Even on the march
in open country the German soldiers tramping silently along--not
singing in spite of orders--were bombed and shot at by these British
aviators, who flew down very low, pouring out streams of machine-gun
bullets. The Germans lost their nerve at such times, and scattered
into the ditches, falling over one another, struck and cursed by their
Unteroffizieren, and leaving their dead and wounded in the roadway.
As the roads went nearer to the battlefields they were choked with the
traffic of war, with artillery and transport wagons and horse
ambulances, and always thousands of gray men marching up to the lines,
or back from them, exhausted and broken after many days in the fires
of hell up there. Officers sat on their horses by the roadside,
directing all the traffic with the usual swearing and cursing, and
rode alongside the transport wagons and the troops, urging them
forward at a quicker pace because of stern orders received from
headquarters demanding quicker movement.
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