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Updated: May 19, 2025
The aviator and the commander of a destroyer know their steeds and have precedent to go by, while the skippers of the tanks had none. They went forth with a new kind of ship on a new kind of sea, whose waves were shell-craters, whose tempests sudden concentrations of shell fire.
He was your companion now when you might walk up the Ridge and, standing among shell-craters still as a frozen sea where but lately an inferno had raged, look out across the fields toward new lines of shell fire and newly won villages on lower levels.
The Allies could not conceal the fact and general location of their offensive, but they did conceal its plan as a whole. The small number of shell-craters attested that no such artillery curtains of fire had been concentrated here as from Thiepval to Gommecourt. Probably the Germans had not the artillery to spare or had drawn it off to the north.
The reliefs could only be made at night lest they should be discovered by British airmen and British gunners, and even if these German soldiers had trench maps the guidance was but little good when many trenches had been smashed in and only shell-craters could be found. "In the front line of Flers," wrote one of these Germans, "the men were only occupying shell-holes.
Interest quickened on the way to the Verdun front as you came to the slopes covered with torn and fallen trees, where the Germans laid their far-reaching curtains of fire to catch the French reserves struggling through mud and shell-craters on those February and March days to the relief of the front line.
More fighting made them fight harder. Such became members of the machine gun corps, which took an oath never to surrender, and led bombing parties and posted themselves in shell-craters to face the charges while shells fell thick around them, or remained up in the trench taking their chances against curtains of fire that covered an infantry charge, in the hope of being able to turn on their own bullet spray for a moment before being killed.
It was enfilade fire from German batteries. But often it happened according to the way of that telephone conversation in the tent by Bronfay Farm. The difference between British soldiers and German soldiers crawling over shell-craters or crouching below the banks of a sunken road was no more than the difference between two tribes of ants.
Every week, every day, I might say, the new army organization had tightened. With steel helmet on and gas mask over the shoulder for the last time, I had a final promenade up to the Ridge, past the guns and Mouquet Farm, picking my way among the shell-craters and other grisly reminders of the torment that the fighters had endured to a point where I could look out over the fields toward Bapaume.
They even left gaps in their lines for the game to enter the net before they began firing; and again, when a broken German charge sought flight its remnants faced an impassable curtain of fire which fenced them in and they dropped into shell-craters and held up their hands, which was the only thing to do. Soon the Germans learned, too, how to make the most of shell-craters.
On that ugly part of the Ridge where no stable trench could be made under the vengeful German artillery fire and small numbers were shrewdly distributed in shell-craters and such small ditches as could be maintained, they crept out in the darkness a few days before the attack to "take over" from the Australians and familiarize themselves with this tempest-torn farming land which still heaved under tornadoes of shells.
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