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Gibbs, Philip, 1877-1962

"Now It Can Be Told"

He lay stretched outside the railway
station into which many shells had crashed. It was as though he had
walked from his own comrades toward our line before a bullet caught
him.
Ludendorff writes of the broken morale of the German troops, and of
how his men surrendered to single troopers of ours, while whole
detachments gave themselves up to tanks. "Retiring troops," he wrote,
"greeted one particular division (the cavalry) that was going up fresh
and gallantly to the attack, with shouts of 'Blacklegs!' and 'War-
prolongers!"' That is true. When the Germans left Bohain they shouted
out to the French girls: "The English are coming. Bravo! The war will
soon be over!" On a day in September, when British troops broke the
Drocourt-Queant line, I saw the Second German Guards coming along in
batches, like companies, and after they had been put in barbed-wire
inclosures they laughed and clapped at the sight of other crowds of
comrades coming down as prisoners. I thought then, "Something has
broken in the German spirit.


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