To inspire the German troops with a spirit of martial fervor (not
easily aroused to fever pitch after the bloody losses before Verdun)
Orders of the Day were issued to the battalions counseling them to
hold fast against the hated English, who stood foremost in the way of
peace (that was the gist of a manifesto by Prince Rupprecht of
Bavaria, which I found in a dugout at Montauban), and promising them a
speedy ending to the war.
Great stores of material and munitions were concentrated at rail-heads
and dumps ready to be sent up to the firing-lines, and the perfection
of German organization may well have seemed flawless--before the
attack began.
When they began they found that in "heavies" and in expenditure of
high explosives they were outclassed.
They were startled, too, by the skill and accuracy of the British
gunners, whom they had scorned as "amateurs," and by the daring of our
airmen, who flew over their lines with the utmost audacity, "spotting"
for the guns, and registering on batteries, communication trenches,
crossroads, rail-heads, and every vital point of organization in the
German war-machine working opposite the British lines north and south
of the Ancre.
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