United States or Bhutan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To the westward, above Schwaben Redoubt half a mile, the advance was nearly 1,000 yards. By St. Pierre Divion, along the valley of the Ancre itself, the advance was over 1,500 yards. Everywhere in this sector the British troops were successful. They gained in this offensive a stretch of 3,000 yards north of the Ancre to an average depth of about a mile.
Following this class came that of the Wittelsbach, including also the Wettin, Zähringen, Mecklenburg, and Schwaben, built between 1901 and 1903, displacing 11,643 tons, making 18 knots, protected with from 9 to 10 inches of armor and carrying a primary battery of four 9.4-inch guns, eighteen 5.9-inch guns, and a large secondary battery.
Our line runs across this Crucifix Valley in a strong sandbag barricade. The enemy line crosses it higher up in a continuation of the front line of the Schwaben. As soon as the lines are across the valley they turn sharply to the south at an important point. The Schwaben spur is like a thumb; Crucifix Valley is like the space between a thumb and a forefinger.
"; "Two unknown British heroes"; "An unknown British soldier"; "A dead Fritz." That gentle slope to the Schwaben is covered with such things. Passing these things, by some lane through the wire and clambering over the heaps of earth which were once the parapet, one enters the Schwaben, where so much life was spent.
Looking back across the Ancre from the Schwaben the hill of the right bank of the river is clear from the woods near Mesnil to Beaucourt. All along that graceful chalk hill our communication trenches thrust up like long white mole-runs, or like the comb of rollers on a reef. At right angles to these long white lines are black streaks which mark the enemy's successive front lines.
Suave in manner, clear-eyed, not hasty in making judgments, he had learnt most things to be known about real war at Thiepval, Schwaben Redoubt, and other bloody places where the Division had made history; wounded again in the August advance, he had refused to be kept from these final phases. The colonel and he understood each other.
The situation at Beaumont-Hamel was also changed for the better by the fact that the German stronghold was now a pronounced salient enfiladed by our fire from the captured Hohenzollern, Schwaben, Stuff, and Regina redoubts. But that advantage was less felt farther north at Serre, and there the left wing of our attack on 13 November was no more successful than it had been on 1 July.
The later ones are visibly more ragged than those near our old line. There are few more lonely places than that scene of old battles. One may stand on the Schwaben for many days together and look west over the moor, or east over the wilderness, without seeing any sign of human life, save perhaps some solitary guarding a dump of stores.
See my article on the "Meddygon Myddfai," entitled "Old Welsh Folk Medicine," "Y Cymmrodor," vol. ix. p. 227. A certain German family used to excuse its faults by attributing them to a sea-fay who was reckoned among its ancestors; Birlinger, "Aus Schwaben," vol. i. p. 7, quoting the "Zimmerische Chronik." Namely, her husband's father, whose name she was not permitted by etiquette to utter.
It was as strong an eyrie as the Schwaben; it turned and made very dangerous our works in front of Hamel; and it was the key to a covered way to the plateau from which all these spurs thrust southward. It is a bolder, more regular spur than the others which thrust from this plateau. The top slopes so slightly as to be almost level, the two flanks are rather steep.
Word Of The Day