Energy books

XIV

Meanwhile, at 6 P.M. on the evening of the first day of battle, the
Guards arrived at Noeux-les-Mines. As I saw them march up, splendid in
their height and strength and glory of youth, I looked out for the
officers I knew, yet hoped I should not see them--that man who had
given a farewell touch to the flowers in the garden of our billet,
that other one who knew he would be wounded, those two young brothers
who had played cricket on a sunny afternoon. I did not see them, but
saw only columns of men, staring grimly ahead of them, with strange,
unspeakable thoughts behind their masklike faces.
It was not until the morning of the 26th that the Commander-in-Chief
"placed them at the disposal of the General Officer commanding First
Army," and it was on the afternoon of Monday, the 27th, that they were
ordered to attack.
By that time we had lost Fosse 8, one brigade of the 9th Scottish
Division having been flung back to its own trenches after desperate
fighting, at frightful cost, after the capture of the Hohenzollern
redoubt by the 26th Brigade of that division.


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