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Updated: June 24, 2025
But they were not waves for long in some instances, only survivors still advancing as if they were parts of a wave, unseen by their commanders in the shell-smoke, buffeted by bursts of high explosives, with every man simply keeping on toward the goal till he arrived or fell. Foolhardy, you say. Perhaps. It is an easy word to utter over a map after the event.
It was where gaps existed and gallantry went blindly forward, unable in the fog of shell-smoke to see whether the units on the right or the left were up, that these sacrifices of heroism were made; but where command was held over the line and the opposition was not of a variable kind counsel was taken of the impossible and retreat was ordered.
An Australian battalion needed a warning in the first instance lest it might keep on advancing, which meant that commanders would not know where it was in the shell-smoke and it might get "squeezed" for want of support on the right and left, as I have explained elsewhere. Certainly, warning was unnecessary in the second instance about the hard going.
As the sun came out without clearing away the mist and shell-smoke over the field we had glimpses of some reserves who had looked like a yellow patch behind a hill deploying to go forward, suggestive of yellow-backed beetles who were the organized servitors of a higher mind on some other planet.
The charge to him was lines on the map parallel with the trenches which would be at given points at given moments lines which he must support when their soldier counterparts were invisible through the shell-smoke in the nice calculation of time and range which should put the shells into the enemy and never into the charging man.
All had the emblems of their units in squares of cloth on their shoulders, and on the backs of some of the divisions were bright yellow or white patches to distinguish them from Germans to the gunners in the shell-smoke. Nothing in their action at first glance indicated the stress of their thoughts.
The sea was thick with floating corpses and shattered wreckage, and darkened with patches of oil that marked the grave of a rammed Submarine or sunken Destroyer. Maimed and bleeding men dragged themselves on to rafts and cheered their comrades as they left them to their death. Through that witches' cauldron of fog and shell-smoke the British Battle-Fleet groped for its elusive foe.
All was confused in that mixture of haze and shell-smoke and maze of trenches, with the appearing and disappearing soldiers living patterns of the carpet which at times itself seemed to move to one's tiring, intensified gaze. Each one was working out his part of a plan; each was a responsive unit of the system of training for such affairs.
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