They will not thereby achieve anything more." Yet when
this was written the German Higher Command was already well aware that
the battle of the Somme had been won by the Allies, and that it would be
impossible for Germany to hold out on the same ground against another
similar attack.
Three months, however, of an extraordinarily hard winter gave them a
respite, and enabled them to veil the facts from their own people. The
preparations for retirement, which snow and fog and the long nights of
January helped them to conceal in part from our Air Service, must have
actually begun not many weeks after General Gough's last successes on
the Ancre, when the British advance paused, under stress of weather,
before Grandcourt and Bapaume. So that in the latter half of February,
when General Gough again pushed forward, it was to feel the German line
yielding before him; and by March 3rd, the day of my visit to the Somme,
it was only a question of how far the Germans would go and what the
retreat meant.
Meanwhile, in another section of the line our own plans were maturing,
which were to bear fruit five weeks later in the brilliant capture of
that Vimy ridge I had seen on March 2, filling the blue middle distance,
from the bare upland of Notre Dame de Lorette.
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