Energy books

A
brigade of the 21st Division was nominally in support of them, but
only small groups of that brigade appeared on the scene, a few white-
faced officers, savage with anger, almost mad with some despair in
them, with batches of English lads who looked famished with hunger,
weak after long marching, demoralized by some tragedy that had
happened to them. They were Scots who did most of the work in trying
to capture the redoubt, the same Scots who had fought through Loos.
They tried to reach the crest. Again and again they crawled forward
and up, but the blasts of machine-gun fire mowed them down, and many
young Scots lay motionless on those chalky slopes, with their kilts
riddled with bullets. Others, hit in the head, or arms, or legs,
writhed like snakes back to the cover of broken trenches.
"Where are the supports?" asked the Scottish officers. "In God's name,
where are the troops who were to follow on? Why did we do all this
bloody fighting to be hung up in the air like this?"
The answer to their question has not been given in any official
despatch.


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