CHAPTER IX

THE WINTER CAMPAIGN

The first purpose of the Allies' scheme of military envelopment was to arrest and eventually to break the German offensive. Even after their losses in the battle of Ypres and the concurrent Battle on the Yser, the Germans still had on the West a superiority in numbers. The shock of those defeats was bitter. That is sufficiently proved by the proclamation which soon afterwards the Emperor of Germany issued to his troops. A cruel hour, he told them, had struck for them and for the Fatherland. He exhorted them to meet it with a greater determination. For a time Germany became a land of mourning. The German newspapers of this date, the later part of November, appeared day by day with pages of private obituary advertisements. The dream of conquest, except as regarded Belgium, was shattered, and it was realised that even to keep that country as a reward of what were called the sacrifices made, Germany would have to face a struggle to the death with Powers whose united superiority was now only too manifest.

That mood, however, soon passed, and feeling, directed at the outset of the war against Russia, was with a redoubled intensity excited against England. The reasons are not far to seek. Extraordinary efforts had become necessary, not only on the East to repair the disaster of the Battle of the Vistula, and to furnish General von Hindenburg with the forces for his great "drive" towards Warsaw, but to make good the wastage on the West.

It is a recognised axiom among military men that for such a scheme as the Germans had in view in France, the lowest superiority in numbers necessary is a proportion of four to three. Even that assumes equal training and equipment, and equal skill in leadership. The last factor, skill in leadership, which is in war the most difficult to estimate beforehand, is, at the same time, as this struggle has proved, tremendously important. In regard to it the odds were heavily against the Germans. The Battle of Ypres, it has become evident, was on their part a series of bad mistakes--mistakes which were not seen until too late. After the defeat at Reims Count von Moltke was removed from his place as Chief of the Staff and Baron von Falkenheyn appointed. The strategical scheme of Baron von Falkenheyn was sound and bold enough if Antwerp had not got into the way of it, and if, too, the tactical blunders of Ypres had not ruined its execution.

Besides defects in leadership, the Germans had to face the striking comparative deficiency of their field artillery, and the fact that their gunnery had not turned out so practically sound as that of the French. It followed that to resume the offensive they must have a superiority of even more than four to three. They had begun with a superiority of two to one. Yet through the unexpected skill in their opponents' leadership they had been foiled and had had their initiative wrested from them. In view, however, of the demands of the campaign on the East, this necessary weight of numbers they could not on the West supply. One resource was to make it up by an appeal to the spirit of the army. That took the form of an unusually liberal distribution of rewards for individual valour.

The Battle of Ypres had at one and the same time brought the second German plan of a Western offensive to the ground, and ensured the accomplishment of General Joffre's envelopment scheme. There was nothing now before the German Staff, therefore, but to attack that envelopment scheme while it remained, as they thought, still in its inceptive stages. If we turn to the day-to-day record of the operations as disclosed in the official reports we shall at once see that there was on the part of the enemy a series of attempted wedging movements. They tried by wedging to break the Allied front simultaneously at Roye and at Arras. This, had it been successful, would have forced out the section of the Allied front lying between those points, and have broken up the Allied position. The movement was not successful. Another movement of this kind was tried between La Bassee on the one side and the Yser on the other. This time the Germans did get a foothold on the west side of the Yser. They were driven out of it, however, by the Belgians cutting the dykes and flooding the country all along the lower course of the river. When the flood burst upon them large numbers of the enemy caught in their entrenchment diggings were drowned.[14] Many of their guns could not be recovered. A third of these wedging attempts was made between La Bassee and Arras. Though they led to desperate fighting, these efforts proved barren of result.

[14] A correspondent of the Paris _Gaulois_, describing the annihilation of a brigade (nearly 9,000) Wurtembergers by the floods on November 4, wrote:

"At midday, the Wurtembergers, in formidable numbers, had succeeded, under the protection of their artillery, in crossing the Yser on planks.

"After a week's fighting the river was choked with sunken boats, trunks of trees, bodies of men, and carcasses of horses. It was over a veritable bridge of corpses that the enemy passed.

"Meanwhile the Allied troops had taken up a position a little in the rear, some regiments remaining in position to cover this movement. Massed on the left bank of the Yser, the enemy's infantry prepared to attack. Some caps skilfully arranged over empty trenches drew the German artillery, which wasted its shells on the decoy. Then the Wurtembergers advanced, and were astonished to find, instead of bodies of the enemy, nothing but a few caps. Just then a loud rumbling noise was heard in a westerly direction. The noise gradually became clearer, resembling the rush of the tide. Suddenly a flood of seething water burst upon the astonished Germans. Trees and corpses were carried on the current, which swept everything before it. Cries of rage and terror came from the German lines. It was too late. Down came the torrent, and in a few moments the enemy's trenches were filled. The terrified herd of Wurtembergers fled to the high ground, to get clear of the inundation, but from the heights the Allied artillery poured volleys of shrapnel into them. The enemy was taken between water and fire. Those who escaped drowning succumbed to our bullets or shells. A few came to our lines, thus evading death by captivity. This was the end of the Wurtemberg brigade."

Let us turn to the side of the Allies. For them the first necessity was to solidify their front. If they could do that they would:

(1) Hold these German armies so that they would be able neither to advance nor to retreat whatever might be the developments of the war on the East front. That meant that the Germans must fight with divided forces, and feed the struggle on the East out of their last reserves.

(2) Bring into fullest play the Allies' superiority in field guns, and by imposing on the enemy the necessity of constant counterattacks, eliminate in the end his advantage in numbers. The effects of this elimination would be that his power in any event of resuming the offensive would progressively disappear, and that, as the process proceeded, the advantage in numbers would pass to the Allied side, and eventually make an Allied offensive both practicable and successful.

Now it is quite certain on the events which have since taken place that the German Headquarters Staff clearly recognised these possibilities. Not only is that shown by the heavy losses they incurred in the wedging battles, which lasted from the middle of November to early part of February, but in the adoption of tactics, designed, as their relative strength in numbers fell, to economise their force. In short, not being able to change the features of the situation, they made a virtue of necessity by trying as far as they could to convert their front into an impregnable barrier of defence, and concurrently doing their utmost to increase the Allies' losses.

Evidently both these means were calculated to delay the accomplishment of the Allied scheme. If at the same time there could be set on foot in the Allied countries the legend, not that the Germans had failed in their great invasion project, as they had, but that they were successfully withstanding an attempt of the Allied forces to push them back, then public opinion in the Allied countries might grow tired of the struggle, and at the finish withdraw from it, leaving Belgium in German hands. The Government of Germany well knew that in England more especially, where the misconception of military operations was profound, operations would be estimated on the, for the immediate purposes of this campaign, entirely false basis of a movement of the front from place to place. The object of the Allied commanders, and the conditions of a successful Allied advance would, in all probability, be alike misunderstood. Experience has shown that these calculations were only too well founded. The nearer the Allied scheme approached to accomplishment, the more energetic became the efforts to propagate the notion that it was a failure.

The German plan of defence, which may be dealt with first, had then, apart from political calculations, two main features. The first was the fortification along their front of advantageous points in such a manner that they could be permanently held. The second was an elaboration of the tactics of trench warfare.

From Ypres southwards to the spur of Notre Dame de Lorette near Arras the German front followed approximately the "inland coastline" already spoken of, and the only break in it geographically of any consequence was the valley of the Lys, the flat stretch lying between the hills south of Ypres and the spur at Aubers south-west of Lille.

On the promontories of this "coastline" the enemy proceeded to fortify themselves. They did the same at other points along their front and notably on the ridge across Champagne, and on the hills to the south-east of Verdun, as well as on the eastern spurs of the Vosges. Simultaneously in the trench warfare they revived grenade throwing, and the use of the trench mortar, expedients which had disappeared from military operations for 200 years. These devices were accompanied by systematic sniping. As skill with the rifle is not a strong point with the German army, a prismatic telescopic sight was invented. This reduced sniping practically to a mechanical trick. If the object fired at was centred on the prism a hit became a certainty--wind permitting. Sapping and mining were also persistently carried on, and the front became for mile after mile a monstrous network of pits, barbed-wire entanglements, electric alarm traps, and obstacles of every sort. In short, what the Germans lacked in comprehensive military skill they made up in laborious detail.

If now we glance at the activity of the Allies, we find that the hardest part of their work was that of solidifying their line in order in the first place to make it invulnerable against German counter-attacks. Those counter-attacks were, as we have seen, to begin with heavy. In support of them the advantage which the enemy then had in howitzers was utilised to the full. During the first weeks of the winter campaign the Allied troops had to hold trenches for the most part hastily made in the stress of battle, and hold them both against this prodigal bombardment with heavy German shells, and through bitter conditions of wet and cold. To reach their trenches along the flooded area in Flanders men had in some places to cross stretches of country on planks, the targets in coming and going for the enemy's shrapnel. The weather, too, was sometimes so severe that the water in the men's drinking bottles turned to ice. The trenches were frozen puddles.

Writing at this time the French "Eye Witness" said:

From the sea to the Lys the operations to the north of the Lys have become terribly difficult. The liquid and cold mud from which the men suffered invaded the breeches of the guns, so that they could no longer fire, and they had to fight with the butt-end of their rifles and with their fists. Our soldiers, according to the expression of one of their leaders, have become blocks of mud. The attempt has been successful to provide for them when they leave the trenches a proper bath and a complete change of linen, which they appreciate very much. Their unalterable good humour enables them to endure with the best possible grace the rough life which is imposed upon them.

A vivid impression of Flanders at this time (the end of November) has been recorded by Alice and Claude Askew, who as members of Dr. Hector Munro's Red Cross Ambulance Corps went to the front to distribute woollen comforters, cigarettes, coffee and chocolates:

Up at Furnes the cold was terrible. The picturesque old town has been shelled twice, but as yet no great damage has been done, and the doctors and nurses working up at the Field Hospital--once a college--are hoping that their hospital may be spared, for this hospital, with its hundred beds and capable band of workers, is doing splendid service.

The patients are so cheerful. Those who are well enough smoke--how the soldier loves his "fag" and how lightly they take their injuries.

* * * * *

Mr. Seeker was operating in the theatre--a patient had just been brought in from the trenches and immediate operation was necessary. A few oil lamps supplied the only illumination; the room was in complete shadow save round the operating table. Outside the wind howled and moaned, and firing could be heard in the distance. We felt very close to the naked heart of war.

The drive back to Dunkirk a few hours later was a strange drive. The road has been broken and battered by the passing of countless military wagons, trodden down by marching feet, it has become a furrow, the plough of war has been over it. On either side gaunt trees lift up gaunt boughs; their branches look like skeleton fingers pointing to the sky, and they look like grim sentinels; the water is half frozen in the dykes.

The whole thing seems unreal--the torn road--those blurred lines of men--the distant gun fire. The effect is that of a dream. We have seen the grim and terrible side of war--the bleeding side.

The moon--a pale sickle moon--shines out of the dun sky--the cold becomes more intense every moment--more freezing.

By continuous labour, however, the entrenchment system developed bit by bit into a vast underground military town. The fire trenches were connected by zigzag communication ways with supports trenches in the rear. From the latter opened the "dug-outs" which were the dwelling places of the men on trench duty. Made and furnished out of the wreckage of towns and villages, some of the "dug-outs" had doors and windows. Here and there the appointments of these underground quarters included desks and long-case clocks. Trench pumps were installed, and the troops provided with sheepskin coats. Entrenchment kitchens, too, were fitted up. The work of improvement went on in fact without a pause.

By day, where fighting was not in progress, these mazes of trenches seemed unutterable desolations of deserted silence. No sign of movement betrayed the thousands who were in them. At night, however, they were scenes of incessant activity. It was by night that entanglements were laid and defences strengthened. At night took place the changes and reliefs. From their billets in the cellars or lower stories of a ruined farm, the smashed windows barricaded with planks and sandbags, or from quarters in some deserted village or abandoned works, the reliefs moved across a country totally without lights, felt their way along lanes and roads pitted into craters by shells; navigated on planks and temporary bridges, ditches, streams, and canals; or crept under the shelter of partly demolished walls, until the rear communication ways into the trenches were reached. In this manner nearly all movements close to the firing line was made.

Acknowledgment too high can never be paid to the devotion and valour of the men who, through the weeks of an unusually dreary and bitter winter, both withstood the fury of the German attacks, and patiently day by day and night by night, solidified the barrier which was to consummate the enemy's ruin. Dangerous though it was the work may well have appeared unheroic. To some interpreters of public opinion at home it did appear unheroic. The soldiers' devotion, however, is a devotion to duty. This was, in his dispatch of November 20, well expressed by the British "Eye Witness."

It is difficult to do justice amid comfortable surroundings to the fortitude of those who day and night support the rigour of life in the trenches. It is true that everything is done for them which foresight and experience can suggest. It is true that by universal admission the rations are unlimited in amount and excellent in quality. But no attention and care can make trench life in winter anything but an extreme test of soldierly fortitude.

It is a small thing that it is dangerous, for danger is the condition of a soldier's life; but it is monotonous, it is damp, it is insanitary, it is intolerably cold, and it is a strain upon the nerves. This war, more than any other, is one of unrecorded heroisms.

Not only the British army, however, but the French and the Belgian armies had unshaken confidence in their leaders, and with good reason. In time the entrenched front became completely organised, a system of settled communications linked up by telephone wires in every direction. The French trenches formed a seemingly endless labyrinth. In Flanders along the Yser rats, driven out of their usual haunts and starving in the desolated country, took up their abode with the men in the dug-outs, and became domesticated and friendly.

To many whose ideas of war remained based on the marches and counter-marches of earlier campaigns it was puzzling to see armies of hitherto unheard of magnitude thus fortifying themselves against each other. Taken together the combatants numbered millions. Their diggings stretched over more than 500 miles of country. A vast amount of labour is needed to complete a modern entrenched post, yet such posts were to be counted along these lines not by thousands but by tens of thousands.

It has been stated that in face of the hugely multiplied power of modern firearms, and of the destructiveness of modern high explosives as used now in war, there is no alternative save for the fighting hosts of the present day to dig themselves in, and thus to remain locked in a deadly embrace. The explanation is crude. Like the astonishment called forth by this spectacle because it was unprecedented, the idea that all this represented merely a "deadlock" sprang from failure to grasp the realities of this gigantic struggle.

At the back of every operation of war there is a strategic purpose. In this instance, so far from there being no strategy in the so-called impasse, it was wholly dictated by strategy. So far from there being no manoeuvres in it, it was nothing else, from the beginning, but a mighty series of manoeuvres. They were modern manoeuvres, not ancient, but that is all.

To every student of this campaign with a knowledge of military affairs, the strategy on both sides which brought about this situation has been clear. Let it be remembered that entrenchment economises force. The proposition presented to General Joffre was that of arresting and breaking the offensive of an enemy not only superior in numbers, but with traditions which led him to cling to and cherish the offensive as his chief instrument of victory. General Joffre therefore knew that the Germans would struggle to regain the offensive until their power to do so became too exhausted to keep up the effort. He knew further that in the position in which he had succeeded in placing them they must make that effort at a disadvantage, and that that advantage must grow rather than diminish. For these reasons it was that the labour of entrenching was undertaken by the Allied troops. No part of that labour was thrown away.

In enclosing the Germans in an entrenched front he so economised his force that it became, though less in number, equal to that of the enemy in power. The simple proof of that is that the Germans were unable to break the barrier. They did their utmost to break it. Their success or their failure in the war depended upon being able to break it. They sacrificed at Ypres, on the Yser, and in later battles more than half a million of men in the endeavour to break it. It remained firm against every assault.

Nor was the loss of life the only loss. These battles has led to a vast, and as it proved, wasteful expenditure of ammunition. Since the barrier could not be broken, the question now was how to render the envelopment scheme abortive by inflicting on the Allies losses which would delay or make impossible the offensive on the part of the Allies to which the scheme was designed to lead. Expedients to that end had to be devised more effective than the fire of heavy howitzers. They must also be less costly expedients. Thus hand grenades and trench mortars reappeared, and mechanical sniping. The reserve of shells with which Germany had begun the war was used up. Such munitions had to be employed more sparingly. Besides, owing to the scarcity of copper resulting from the British naval blockade, both the cost and the difficulty of manufacturing shells had immensely increased.

The German ordinary grenade was nothing more than the small iron bomb which had been used during the campaigns in Flanders in the seventeenth century. It was now filled with a charge of guncotton, and hurled into the hostile trenches by hand. Another variety had attached to the globe a short iron stump. This enabled the grenade to be stuck on to the muzzle of a rifle, and fired into the opposing trenches when the distance was too great to allow of the use of hand bombs. The trench mortar fired in the same way an iron globular bomb about a foot in diameter. The bomb was stuck on to the muzzle of the mortar by a short iron stump projecting from it, and filled with a heavy charge of nitro-glycerine, was fired at a high angle, so that it might fall right into a hostile trench and by the tremendous force of the explosion wreck it.

These projectiles, grenades and mortar bombs, were now turned out of the German arsenals in huge quantities. They were both much cheaper than shells, always a primary consideration in German warfare, and the mortar bombs required no copper driving bands.

In addition to these expedients mines were resorted to. Several blind saps--tunnels slightly below the surface--driven towards a hostile line of trench would be connected by a cross tunnel, and in this just in front of the trench the mines would be laid. At the moment chosen for attack they would be exploded from the German position by electricity, and a rush made to occupy the craters so formed. Yet another ruse was to drive an open sap--a narrow zigzag cutting--to a point commanding a hostile trench, and there instal a machine gun. For daring in these operations military distinctions were freely bestowed, and it is not surprising that in carrying them out many of the enemy displayed an audacious cunning.

When, however, we consider that the British and Belgians alike were much more expert riflemen, and that all three Allies as time went on steadily emphasised their ascendancy in artillery, the failure of these efforts of German perseverance to make up for the German want of military genius, was, it is not difficult to see, inevitable. The British troops improvised hand grenades out of army jam or beef tins. In grenade throwing they speedily became expert. Every German device was countered and improved upon. Parties engaged in mining met each other underground, and fought it out hand to hand. To diminish the losses arising from rifle and artillery fire, the larger German operations in this stage of the campaign were their night attacks. In these night battles the country before plunged in total darkness would suddenly present the spectacle of flights of star shells and flares, mingled with the play of searchlights, and the lurid flash of guns and rifles.

Attack and counter-attack, varied in every interval of clearer weather by artillery duels, went on during week after week. The lines round Ypres and to the west of Lille, more especially about La Bassee, remained among the main scenes of German activity.

Round Ypres the shot-torn and shell-ploughed woods became those melancholy and unapproachable "zones of the dead" where the German slain lay unburied, and many of the wounded had been left miserably to perish.

Frequent allusion has been made (the British "Eye Witness" wrote on November 20) to the losses of the enemy. Round Ypres we are continually finding fresh evidence of the slaughter inflicted. On November 15 one of our battalions, upon advancing discovered a German trench manned by seventeen corpses, while there were forty-nine more in a house close by. Next day a patrol discovered sixty dead in front of one trench, and fifty opposite another. In fact, all the farms and cottages to our front are charnel houses. The significance of such small numbers lies only in the fact that they represent the killed in a very small area.

According to prisoners the German attempts to take Ypres have proved costly. One man stated that there were only fifteen survivors out of his platoon which went into action fifty strong; another reported that of 250 men who advanced with him only nineteen returned.

It is believed that one Bavarian regiment, 3,000 strong, which left Bavaria for the front on October 19, had only 1,200 men left before the attack made along the Menin-Ypres road on November 14, when it again suffered severely. The plight of some of the units of the new formations is even worse. One regiment of reserve corps having but 600 men out of 3,000.

If the period since the beginning of the war is considered the numbers are greater. For instance of the 15th Corps one regiment has lost sixty officers and 2,560 men, and another has lost 3,000 men. These figures include casualties of every kind--killed, wounded, and missing.

By dint of persistence the Germans succeeded in establishing on the west bank of the Yser a bridgehead at a point known as the Ferryman's Hut. They lost it, however, on November 27.

The action (says the French official account) was particularly brilliant. Several German trenches were carried in succession.

The operation was one of the most arduous and difficult tasks which our troops have accomplished. The object was to drive from the left bank of the Yser the Germans who had succeeded in establishing themselves there for a length of over a mile.

The difficulty in the attack lay in the fact that the canal was bordered by marshes which could not be crossed, and the only way of approach was along the bank and on a very narrow front. Moreover, the right bank, where the enemy had taken up his position, dominated the left bank, which was exposed to a machine-gun fire. The assault on the Ferryman's hut was delivered by a detachment of 100 volunteers from the African battalions.

Our men fought knee deep in the water in a downpour of rain. The Germans displayed the greatest courage, and our men had to kill one officer and fifteen men who refused to surrender.

In the ferryman's hut itself, which had been turned into a little fort, there were fifty-three lying dead, two of whom were officers. They had been killed by our 8·6 shells. Close by was the wreckage of their searchlight and their machine guns.

Across the Yser the Germans had tried to push their outposts westward as far as possible. Mr. A. Beaumont, special correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, gathered the story of one of these expeditions which reached a ruined village:

Amid the ruins the church alone was standing, though the belfry was demolished. A score of Germans on outpost duty had taken shelter in the church for the night. They found the sexton, an old man of more than seventy, and mercilessly flogged him because he would not or could not tell them where the enemy was.

He crept out into the fields, found a French company concealed in some trenches, and told them his story. There was an instant rush of picked men into the village, the church was surrounded. The Germans taken by surprise hid in the choir, but to light up the place the old sexton found a bundle of straw, to which he set fire. As he held it up the Germans were slain on the spot.

The efforts of the Germans were directed not only towards gaining a crossing over the Yser, but to driving the British out of the valley of the Lys. This it has already been noted was geographically a weak point in their front. Down the valley of the Lys, besides, lay the railway junctions of Menin and Courtrai, vital to the maintenance of their positions alike between the Lys and the sea, and from Lille to Arras. South of Ypres they had at length succeeded by sapping and mining in getting possession of the Kleine Zillebeke ridge, though they had been unable to capture it in the battle. At the same time they tried to push the British line westward from Lille. Repeated and desperate attacks were made on the British posts at Cuinchy and Givenchy. Cuinchy they captured. Later, however, the place was retaken, and with it a large depôt of German bombs and hand grenades. On January 25 the enemy, advancing from La Bassee in two powerful columns, made a furious effort to take Givenchy. Five assaults were delivered against that place. The first attack was in the nature of a surprise.

Unexpectedly in the cold and misty dawn the mass, brought up with secrecy during the night, surged from the German trenches. The British trenches were not more than 100 yards away. Across this space, ankle deep in mud, the attackers ploughed their way despite severe losses. The British trenches were taken, though not without a stiff fight. The resistance enabled the British supports to be called out. Charging into Givenchy village the Germans found themselves confronted at the end of the main street by these additional troops. The fire lasted only seconds. Without further ado the British dashed in with the bayonet. The clash was desperate. It was a melee of man to man. Not only bayonets were used. Many Germans were knocked out by British soldiers' fists. The remnant who could not get out of the village in time sought refuge in the houses. They were hunted out. One man broke into a house where eight Germans had sheltered themselves, bayonetted four, and made prisoners of the others.

With the defeat of this attack the British regained the trenches lost. The later attacks of the enemy never got home. A determined struggle was all this while being waged to the south of La Bassee in the area of the brickfields. At one point the Germans broke through the British line. Early in the afternoon, however, a combined French and British counter-attack drove them back. Here, too, there was hand to hand fighting.

From October onwards La Bassee remained one of the hottest corners in the war. Perched on an inland promontory which had been elaborately fortified, the German front here formed a salient. It was an important part of their plan to pierce the Allied front at this point. To carry out that plan they made repeated attacks in great force. That these attacks failed was due to the remarkable fighting qualities of the troops opposed to them. About this struggle, of vital importance in its bearing on the campaign, many stories have been told. The two following, both authentic, illustrate the spirit which inspired our men, British and Indians alike:

In one trench which had become in the course of the fighting more or less isolated, forty of our men continued to hold firm until every one of them was either killed or wounded. Eventually there were only three left capable of firing, and these three continued to hold the enemy at bay. In the meantime word had been brought to those in rear that their ammunition was nearly exhausted, and seven men, the strongest available, were selected to bring up as much ammunition as they could carry. These latter found the three wounded survivors still standing amid the bodies of their dead and disabled comrades and still firing steadily. The support, slender as it was, came in the nick of time, for at that moment the Germans launched another assault, which, like the previous ones, was beaten off, and the position saved.

A very striking instance of resource and presence of mind was shown by a private (Indian) since been promoted from the ranks in recognition of his services. He and another were instructed to creep out of the trench they were defending in order to make observations of a German trench 200 yards away. They advanced, creeping in the dark, with about forty yards laterally between them. When they had covered half the distance a brilliant German searchlight was suddenly flung over the space which divided the two trenches. The flood of light left one of the two fully exposed, while just avoiding with its outer rim his companion.

Concealment was useless for the man so exposed, and he was quick-witted enough to realise that no ordinary resource would save his life. He at once rose to his feet, and, in view of the British trench, advanced, salaaming to the German trench. Its occupants, taken aback by so unusual an advance, ceased fire. He still advanced, and, approaching quite close to the trench, was allowed after some dumb show to enter. A dialogue followed. The Germans, anxious to define his status, mentioned several Indian nationalities. He shook his head until the word Mussulman was mentioned. Then he nodded vigorously. A moment later his questioners mentioned the British. He drew his hand across his throat with a lively gesture of disgust. The Germans, encouraged by this indication, gave him some rations and a blanket.

He spent the night with them. Next morning, by the use of his fingers, he indicated to a superior officer who had been sent for to deal with so novel a case, that there were twenty-five other Mussulman in his trench, whom, if released, he could certainly bring in. The Germans, completely deceived, gave him a final cup of coffee, and set him on this promising errand. He rejoined his friends, who had long since given him up, with a report of far more than local interest.

These acts of valour are but typical of a thousand like them. By such devotion to the soldier's ideal--his duty--by a courage, a morale, and a disciplined fortitude which have never been surpassed in any armies at any time, the first and essential part, the foundation, of the Allied generals' scheme, the most brilliant and daring stroke of strategy till then attempted in war, was accomplished. The Germans were held as in a vice.