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.

The Third Army Corps, after a brief artillery duel, advanced on Soissons to cover the work of the engineers who were building a pontoon bridge for the French troops.  The German fire was deadly, yet though more than half their men fell, the engineers put the pontoon bridge across.  German howitzer fire, from behind the ridge, however, soon destroyed the bridge.  The Turcos crossed the river in rowboats and had a fierce but indecisive struggle in the streets of the medieval city.  Meanwhile, with the failure of the pontoon bridge at Soissons, General Pulteney struck to the northeast along the road to Venizel.  The bridge at that point had been blown up, but the British sappers repaired it sufficiently to set the Eleventh Brigade across, and even, despite the lurid hail of shot and shell, four regiments gathered at Bucy-de-Long by one o’clock on that Sunday, September 13, 1914.  Over the heads of these courageous regiments towered the great hill of Vregny, a veritable Gibraltar of heavy guns with numerous machine guns along the wooded edge.  There was no protection, and no shelter against the terrible German Maxim fire, so that the moment came when to attempt further advance meant instant annihilation.  Still, under cover of the success of the Eleventh Brigade the engineers built a pontoon bridge at Venizel and the Twelth Brigade crossed to Bucy-de-Long, with a number of the lighter artillery.  As there was absolutely no shelter, to storm the height at that point was impossible, and to remain where they were was merely to court sudden death, so the Twelfth Brigade worked over the slopes to the ravine at Chipres, where they intrenched.

The task in front of the Second Army Corps was no less difficult.  The bridge at Conde was too strongly defended to be taken by assault, as Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien speedily found out, so he divided his forces into two parts, one of which was directed at the village of Missy, two and one half miles west of Conde, while the other concentrated its attack on a crossing at the town of Vailly, three miles east of Conde.  Both detachments made good their crossing, but the regiments that found themselves near Missy also realized that hasty, very hasty intrenchment was imperative, lest every one of them should be blown into kingdom come before half an hour had passed by.  During the night some troops were rafted over, three men at a time, and these encamped near Missy.  It was a false move.  For sixteen days thereafter the British troops had to remain in their dugouts, a large part of the time without food or water.  To show a head above the trench was sudden death.