was at this hotly contested crossing that Captain William Johnston and Lieutenant Robert Flint spent much of the next day under fire ferrying ammunition across one way and wounded the other. Major Walker later commented:
‘When I got near him [Johnston] he signalled me not to approach. He and Flint were working the raft to and fro … I sat down under cover with Pennycuick and a few men ready to assist and so we spent the day …Johnston and Flint continued this work until 7pm when they were relieved, quite worn out. Johnston received a VC for this and Flint a DSO. I was able to recommend them personally as I saw it all.’48
At 11.00am on 13 September the sappers of 17/Field Company arrived further downstream at Moulin des Roches and began ferrying 14 Brigade across the river. Second Lieutenant Kenneth Godsell described the night’s activity:
‘On reaching the river we discovered a boat on the far side and a Sapper of my section stripped, swam across, and fetched it back. It was discovered later that there was nobody in front of us and the Germans were holding an entrenched position on the hills just the other side of Missy. By 12 o’clock No. 2 Section had made a pontoon raft and had started ferrying the infantry across. We got 53 men on to the pontoon raft and nine in the boat. Each trip took 8 minutes if the party to board were ready on the bank. Later we constructed a landing bay each side by using the Weldon Trestles which accelerated boarding and reduced the time per trip to 6 minutes. The actual place of crossing was most convenient as it was where a track, which crossed the railway by a level crossing, ran into the tow path along the river bank. The point was sheltered from observation by a belt of trees and a small copse.’49
Godsell estimated that, ‘the river at this point was some 70 yards wide and flowed at a good rate’, but any hopes of a rest were soon dispelled when the advance guard of 15 Brigade arrived at 11.30pm. ‘We found ourselves on the bank’, wrote Edward Gleichen, ‘with a darker shadow splashing backwards and forwards over the river in our front, and some RE officers talking in whispers’. Godsell’s diary records an exhausting night with the last man of 15 Brigade crossing just before 6.30am the next morning. ‘It was’, he felt, ‘a very wet night but we were too busy to notice it’.
At Vailly, Second Lieutenant Cyril Martin from 56/Field Company and Major Henderson the officer commanding the 57th, soon discovered that the bridge over the Canal Latéral was undamaged but in contrast the river bridge boasted but a single plank spanning a rather precarious looking gap. Despite making a wide detour to avoid being spotted by German infantry from IR13 on the far bank, Henderson was hit in the elbow by enemy fire. Martin sent Henderson back ‘with the man we had with us and then made a rough sketch of the bridge’ and headed back to lodge his report. On returning to the bridge to see if the gap was safe enough to traverse by infantry, Martin managed to jump across and secure the plank. ‘It was a pretty warm time as the Germans were firing from quite close’. Martin’s apparent lack of concern for his own safety had already been demonstrated at Le Cateau, where he won a DSO. He would be noticed again in April 1915 when his stubborn refusal to give up a captured trench resulted in the award of the Victoria Cross. The bridge, Martin felt, was probably not going to take the weight of an infantry brigade, but after a personal inspection by Hubert Hamilton, commanding the 3rd Division, 8 Brigade was ordered to cross the river using the bridge.50
What followed was a repeat of the Vénizel experience, a single plank spanned the breach in the road bridge and the Royal Irish and Royal Scots began crossing at 3.00pm on 13 September. Being daylight they were under continual shell fire from German batteries, both battalions taking casualties, however, by 6.00pm they had established themselves around Vailly: the Royal Irish east of St-Pierre and the Scots at Vauxcelles Château, a mile or so northwest of Vailly. That night 9 Brigade followed on using the same precarious plank whilst 56 and 57/Field Companies began the task of erecting a pontoon bridge across the river, completing their task by 3.00am on 14 September.
Further east, the approach to Bourg lay across two canal bridges and a road bridge which crossed the river itself. An initial cavalry reconnaissance reported the village clear of enemy troops but when Lieutenant Robert Featherstonehaugh and a troop of B Squadron, 4/Dragoon Guards arrived, they were met with a hail of gun fire from well entrenched German infantry along the canal bank. Similarly, when A Squadron approached the bridges at Villiers – which had both been destroyed – the canal bank was found to be occupied by an enemy rearguard. Fortunately the two canal bridges at Bourg were intact and taken by the dragoons under heavy fire. Given the task confronting them, casualties were extraordinarily light: only one officer and three men killed. When 28-year-old Captain Gerald ‘Pat’ Fitzgerald, the machine – gun officer, went down with a bullet between the eyes, Arthur Osburn, the regimental medical officer was only yards away: ‘Fitzgerald was unconscious when I got to him, his wound no bigger than a blue pencil mark in the centre of his forehead. Then in a moment he was gone’.51 Once across the canals it became apparent that although the road bridge had been destroyed, the aqueduct carrying the canal over the river was intact. Apart from an ‘uncomfortable quarter of an hour’, when the cavalrymen were caught in crossfire, Osburn recorded his relief in watching the defending German rearguard being the subject of some accurate shell fire and eventually retreating towards the wooded slopes of the high ground to the north.
Just upstream of the Bourg bridges 2 Cavalry Brigade crossed the river using the hand-drawn ferry where, despite the obvious dangers from gunfire, the ferry boy was still at work, a deed which impressed Second Lieutenant Jock Marden, an officer with A Squadron, 9/Lancers:
‘6.25, orders to move at once – off in a confusion at 6.35 then we attack Bourg and the crossings of the Aisne and parallel canal – the furthest bridge of the two having been blown up. We go to the right and cross by 6s in a ferry under an irritating sniper’s fire from a church tower. Gave the ferry boy a franc for courage.’52
With the cavalry across the river, the waiting infantry and artillery units which were gathering south of the Canal Latéral began moving to join them. Lieutenant Evelyn Needham had been on the road since 4.00am with his company of 1st Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment and arrived south of Bourg to find, ‘the cavalry and artillery hotly engaged with the enemy on the far side of the river’.53 Glad of the rest they were held up for three or four hours before the order to advance saw the battalion crossing the aqueduct. ‘Oddly enough’, wrote Needham, ‘I have no recollection of this crossing beyond the fact that we doubled across as fast as we could, so as to get under cover on the far side’. Second Lieutenant James Hyndson who crossed with B Company, 1st Battalion Loyal North Lancashire Regiment (1/Loyals), noticed, ‘strong barricades and disguised trenches abandoned by the enemy which, if held, would certainly have cost us casualties’. Corporal J N Perks, a motorcycle rider with the 1st Signal Company, remembered his crossing over the aqueduct vividly:
‘The Germans had obviously though we might try and cross this way and had tried to blow up the viaduct but had only succeeded in blowing a small hole in the towpath which engineers soon repaired with wooden faggots … the reason for the German failure was obvious, as lying by the side of the towpath were 3 dead Germans who had obviously been killed before they could finish the job.’54
Perks’ assessment of the German failure was almost certainly incorrect; there is no record of a German demolition party being killed and the dead Germans he saw were probably casualties of the earlier fighting. The aqueduct was a massive steel structure carrying the canal and would have required a considerable amount of explosive to destroy it, a task clearly beyond the resources of the German rearguard. After crossing the river on his Triumph Roadster, Perks was nearly pushed into the canal by an artillery brigade who took up most of the available road, ‘I only had a few feet to ride between the guns and the edge of the canal, and the towpath was awfully greasy’. To make matters worse just as he reached the junction with the main road – the modern day D88 – German gunners were beginning to get the range of the advancing troops: ‘Just in front of me a shell landed in front of a team of horses drawing a gun, killing the leaders but luckily not touching the drivers’.
Frederick Coleman, another of the RAC volunteer drivers, managed to get his vehicle over the aqueduct but almost came to grief in the rain on the muddy towpath attempting to drive up a steep slope. ‘No choice remained but to charge it at such speed as one could muster. Near the top the whirring wheels refused to bite and back the car slid towards the river’. Surrounded as he was by units of the 1st Division he eventually ‘crawled upwards’ and over the crest of the bank to join the advance north towards Vendresse. Also at Bourg, Corporal Cuthbert Avis of the 1/Queen’s Royal West Surreys remembered scrambling, ‘along girders of a destroyed bridge’ and advancing with his battalion in heavy rain up the slopes of the river bank. ‘It was an unlucky day’, he recorded, ‘when the battalion forced the passage of the river with a loss of nearly 100 killed and wounded’.
Meanwhile at Pont-Arcy, 11/Field Company began work on the road bridge which had only been partly destroyed, while a mile and a half upstream the sappers of 5/Field Company started construction of a pontoon bridge which was in use by 5.00pm that afternoon. One of the first battalions to cross the river at Pont-Arcy was 2/Connaught Rangers which, under fire, used the single girder that remained – albeit partly submerged – and took up positions on the north bank where they covered the crossing by the remainder of 5 Brigade over the pontoon bridge. The Connaughts had lost their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Abercrombie, at Le Grand Fayt on 26 August.55 Forced into fighting a rearguard action after the battalion’s strength was divided, Abercrombie and some 100 officers and men were ambushed as they entered the village, resulting in the eventual capture of the colonel and the majority of the party. The battalion, now under the command of Major William Sarsfield, was ordered into Soupir to take up positions on the northern and western outskirts of the village. At 1.00am Major Sarsfield – on his own initiative – moved the battalion up to La Cour de Soupir Farm which lay at the head of the valley through which the next day’s advance would take place. The Connaughts arrived at 5.30am on 14 September and found no sign of the enemy. They were less than 2 miles from the Chemin des Dames ridge.
Further downstream opposite Chavonne, 4 (Guards) Brigade, under the temporary command of Lieutenant Colonel Fielding, was assembled to begin crossing the canal at Cys-la-Commune. They had arrived late and it was not until noon that they were ready to cross. Notwithstanding the information that Chavonne was apparently only lightly held, the approaches to the village were distinctly hazardous for the infantryman. The 800 yard wide stretch of ground between the canal bridge at Cys and the river crossing at Chavonne was devoid of all cover and offered no protection to assaulting infantry. On the northern bank the partially wooded ground rose steeply from the river providing cover for a concealed enemy who had the benefit of excellent fields of fire over the whole area. If the village and the commanding heights above it were held in force and the rearguard determined to resist, a successful crossing would be very much in the balance.
With the three remaining battalions of the brigade in support, it fell to the 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards (2/Coldstream) to test the strength and resolve of the German rearguard. Captain Gilbert Follett and Number 2 Company soon came under heavy rifle and machine gun fire as he approached the canal bridge, prompting Lieutenant Colonel Pereira to send up two further companies to return fire from the canal bank. Watching the afternoon’s events from the high ground south of Cys was Major Lord Bernard Gordon Lennox and the men of 2/Grenadier Guards. He notes in his diary that, ‘after a couple of hours they [the Coldstream] ejected the Dutchmen [sic] who were seen scuttling up the hill and over the skyline’.56
The ‘scuttling’ retreat of the German rearguard had been encouraged by the combined firepower of shell fire from the guns of 71/Battery which scoured the ridge above Chavonne and the machine-gun section from 2/Grenadier Guards commanded by Lieutenant Hon. William Cecil which came into action by the canal bridge. By 4.00pm the Coldstream were on the river bank where a leaking boat found by Lance Corporal Albert Milward provided the transport for Number 3 Company to begin establishing themselves on the northern bank. The Coldstream war diary records the, ‘considerable opposition from hostile infantry and machine guns and at least a squadron of German cavalry’, which was met by the Coldstream’s Number 3 Company as it fought its way up onto the heights of Les Crinons above the village. Meanwhile the Grenadiers had begun crossing the river a mile or so east of Chavonne using what the regimental historian describes as, ‘three or four boats of doubtful buoyancy’. No doubt it was the onset of darkness and heavy rain which decided Colonel Fielding to withdraw the brigade – except the Coldstream Company established on Les Crinons – to the safety of St Mard and Cys for the nigh; a welcome alternative to a riverside bivouac. Bernard Gordon Lennox and his company officers were fortunate in that they:
‘Found an obliging farmer, whose daughter had come home from Paris for a fortnight’s holiday … she proved to be an awfully good cook and made us an excellent bouillon of vegetable followed by an equally excellent omelette …a pouring wet night and were glad to have a roof over our heads.’57
However, the logic as to why Fielding was ordered to withdraw his forces on the north bank remains a mystery, but the orders came directly from I Corps Headquarters. Had Fielding pushed his men over the river and continued the advance that night – as 2/Connaughts did – the stalemate which became synonymous with Cour de Soupir Farm may have had a more favourable outcome.
So by dawn on 14 September the Cavalry Division and the 1st Division were across the river and established between Paissy and Verneuil. Only 5 Infantry Brigade – plus one company of Coldstream at Chavonne – from the 2nd Division had crossed and were occupying a line running roughly from Verneuil to Soupir. Then there was a gap of some 5 miles where 8 and 9 Infantry Brigades were established at Vauxelles, before a further gap of 3 miles occurred – formed by the Condé salient. At Missy two battalions of 13 Brigade, the 1/Royal West Kents and 2/King’s Own Scottish Borderers were dug in together with 14 and 15 Brigades. Close by were the three brigades of the 4th Division occupying positions from St Marguerite to Crouy. South of the Aisne, and not yet across the river, were 4 and 6 Infantry Brigades at Veil Arcy, Cys and St Mard, 3 and 5 Cavalry Brigades and 7 Infantry Brigade at Braine, and the two missing battalions of 13 Brigade somewhere south of Missy. 19 Brigade were at Billy-sur-Aisne.
Both flanks of the BEF were in touch with their French counterparts. On the right General Conneau’s Cavalry Corps had fallen back on Jouvincourt in the face of strong enemy resistance, however, on Conneau’s right the French XVII Corps appeared to be having more success in their advance towards Corbeny and Craonne. On the left of the BEF, the French Sixth Army advance was held up at Soissons by the demolished bridges and heavy shell fire from the heights between Crouy and Vaurezis. The 55th Division had failed to advance beyond Cuffies and the 56th Division’s attempts to cross the Aisne at Pommiers had also resulted in failure. However, the 14th Division had crossed the river at Vic-sur-Aisne and part of the French IV Corps had completed a similar exercise at Berneuil. This piecemeal success was the first sign of the looming strategic nightmare which would halt the northward advance of the BEF and see the name Chemin des Dames pass forever into French consciousness and become part of Gallic military legend.