"
In the month of November the German High Command believed that the
British attacks were definitely at an end, "having broken down," as
they claimed, "in mud and blood," but another shock came to them when
once more British troops--the 51st Highland Division and the 63d Naval
Division--left their trenches, in fog and snow, and captured the
strongest fortress position on the enemy's front, at Beaumont Hamel,
bringing back over six thousand prisoners. It was after that they
began their retreat.
These studies of mine, of what happened on both sides of the shifting
lines in the Somme, must be as horrible to read as they were to write.
But they are less than the actual truth, for no pen will ever in one
book, or in hundreds, give the full record of the individual agony,
the broken heart-springs, the soul-shock as well as the shell-shock,
of that frightful struggle in which, on one side and the other, two
million men were engulfed. Modern civilization was wrecked on those
fire-blasted fields, though they led to what we called "Victory.
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