130 Tuf. Ypres Times. But while the nations in arms turned up the earth for Mars, the French farmer, returned for the third time to his war-scarred acres, drove, among the unexploded shells, the new plough which the kindly British Government had sent up to him, and prayed to Ceres to bless his labours. That toy defence line east of the river, those ploughing peasants with their new- hope and new implements, gave one, not confidence but a clue to official opinion of Germany's remaining strength. The larks were singing in the valley, and the catkins gleamed like ermine on the eve of The Great Push. Bright sunny days succeeded a morning mist. The Germans were lucky in their weather. The moon was very bright at night. HOFDING ON A PHASE IN THE GREAT GERMAN ATTACK. [Imperial War Museum Photograph. Crown Copyright. The brigade in our sector received their fair share of the overwhelming bombardment and succeeding attack. Everywhere the line gave, but its burying of the cable was not work wasted. The little hill-top village of Le Yerguier wrote that day its name in history, and the heroic troops who defended it were still holding out in a ring of dead Germans when the enemy were over the Somme south of Brie, the toy defence line taken in their stride. There followed, for one cavalry unit of whose doings I have a hazy recollection, a fortnight of nightmare wanderings as the line gave wrav from Peronne back to Corbie, dangerously close to Amiens. There was food to be had, for rationing does not break down on a retreat, but little time in which to eat it. Truth and sleep were necessities hardest to come by those days. Counter orders followed hard on orders, rumour stood at every cross-road, and panic struggled irr the arms of discipline. Sometimes an officer found himself leading to the rear a squadron of horses linked on a rope, one man to six horses. At another, he was marching forward

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1927 | | pagina 4