aphy of Thiepval-Sprays of bullets and blasts of artillery fire-"The day" of the New Army-The courage of civilized man-Fighting with a kind of divine stubborn

n our pulsebeats. By the same map on the table in the center of the room showing the plan of attack with its lines indicating the objectives we should learn how many of them had been gained. Th

must have reached their objective, as their signals had been seen. From La Boisselle southward the British had taken every objective. They were in Mametz and Montauban and ar

e press at home, less conscious then than now of the wonder of the situation. Downstairs the curé of the church next door was standing on the steps, an expecta

French?"

their ob

and rubbed his hands toget

eat m

And g

es

. I left him on the steps of the chur

k in the streets of the casualty clearing stations which had been empty yesterday. There were no idle ambulances now. They had passengers in green as well as in khaki. Th

mpared to the whole but when taken together making up the whole. The wounded in the Thiepval-Gommecourt sector spoke of having "crawled" ba

beyond the first-line trenches and at another of battalions whose survivors were back in their own trenches. He could hear one wounded man say: "It was too stiff, sir. There was n

ment of the whole arm, with the shoulder at Gommecourt and the fist swinging in at Montauban, crushing its way against those fortifications. It broke through for a distance of more than from the elbow to t

which were to become such a familiar sight on the battlefield. It was uphill all the way to Thiepval for the British. A river so-called, really a brook, the Ancre, runs at the foot of the slope and turns eastward beyond Thiepval, where a rid

unt of the offensive in this sector and every hour's delay in the attack was invaluable for their final preparations. Thiepval, Beaumont-Hamel and Gommecourt would not be yielded if there were any power of men or material at German command to ke

were snug in their refuges as the earth around trembled from the explosions. Those shell-threshed parapets of the first-line German trenches which appeared to represent complete destruction had not filled in all the doorways of dugouts which big shells had failed to reach.

ions to the southward swept forward according to plan and the guns' pioneering was successful, those on this front in many cases started from trenches already battered in by German shell fire.

s had survived in their positions in the débris of the trenches or had been mounted overnight and others appeared from manholes in front of the trenches. Sprays of bullets cut crosswise of the blasts of the German curtains of artillery fire. H

ism. This is the privilege of tried soldiers who have won victories and are secured by such an expression as, "If the Old Guard saw that it could

second nature of training and spirit. How officers had studied the details of their objectives on the map in order to recognize them when they were reached! How like drill it was the way that those human waves moved forward! But they were not waves for long in some instances, only survivors still advancing as if they wer

later; but in war all skill is based on such courage as these men showed that day. Those who sit in offices in times of peace and think otherwise had better be relieved. It is the precept that the German Army itself taught and practiced at Ypres and Verdun. On July 1st a questi

e men stabbed and bombed, fought to put out machine guns that were turned on them and so stay the tide c

July 1st went on their own feet driven by their own will toward their goals, without turning back. Surviving officers with objectives burned in their brains led the surviving men past the first-line trenches if the directions required this. "Theirs not to reason w

ons literally disappeared into the blue. I thought that the Germans might have taken a considerable number of prisoners, but not so. Those isolated lots who went on to their objective

re made; but where command was held over the line and the opposition was not of a variable kind counsel was taken of the impossible and retreat was ordered. That is, the units turned back t

had been knocked over by a German "krump" when he picked himself up;

or if the captor were, another Briton took charge of the prisoner. Persistently stubborn were the captors in holding on to prisoners who were trophies out of that inferno, and when a Briton was back in the first-line t

ly and steadily as at drill they entered the blanket of shell-smoke with its vivid flashes and hissing of shrapnel bullets and shell-fragments. Commanders, I fou

It did not occur to them that they had been beaten; they had been roughly handled in one round of a many-round fight. Had a German counter-attack developed they would have settled down, rifle in hand, to stall through the next round. And that young officer barely twenty, smiling thou

won a victory in battle. He rehearsed the details of preparation, which were the same in their elaborate care as those of corps which had succeeded; and he did not say that luck had been against him-indeed, he never once used the word-but

l had said that repulse was an incident of a prolonged operation in the initial stage, which sounded more professional but was no

ten and look on with the awe of one who feels that he is in the presence of immortal heroism. And an hour's motor ride