United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One need only glance at the hill on which they stand to see that it has been more burnt and shell-smitten than most parts of the lines. It is as though the fight here had been more than to the death, to beyond death, to the bones and skeleton of the corpse which was yet unkillable.
The pleasant little villages that had dotted the smiling landscape were reduced to mere heaps of rubbish. Hardly a bit of wall was left standing. It seemed impossible that any living thing could survive in all that shell-smitten territory. As the day fixed upon for the attack drew near the condition of the weather caused the British command some anxious hours.
But these black-clad women do know know that the cool green clump of trees over on the hill-side hides a roofless ruin with fire-blackened walls; that the church spire that for all their lives they had seen out there over the sky-line is no longer visible because it lies shell-smitten to a tumbled heap of brick and stone and mortar; that the glint of white wood and spot of scarlet yonder in the field is the rough wooden cross with a képi on top marking the grave of a soldier of France; that down in the hollow just out of sight are over a score of those cap-crowned crosses; that a broad belt of those graves runs unbroken across this sunlit face of France.
The plan no doubt was the same old plan a quick and overwhelming torrent of shell fire, a sudden hurricane of high explosive on the forward trench, and then, before the supports could be hurried up and brought in any weight through the reeking, shaking inferno of the shell-smitten communication trenches, the surge forward of line upon line, wave upon wave, of close-locked infantry.
Word Of The Day