XXII
All through July and August the enemy's troops fought with wonderful
and stubborn courage, defending every bit of broken woodland, every
heap of bricks that was once a village, every line of trenches smashed
by heavy shell-fire, with obstinacy.
It is indeed fair and just to say that throughout those battles of the
Somme our men fought against an enemy hard to beat, grim and resolute,
and inspired sometimes with the courage of despair, which was hardly
less dangerous than the courage of hope.
The Australians who struggled to get the high ground at Pozieres did
not have an easy task. The enemy made many counter-attacks against
them. All the ground thereabouts was, as I have said, so smashed that
the earth became finely powdered, and it was the arena of bloody
fighting at close quarters which did not last a day or two, but many
weeks. Mouquet Farm was like the phoenix which rose again out of its
ashes. In its tunneled ways German soldiers hid and came out to fight
our men in the rear long after the site of the farm was in our hands.
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