There was a Pioneer battalion along the road out to Observatory Ridge,
which was a German target. They were mending the road beyond the last
trench, through which our men had smashed their way. They were busy
with bricks and shovels, only stopping to stare at shells plowing
holes in the fields on each side of them. When I came back one morning
a number of them lay covered with blankets, as though asleep. They
were dead, but their comrades worked on grimly, with no joy of labor
in their sweat.
Monchy Hill was the key position, high above the valley of the Scarpe.
I saw it first when there was a white village there, hardly touched by
fire, and afterward when there was no village. I was in the village
below Observatory Ridge on the morning of April 11th when cavalry was
massed on that ground, waiting for orders to go into action. The
headquarters of the cavalry division was in a ditch covered by planks,
and the cavalry generals and their staffs sat huddled together with
maps over their knees.
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