"British!" says the officer in front--who was himself in the battle.
Only a few steps further on, as it seems, we come to the remains of the
German front line, and the motor pauses while we try to get our
bearings. There to the south, on our right, and curving eastward, are
two trench lines perfectly clear still on the brown desolation, the
British and the enemy front lines. From that further line, at half-past
seven on the summer morning for ever blazoned in the annals of our
people, the British Army went over the parapet, to gather in the victory
prepared for it by the deadly strength and accuracy of British guns;
made possible in its turn by the labour in far-off England of millions
of workers--men and women--on the lathes and in the filling factories of
these islands.
We move on up the road. Now we are among what remains of the trenches
and dug-outs described in Sir Douglas Haig's despatch. "During nearly
two years' preparations the enemy had spared no pains to render these
defences impregnable," says the Commander-in-Chief; and he goes on to
describe the successive lines of deep trenches, the bomb-proof shelters,
and the wire entanglements with which the war correspondence of the
winter has made us at home--on paper--so familiar.
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