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Updated: May 16, 2025
It was not much more than four feet in depth; the chalky parapet could by no stretch of imagination be described as bullet-proof; dug-outs and communication-trenches were non-existent. On our left the trench-line was continued by the troops of another Division: on our right lay another battalion of our own brigade.
Yet, see what now faced her; not victory, but embarrassment on every side: a trench-line running from north to south in Russia a trench-line against which her weakened battalions had battered in vain, a line held by the forces of the Tsar, even though short of ammunition, so securely that Germany could not advance; and on the west another trench-line, which, after the battle of the Marne, had been extended westward and northward to the sea-coast and blocked the advance of the Kaiser's forces just as securely as did those lines in Russia.
It was this check at the Flesquieres Ridge, followed by the breaking of a bridge at Masnieres under the weight of a tank and the holding of a trench-line called the Rumilly switch by a battalion of Germans who raced to it from Cambrai before our men could capture it, which thwarted the plans of the cavalry.
He slid his hand into the breast of his jacket, pulled a little cord and drew out a silver whistle, the very same that he had used at Gallipoli. As he slid it to his lips, they tautened. A flood of memories surged over him. His fighting-blood was up, like that of all the other Legionaries in that hasty trench-line along the white sand-drifts. A moment's silence followed. Outwardly, all was peace.
Then came the introduction of aerial photography on a large scale, and with it a complete bird's-eye plan of all enemy defence works, pieced together from a series of overhead snapshots that reproduced the complete trench-line, even to such details as barbed wire.
The authorities allowed us exactly two days' rest, and then packed us off by train, with the new draft, to a particularly hot sector of the trench-line in Belgium there to carry on with the operation known in nautical circles as "executing repairs while under steam." Well, we have been in Belgium for two months now, and, as already stated, are getting into our stride again.
"In fact," said Colonel Kemp, "this war will end when the Boche has lost so many men as to be unable to man his present trench-line, and not before." "You don't think, sir, that we shall make another Push?" suggested Angus M'Lachlan eagerly. The others were silent: they had experienced a Push already. "Not so long as the Boche continues to play our game for us, by attacking.
This trench-line ran through certain of the small outlying forts, such as Tavannes, Thiaumont, Douaumont, and Vaux, and that is why you have read in the papers so much of the desperate fighting about them. Thus the much-talked-of fortress of Verdun was no longer a fortress at all, but merely a sector in that battle-line which extends from the Channel to the Alps.
It is not mis-stating the fact on the night of the 21st February when we assert that those two French army corps, holding a trench-line extending over some twenty-five miles, stood, for the time being and for many hours to come, alone between the enemy and their objective.
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