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A few days were spent here, during which Major C.P. James took over the command of the Battalion, and afterwards it marched via Doullens to Amplier, and after a night's rest in some huts there it reached Berles-au-Bois the next day.
The French front was extended up to the Luce and an extemporized Fourth Army replaced the weary remnants of the Fifth. More important was the appointment of Foch as commander-in-chief on the 25th after a conference at Doullens between Haig and Pétain, Lord Milner and Clémenceau, though it cannot have had much effect upon the operations which checked the German advance by the end of March.
Between the 25th of June, 1595, and the 10th of March, 1597, the Spanish armies took, in Picardy and Artois, Le Catelet, Doullens, Cambrai, Ardres, Ham, Guines and two towns of more importance, Calais, still the object of English ambition and of offers on the part of Queen Elizabeth to any one who could hand it over to her, and Amiens, one of the keys to France on the frontier of the north.
Lucheux, a very old French village with its castle and gateway, stands on the edge of a still older forest a few miles North of Doullens, and the majority of the inhabitants, under the guidance of a very energetic Mayor, did all they could to make us comfortable.
It was on Monday, March 25th, that at Doullens, a small manufacturing town, lying in a wooded and stream-fed hollow not far from Amiens, there took place the historic meeting of the leading politicians and generals of the war, which ended in the appointment of Marshal Foch to the supreme military command of the Allied forces in France.
Ten days later the unit was relieved and marched to Estaires, where it arrived on the morning of the 1st April. Leaving this town later in the day, it made Haverskerque that night, left there the next day for Steenwerck, and entrained for Doullens. Detraining at Doullens at 1 a.m. on the 3rd, the Battalion proceeded by night march to Sus St. Leger.
And on October 9 the gallant Belgian army withdrew from Antwerp and made its way to the Yser under cover of French and British troops. Foch soon saw that an allied offensive would not be possible then; that the most they could hope to do was to hold back the invading forces. Until October 24 he remained at Doullens, twenty miles north of Amiens.
A distressing attack of tooth-ache took me twice to the C.C.S. near Doullens. I found that town more deserted than it used to be, for the Germans had shelled and bombed it vigorously since their offensive started. On April 16, after a week's rest, the 42nd Division took over the trenches running from Gommecourt to Hébuterne.
Pol station was shelled to ruins; Hazebrouck, Chocques, and Doullens were nightly targets for German bombs. Already at Tinques and Achiet the R.T.O.s had been killed. Our railwaymen and engine drivers showed staunch devotion to duty and were as much responsible as any branch of the service for keeping our armies fighting during the critical months of the spring and early summer.
In the dusk of the forest that look followed us down the mountain; and as we skirted the edge of the ravine between the armies, we felt that on the far side of that dividing line were the men who had made the war, and on the near side the men who had been made by it. June 19th, 1915. On the way from Doullens to Montreuil-sur-Mer, on a shining summer afternoon.
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