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Quentin and our own to the north of it left a good deal to be desired in their defensive strength, while the great bridgehead under construction to protect the Somme south of Péronne had not been completed. The Allied advance had been slow, but since 1916 a confident conviction possessed the Allied armies that they would only move in a forward direction.
To the north the Canadians under Sir Julian Byng carried the crest of the Vimy Ridge, and by nine o'clock had mastered it all except at a couple of points. Farther south troops that were mainly Scottish captured Le Folie farm, Blangy, and Tilloy-lez-Mofflaines, while a fortress known as the Harp, and more formidable than any on the Somme, was seized by a number of Tanks.
If it be dull to read about and to see, it was, at least, the old line which kept back the tide and stood the siege. It was the line from which, after all those months of war, the tide turned and the besieged became the attackers. To most of the British soldiers who took part in the Battle of the Somme, the town of Albert must be a central point in a reckoning of distances.
November 17th, he began a voyage down the Somme, which occupied two days. He started at Amiens. On the evening of the first day, just before reaching Ponte Remy, where he intended to stop for the night, he was surprised at receiving a charge of shot.
But in the main the object is to prepare the unfortunates known as réformés for the future. Since the fighting on the Somme began Madame Lyon has gone several times a month to the recaptured towns, in charge of train-loads of installations for the looted homes of the wretched people. In one entire village the Germans had left just one saucepan. Nothing else whatever.
They talked of Bali, and Rhys Davids, and Bishop, and McCudden, and all the heroes who had won their spurs since the Somme, and of the new British makes, most of which Peter had never seen and had to have explained to him. Outside a haze had drawn over the meadows with the twilight. I pointed it out to Blenkiron. 'There's the fog that's doing us.
This advance, which had been obtained by the skill and activity of Ætius, might reflect some disgrace on the military prudence of Clodion; but the king of the Franks soon regained his strength and reputation, and still maintained the possession of his Gallic kingdom from the Rhine to the Somme.
Some sixteen British aeroplanes bombarded a stores depot at Miramont in the Somme district, and the aerodrome at Hervilly. All of the machines returned safely, and considerable damage was believed to have been done at the above points. The aeroplane as a commerce destroyer had a test on October 30, 1915, when three German machines attacked the steamship Avocet of the Cork Steamship Company.
1917, ARRAS. The Somme fighting ends. Again our armies are built up, until the 760,000 point is reached. FRONT, increased to nearly 120 miles by a relief of French troops, falls again to 105, owing to the German retirement about ARRAS. Heavy guns have increased from just over 300 to 1,500.
The enemy artillery was very quiet, and obviously the British had the artillery ascendancy, and it was surmised that this was attributable to the fact that he had removed his artillery to the Somme. The minenwerfers were active and so were the enemy snipers. After a tour in the line the Battalion repaired to Ypres.
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