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Updated: May 17, 2025
But mist would play the devil with that scheme, for the enemy would be past the place for flanking fire before we knew it... Oh, I know we had good warning, and had the battle-zone manned in time, but the outpost line was meant to hold out long enough to get everything behind in apple-pie order, and I can't see but how big chunks of it must have gone in the first rush.... Mind you, we've banked everything on that battle-zone.
Yes, the battle-zone. He's flinging in division after division like the blows of a hammer. What else could you expect? And he clutched my arm fiercely. 'How in God's name could eleven divisions hold a front of forty miles? And against four to one in numbers? It isn't war, it's naked lunacy. I knew the worst now, and it didn't shock me, for I had known it was coming.
It's been going on the whole morning and down the whole front from Arras to the Scarpe. 'And we've held? we've held? 'So far magnificently. Our outpost troops have been withdrawn to the battle-zone that's all. The line has held everywhere. The Germans have lost heavily. 'Outpost troops! whispered the boy 'why, that's nothing! We always expected to lose the first line. Good old Army!
Our outpost line held up the Hun for six hours, and only about a dozen men came back. We could have stuck it out in the battle-zone if both flanks hadn't been turned. They got through Crabbe's left and came down the Verey ravine, and a big wave rushed Shropshire Wood ... We fought it out yard by yard and didn't budge till we saw the Plessis dump blazing in our rear.
We were in the front trench of what they ca' the battle-zone, and Amos and me was keepin' oor eyes on the enemy, who could be obsairved dribblin' ower the open. Just then the prisoner catches sight of the enemy and jumps up on the top. Amos tried to hold him, but he kicked him in the face.
But before darkness fell, during the central part of the day, we had crossed the southern lines of the convergent American attack on St. Mihiel. Trenches and wire-fields and artillery positions had all belonged to the French battle-zone before the Americans took them over, and there had been fierce fighting here by the French in 1915.
It's damned good, but if it's gone 'He flung up his hands. 'Have we good reserves? I asked. He shrugged his shoulders. 'Have we positions prepared behind the battle-zone? 'I didn't notice any, he said dryly, and was off before I could get more out of him. 'You look rattled, Dick, said Blenkiron as we walked to the hotel. 'I seem to have got the needle.
The flanking fire was so bad that I had to give up the left of the forward zone, which caught it fairly, and retire the men there to the battle-zone. The latter was better protected, for between it and the river was a small wood and the bank rose into a bluff which sloped inwards towards us.
The forward zone resisted heroically, but by noon the Germans were through it west of La Fère and were in our battle-zone north of St. Quentin at Ronssoy. Between these two extremes of Gough's front they reached in the afternoon Maissemy, north of St. Quentin, and the line Essigny-Benay south of it.
It was a hot, clear spring afternoon, and in the open fighting the enemy came on like troops at manoeuvres. On the left they got into the battle-zone, and I can see yet Lefroy's great figure leading a counter-attack in person, his face all puddled with blood from a scalp wound ...
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