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During those long and terrible months, in the face of a continued bombardment and of successive counter-attacks, with the line growing thinner, week by week, hacked up by woefully inadequate artillery, the Canadian army had held on with the grim tenacity of death itself. There was nothing that they could do but hold on.
The Crusades were merely Western counter-attacks against a Turkish assault on Christendom which continued for six hundred years and was definitely broken only under the walls of Vienna in 1683. Naturally, from these centuries of unrelenting strife furious hatreds and fanaticisms were engendered which still envenom the relations of Islam and Christendom.
But next day strong counter-attacks by British and Italian troops restored the line, our lost guns were retaken and the retreating Austrians suffered great slaughter and demoralisation. On the British right Divisional Front, in support of which our Brigade was operating, the British 23rd Division fought a fight worthy of their high reputation.
Or, shall I forget the French-Canadian colonel telling his story of how he and the battalion on his left in equal difficulties held the line beyond Courcelette with his scattered men against thirteen counter-attacks that night; how he had to go from point to point establishing his posts in the dark, and his repeated "'I golly!" of wonder at how he had managed to hold on, with its ring of naïve unrealization of the humor of being knocked over by a shell and finding, "'I golly!" that he had not been hurt!
To permit a retirement before such a great superiority of the enemy to be made without disaster, it was necessary to counter-attack not only at this inception of the movement, but throughout all the terrible strain of the ensuing eight days. Here it may be necessary to explain why, in any retirement, continual counter-attacks on the pursuing enemy are necessary.
In a number of wars, Frederick conquered all of Silesia, and although he was often very near defeat, he maintained himself in his newly acquired territories against all Austrian counter-attacks. Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a very powerful new state.
Sunlight has scattered the spectres of the night, they have fled, leaving behind them only the matter-of-fact residuum of heavy Turkish counter-attacks against our fresh-won ground. The fighting took place along the coastline, and the stillness of the night seems to have helped the sounds of musketry across the twelve miles of sea.
German counter-attacks obliged A Company, which had made good progress south of the Neuf Berquin-Estaires road in the morning, to withdraw its patrols at dusk. A few days later, however, the opposition lessened, and companies went forward several miles.
Then began the long battle of the woods Devil's Wood, High Wood, Trones Wood continued through August with most fierce and bloody fighting, which ended in our favor and forced the enemy back, gradually but steadily, in spite of the terrific bombardments which filled those woods with shell-fire and the constant counter-attacks delivered by the Germans.
The confusion of thought which has led to the misconceptions about defence as a method of war is due to several obvious causes. Counter-attacks from a general defensive attitude have been regarded as a true offensive, as, for instance, in Frederick the Great's best-known operations, or in Admiral Tegetthoff's brilliant counterstroke at Lissa, or our own operations against the Spanish Armada.
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