They saw no ending of the war, and nothing except
continuous slaughter, such as that in Flanders.
Our men were not mythical heroes exalted by the gods above the
limitations of nature. They were human beings, with wives and
children, or mothers and sisters, whom they desired to see again. They
hated this war. Death had no allurement for them, except now and then
as an escape from intolerable life under fire. They would have been
superhuman if they had not revolted in spirit, though still faithful
to discipline, against the foul conditions of warfare in the swamps,
where, in spite of all they had, in that four months or so of
fighting, achieved the greatest effort of human courage and endurance
ever done by masses of men in obedience to command.
VII
At the end of those battles happened that surprising, audacious
adventure in the Cambrai salient organized by the Third Army under
General Byng, when on November 20, 1917, squadrons of tanks broke
through the Hindenburg line, and infantry streamed through the breach,
captured hundreds of guns, ten thousand prisoners, many villages and
ridges, and gave a monstrous shock to the German High Command.
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