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The débris beaten into dust had been so scattered that one could not tell where the village began or ended, but the smudge was a symbol to the army no less than to the British public a symbol of the boasted impregnability of the first-line German fortifications which had resisted the attack of July 1st and its capture a reward of English stubbornness appealing to the race which is not unconscious of the characteristic that has carried its tongue and dominion over the world.
I soon found that the precaution was not an idle one, for, as our car drew up at the entrance to the boyau which led by devious windings into the first-line trenches, the group of officers and men assembled in front of brigade headquarters were hastily donning their masks: grotesque-looking contrivances of metal, cloth, and rubber, which in shape resembled a pig's snout.
On the other side of the valley was a cut in the earth, a ditch, the British first-line trench, which was unoccupied, so far as I could see. Beyond lay the old No Man's Land where grass and weeds had grown wild for two seasons, hiding the numerous shell-craters and the remains of the dead from the British charge of July 1st which had been repulsed.
Could it be possible that our car was running along that road back of the first-line trenches where it would have been death to show your head two days ago? And could battalions in reserve be lying in the open on fields where forty-eight hours previously a company would have drawn the fire of half a dozen German batteries?
In the left, at the bottom of the dip the 108th was in action, partially covered by some sparse bushes. A few ambulance waggons and some miscellaneous first-line transport were drawn up along the side of the road at the bottom of the dip. To the N.W. we could see for about four miles over low, rolling fields.
Had we been in the first-line British trenches we could hardly have seen the men who left them through this wall of smoke and mist as they entered the German first line and the answering German "krumps" would have driven us to the dugouts and German curtains of fire held us prisoner. One of us called attention to a lark that had risen and was singing with all the power in his little throat.
Lookout Mountain was known as the battle in the clouds, where generals could not see what their troops were doing. Now all battles are in a cloud. From the first-line British trench the first wave of the British attack moved under cover of the smoke-screen and directly you saw that the shells had ceased to fall in Contalmaison.
Here and there small groups collected and offered desperate resistance, but their efforts to stem the tide of advancing British were in vain. An hour after daylight first-line defenses of the entire Hindenburg line were in the hands of the British. But General "Bingo" Byng was not content to rest on these laurels.
The Germans won a section of trench in neighborhood of Courcy, but later were driven out or destroyed by the French in a counterattack. East of Monchy-le-Preux the Germans after a heavy bombardment of British positions made an attack in force that was entirely successful in gaining the first-line defenses.
I begin to believe that had Germany centred all her forces on that frontier in August, 1914, when her first-line troops were available, and their hopes high, she would probably have passed. No one can know that, but it is likely, and many military men think so. Isn't it a sort of poetic justice to think that it is even possible that had Germany fought an honorable war she might have got to Paris?
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