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I should have made a good film actor that day: "Dick Turpin's ride to York" in two reels. I reached the turning off the high road all right, and pursued my wild career down the lanes which led to the Colonel's headquarters. The road wound about in a most ridiculous way, making salients out of ploughed fields on either side. I decided to throw all prudence to the winds, and cut across these.
Philip stands about 700 yards higher up the river than Fort Jackson; the river at this point is about 800 yards wide, and the distance between the nearest salients of the main works is about 1,000 yards. A vessel attempting to run the gauntlet of the batteries would be under fire while passing over a distance of three and a half miles.
In these variegated beds there are many deep recesses and sharp salients, everywhere set with crags, and the wall is buttressed by a steep talus in many places. In the sheen of the midday sun, these rocks, which are besprinkled with quartz crystals, gleam like walls of diamonds. A climb of 800 feet over the variegated beds and the foot of the cliff sandstone is reached.
As the crow flies, the length of this line, from the Gulf of Riga to the Rumanian border was six hundred and twenty miles. Actually, counting its many turns and twists and salients, it covered more than seven hundred and fifty miles. From the Gulf to the Pripet River the eastern front was held by German troops with one single exception.
But in utter amazement they found that we had captured these fine pieces of heavy political artillery and that through them we had acquired and taken over some of the most valuable political salients in the state. A little incident in the campaign is worth reciting.
Men who came back from it spoke in whispers of its generalship and staff work, and said things which were dangerous to speak aloud, cursing their fate as fighting-men, asking of God as well as of mortals why the courage of the soldiers they led should be thrown away in such a muck of slaughter, laughing with despairing mirth at the optimism of their leaders, who had been lured on by a strange, false, terrible belief in German weakness, and looking ahead at unending vistas of such massacre as this which would lead only to other salients, after desperate and futile endeavor.
Human character is really not so profoundly difficult, if you resolutely try to see life from the other person's standpoint. That done, you can help them and yourself through them." "People who show you their edges, instead of their rounds, are not at all agreeable," said Miss Ironsyde. "To conquer the salients of character is often a very formidable task."
W. Gordon McCabe before the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia November 2, 1876 speaking of this event, he says: "From the mysterious paragraphs in the Northern papers, and from reports of deserters, though those last were vague and contradictory, Lee and Beauregard suspected that the enemy was mining in front of some one of the three salients on Beauregard's front, and the latter officer had in consequence directed counter-mines to be sunk from all three, meanwhile constructing gorge-lines in the rear upon which the troops might retire in case of surprise or disaster.... But the counter- mining on the part of the Confederates was after a time discontinued, owing to the lack of proper tools, the inexperience of the troops in such work, and the arduous nature of their service in the trenches."
Relying on their machine-gun and rifle fire to overcome the Americans' resistance, the enemy's artillery had been drawn into the deepening salients; but in spite of all-day fighting the straggling line had held. After a few questions from Durwent they relapsed into silence, gazing at the undulating expanse of country revealed by the ascending sun. 'Selwyn. Dick cleared his throat nervously.
After luncheon, we go into the next room to look at the General's big maps which show clearly how the salients run, the smaller and the larger, from which the Germans are falling back, followed closely by the troops of General Gough. News of the condition of the enemy's abandoned lines is coming in fast. "Let no one make any mistake.
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