My Year of the War - Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops in France and - the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here Given for the - First Time in its Complete Form by Frederick Palmer
page 145 of 428 (33%)
page 145 of 428 (33%)
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found the shoe on the other foot.
Now the fields in the foreground down to the woods' edge were bare of any living thing. You had to take mon capitaine's word for it that there were any soldiers in front of us. "The Boches are a good distance away at this point," he said. "They are in the next woods." A broad stretch of snow lay between the two clumps of woods. It was not worth while for either side to try to get possession of the intervening space. At the first movement by either French or Germans the woods opposite would hum with rifle fire and echo with cannonading. So, like rival parties of Arctic explorers waiting out the Arctic winter, they watched each other. But if one force or the other napped and the other caught him at it, then winter would not stay a brigade commander's ambition. Three days later in this region the French, by a quick movement, got a good bag of prisoners to make a welcome item for the daily French official bulletin. "We wait and the Germans wait on spring for any big movement," said the colonel. "Men can't lie out all night in the advance in weather like this. In that direction------" He indicated a part of the line where the two armies were facing each other across the old frontier. Back and forth they had fought, only to arrive where they had begun. There was something else which the colonel wished us to see before we left the hill of Ste. Geneviève. It appealed to his Gallic sentiment, this quadrilateral of stone on the highest point where legend tells that "Jovin, a Christian and very faithful, vanquished the German |
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