The reserves, it seemed, were
desperately wanted up in the lines. The English were attacking again .
. . God alone knew what was happening. Regiments had lost their way.
Wounded were pouring back. Officers had gone mad. Into the midst of
all this turmoil shells fell--shells from long-range guns. Transport
wagons were blown to bits. The bodies and fragments of artillery
horses lay all over the roads. Men lay dead or bleeding under the
debris of gun-wheels and broken bricks. Above all the noise of this
confusion and death in the night the hard, stern voices of German
officers rang out, and German discipline prevailed, and men marched on
to greater perils.
They were in the shell-zone now, and sometimes a regiment on the march
was tracked all along the way by British gun-fire directed from
airplanes and captive balloons. It was the fate of a captured officer
I met who had detrained at Bapaume for the trenches at Contalmaison.
At Bapaume his battalion was hit by fragments of twelve-inch shells.
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