VII
There was the illusion of victory on that first day of the Somme
battles, on the right of the line by Fricourt, and it was not until a
day or two later that certain awful rumors I had heard from wounded
men and officers who had attacked on the left up by Gommecourt,
Thiepval, and Serre were confirmed by certain knowledge of tragic
disaster on that side of the battle-line.
The illusion of victory, with all the price and pain of it, came to me
when I saw the German rockets rising beyond the villages of Mametz and
Montauban and our barrage fire lifting to a range beyond the first
lines of German trenches, and our support troops moving forward in
masses to captured ground. We had broken through! By the heroic
assault of our English and Scottish troops. West Yorks, Yorks and
Lancs, Lincolns, Durhams, Northumberland Fusiliers, Norfolks and
Berkshires, Liverpools, Manchesters, Gordons, and Royal Scots, all
those splendid men I had seen marching to their lines. We had smashed
through the ramparts of the German fortress, through that maze of
earthworks and tunnels which had appalled me when I saw them on the
maps, and over which I had gazed from time to time from our front-line
trenches when those places seemed impregnable.
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