Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Struggle in Flanders on the Western Front, 1917
The year began with the German retreat from the Somme battlefields. It was a withdrawal for strategical reasons the Shortening of the enemy's line and the saving of his man-power - but also a retreat because it was forced upon the enemy by the greatness of his losses in the Somme fight ing. He would not have left the Bapaume Ridge and\all his elaborate defences down to Peronne and Roye unless we had so smashed his divisions by incessant gun-fire and infantry assaults that he was bound to economize his power for adventures elsewhere. On the ground from which he drew back, more hurriedly than he desired because we fol lowed quickly on his heels to Bapaume, he left some of his dead. Many of his dead. Below Loupart Wood I saw hun dreds of them, strewn about their broken batteries, and lying in heaps of obscene ?esh in the wild chaos of earth which had been their trenches. On one plot of earth a few hundred yards in length there were 800 dead, and over all this hattlefield one had to pick one's way to avoid tread ing on the bits and bodies of men. From the mud, arms stretched out like those of men who had been drowned in bogs. Boots and legs were uncovered in the muck-heaps.
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