I was with the
Australians on that day when they swarmed into Bapaume, and they
brought out trophies like men at a country fair . . . I remember an
Australian colonel who came riding with a German beer-mug at his
saddle . . . Next day, though shells were still bursting in the ruins,
some Australian boys set up some painted scenery which they had found
among the rubbish, and chalked up the name of the "Coo-ee Theater."
The enemy was in retreat to his Hindenburg line, over a wide stretch
of country which he laid waste behind him, making a desert of French
villages and orchards and parks, so that even the fruit-trees were cut
down, and the churches blown up, and the graves ransacked for their
lead. It was the enemy's first retreat on the western front, and that
ferocious fighting of the British troops had smashed the strongest
defenses ever built in war, and our raw recruits had broken the most
famous regiments of the German army, so in spite of all tragedy and
all agony our men were not downcast, but followed up their enemy with
a sense of excitement because it seemed so much like victory and the
end of war.
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