The fight is not over--the
victory is not yet--but on the Somme no English or French heart can
doubt the end.
The same thoughts follow one along the sunken road to Contalmaison.
Here, first, is the cemetery of La Boisselle, this heaped confusion of
sandbags, of broken and overturned crosses, of graves tossed into a
common ruin. And a little further are the ruins of Contalmaison, where
the 3rd Division of the Prussian Guards was broken and 700 of them taken
prisoners. Terrible are the memories of Contalmaison! Recall one letter
only!--the letter written by a German soldier the day before the attack:
"Nothing comes to us--no letters. The English keep such a barrage on our
approaches--it is horrible. To-morrow morning it will be seven days
since this bombardment began; we cannot hold out much longer. Everything
is shot to pieces." And from another letter: "Every one of us in these
five days has become years older--we hardly know ourselves."
It was among these intricate remains of trenches and dug-outs, round the
fragments of the old chateau, that such things happened.
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