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Updated: May 29, 2025
Always when I write to you odds and ends come to mind, smacking of local colour. After an attack some months ago I met a solitary private wandering across a shell-torn field, I watched him and thought something was wrong by the aimlessness of his progress. When I spoke to him, he looked at me mistily and said, "Dead men. Moonlit road."
As far as Tom could see along the line in either direction this shell-torn area was being crossed by hundreds of boys in khaki holding fixed bayonets, some going ahead of the tanks and some perching on them. Above him the whole district seemed to be in pandemonium, men shouting and their voices drowned by the thunder of artillery.
They were evidently the very last of the advancing force, and even as Tom looked across the shell-torn area of No Man's Land, he could see the men picking their way over the flattened entanglements and pouring into the enemy trenches. The tanks had already crossed these and were rearing and waddling along, irresistible yet ridiculous, like so many heroic mud turtles going forth to glory.
I followed the deserted shell-torn road that led from the level-crossing, searching for a track on the left that would lead to the house I sought. A motor-cyclist, with the blue-and-white band of the Signal Service round his arm, came through the hedge. "Is there a house on top of that hill?" I asked him, after a preliminary flicker of my torch. "Yes, sir." "Is it a red-roofed house?"
A moment later Tom had the machine to earth, and it ran along the uneven and shell-torn ground, coming to a rest not far from what had been the outer fence of the prison camp. A group of Allied captives, newly freed, rushed forward. Tom and Jack, removing their goggles, looked eagerly for a sight of Harry Leroy.
The constant shelling coupled with attacks and counter attacks for months over the same ground had razed the village to the ground, leaving nothing but a shell-torn field and a few blackened ruins. It was useless to hold the place longer and consequently that night it was decided to abandon the position here and withdraw to a new line about three versts in advance of Kitsa.
As carefully as might be, though, at that, making noise which the members of the patrol thought surely must be heard clear to Berlin, they made their way over the shell-torn and uncertain ground in the darkness.
I knew I should not see cavalry charges, guns in the open, and all the old-world panoply of war, but I was not prepared for this barren and shell-torn circle of hills, continually being freshly, and, to an uninformed observer, aimlessly lashed by shell fire. Not a man in sight, though below us the ground was thickly strewn with corpses.
Dick soon returned with ample food for them and helped them later, when they moved to quarters outside in the shell-torn city. Dick saw that they were comfortable, and then his mind turned toward Tennessee. Detachments from Grant's army were to be sent to that of Rosecrans, who was now heavily threatened by Bragg, and the Winchester regiment, which really belonged with him, was sure to go.
The devastated and shell-torn condition of the terrain taken over by the Germans was unfavorable for bringing up the great guns to within striking distance. From that time on, the Allies were supremely confident of their ability to cope with any forces.
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