Every division in the British army took
its turn in the blood-bath of the Somme and was duly blooded, at a
cost of 25 per cent. and sometimes 50 per cent. of their fighting
strength. The Canadians took up the struggle at Courcelette and
captured it in a fierce and bloody battle. The Australians worked up
on the right of the Albert-Bapaume road to Thilloy and Ligny Thilloy.
On the far left the fortress of Thiepval had fallen at last after
repeated and frightful assaults, which I watched from ditches close
enough to see our infantry--Wiltshires and Worcesters of the 25th
Division--trudging through infernal fire. And then at last, after five
months of superhuman effort, enormous sacrifice, mass-heroism,
desperate will-power, and the tenacity of each individual human ant in
this wild ant-heap, the German lines were smashed, the Australians
surged into Bapaume, and the enemy, stricken by the prolonged fury of
our attack, fell back in a far and wide retreat across a country which
he laid waste, to the shelter of his Hindenburg line, from Bullecourt
to St.
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