More than two new German divisions had to be brought into the
front-line every week since the end of June, to replace those smashed
in the process of resisting the Allied attack. In November it was
reckoned by competent observers in the field that well over one
hundred and twenty German divisions had been passed through the ordeal
of the Somme, this number including those which have appeared there
more than once.
XXIII
By September 25th, when the British troops made another attack, the
morale of the German troops was reaching its lowest ebb. Except on
their right, at Beaumont Hamel and Beaucourt, they were far beyond the
great system of protective dugouts which had given them a sense of
safety before July 1st. Their second and third lines of defense had
been carried, and they were existing in shell-craters and trenches
hastily scraped up under ceaseless artillery fire.
The horrors of the battlefield were piled up to heights of agony and
terror. Living men dwelt among the unburied dead, made their way to
the front-lines over heaps of corpses, breathed in the smell of human
corruption and had always in their ears the cries of the wounded they
could not rescue.
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