From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917

rua

llowed the first patrols, who had felt forward and took possession of the sa

place will be haunted for ever by the memory of their loss and great endurance. At last the gates were open. The enemy's troops had stolen away in the dusk, leaving nothing behind but the refuse of trench life and the litter of trench tools. In order to keep the way open for their withdrawal, strong posts of Germans with machine-guns held out in a wedge just

s give our men greater trouble, but are being routed out from their hiding-places. There were a lot of them in the ruins of Pusieux, but last night, after sharp fighting and a grim man-hunt among the broken brickwork, the enemy was destroyed in this village, and our line now runs well beyond it to Gommecourt, on the left and down

up his reserves of ammunition in the dumps along the line of his retirement. Many of his heavy guns still remain on railway mountings behind Bapaume-we are now less than a mile from that town-and they are doing double duty by quick firing.

us, but, beyond all, by the fear that our fighting power in the spring might break his armies if they stayed on their old line. Now he is executing with skill, aided by great luck-for the foggy weather is his luck-a man?uvre desig

y or two, unless you have gazed at those places for months through narrow slits in underground chambers, and know that it would be easi

ove them. I had this thrill when I walked through Gommecourt-Gommecourt the terrible, and the graveyard of so many brave London boys who fell here on July 1-and up through Gommecourt Park, with its rows of riven trees, to a point beyond, and to a far outpost where a group of soldiers attached to the Sherwood Foresters of the 46th Division, full of spirit and gaiety, in spite o

guns had played hell with the place, though we could not capture it on July 1. Thousands of shells, even millions, had flung it into ruin-the famous chateau, the church, the great barns, the school-house, and all

h Gommecourt with me pointed out with pride the "top-hole" effect of all our gun-fire. To him, as a gunner, all this destruction was a good sight.

me," said the trench-mortar officer, who was a humo

merrier party than a little lot I found at a spot called Pigeon Wood, far beyond Gommecourt, where th

me up there and introd

t there was to be a trench-mortar "stunt" in half an hour or so, and he wanted me to see "the fun." Through the driving snow we went into the bit of wood, trampling over the broken twigs and stepping as

ry grigs I had come to meet, and in less than a minute they had made me welcome, and in less than five I was sitting on a German chair at a

he senior officer chased by two Boches, and roared again when the captain sent round to the "chemist's shop" next door for some more soda-water and a bottle of whisky. They had found thousands of bo

f the younger officers, "but you come a

y but a narrow stretch of shell-broken earth, and went away from the wood just as the enemy began shelling it again, and sat down under the bank with one of the officers when the enemy "bracketed" the road back with whiz-bangs, and stopped on the way to take a cup of tea in another dug-out, and to make friends with other men who were following up the enemy, and moving into German apartments for a night or so, before they go farther on, with that keen and spirited courage which is the