land Territorials having taken two lines of trenches, linked up
with the Australians at the north corner of the village, where they
established themselves in a cemetery. As the Germans still held the
Windmill on much higher ground, they had good observation, and made
the most of it, bombarding the British position unceasingly until it
seemed smothered in smoke and fire. It seemed incredible that anything
could live in such a zone of death.

Captain C. W. Bean, who was with the Australians, has recorded his
impressions of the German bombardment in a few graphic lines.

"Hour after hour, day and night, with increasing intensity as the time
went on, the enemy rained heavy shell into the area. Now he would send
them crashing in on a line south of the road--eight heavy shells at a
time, minute after minute followed by a burst of shrapnel. Now he
would place a curtain straight across this valley or that till the sky
and landscape were blotted out.... Day and night the men worked
through it, fighting the horrid machinery far over the horizon as if
they were fighting Germans hand to hand, building up whatever it
battered down, burying some of them, not once, but again and again and
again. What is a barrage against such troops? They went through it as
you would go through a summer shower, too proud to bend their heads,
many of them, because their mates were looking. As one of the best of
their officers said to me: 'I have to walk about as if I liked it;
what else can you do when your own men teach you to?'"

PART IX--THE WAR IN THE AIR

CHAPTER LIII

THE VALUE OF ZEPPELINS IN LONG-DISTANCE RECONNOITERING--NAVAL
AUXILIARIES

The growing intensity and fierceness of the gigantic struggle between
the great nations of the world in the second half of the second year
naturally was reflected in the extraordinary activities of the aerial
fleets of the combatants. To give in detail the thousands of
individual and mass attacks is manifestly impossible in a restricted
work of this kind, and we shall have to be satisfied with a
description of the more important events in this latest of all
warfares.

Undoubtedly the most pronounced feature of aerial combat in 1916 was
the complete rehabilitation of the Zeppelin type of rigid airship
construction as an invaluable aid to the land and naval forces in the
difficult and dangerous task of reconnoitering the enemy forces. There
can be no doubt that the frequent raids of the e