Energy books

That was after the retreat from Mons, the
victory of the Marne, the early battles round Ypres, and the slaughter
at Neuve Chapelle. The "Old Contemptibles" were an army of ghosts
whose dead clay was under earth in many fields of France, but whose
spirit still "carried on" as an heroic tradition to those who came
after them into those same fields, to the same fate. The only
survivors were Regular officers taken out of the fighting-lines to
form the staffs of new divisions and to train the army of volunteers
now being raised at home, and men who were recovering from wounds or
serving behind the lines: those, and non-commissioned officers who
were the best schoolmasters of the new boys, the best friends and
guides of the new officers, stubborn in their courage, hard and
ruthless in their discipline, foul-mouthed according to their own
traditions, until they, too, fell in the shambles. It was in March of
1915 that a lieutenant-colonel in the trenches said to me: "I am one
out of 150 Regular officers still serving with their battalions.


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