spray on jagged cliffs when they surged in wave after
wave against the army of Foch at Sezanne and Fere Champenoise.

Germany was willing to sacrifice those superb troops during the
early part of the battle because she knew that von Kluck had only
to hold his army together, even though he did not advance, and the
overthrow of Foch would mean a Teuton wedge driven between Verdun
and Paris.

One year and ten months later she hurled the Guard Reserve at
Contalmaison because she was determined that this important link in
the chain of concrete and steel that coiled back and forth before
Bapaume-Peronne must remain unbroken. The newly-formed lines of
Britain's sons bent but did not break under the shock. They were
outnumbered, but, like all the rest of the British that the
back-from-the-front German soldiers have told me about, these
fought on and on, never thinking of surrender.

I know from one of these that in a first onslaught the Guard lost
heavily, but was reinforced and again advanced. Another desperate
encounter and the men from Potsdam withered in the hand-to-hand
carnage. The Germans could not hold what they had won back, and
the khaki succeeded the field grey at Contalmaison.

The evacuation of the wounded occupied hours. I purposely missed
my train, for I knew that I was probably the only foreign civilian
to see the historic picture of the proudest soldiery of Prussia
return to its garrison town from the greatest battle in history.

Empty trains were pulled out of the way, to be succeeded by more
trains full of wounded, and again more. Doctors and nurses were
attentive and always busy, and the stretcher-bearers moved back and
forth until their faces grew red with exertion.

But it was the visages of the men on the stretchers that riveted my
attention. I never saw so many men so completely exhausted. Not
one pair of lips relaxed into a smile, and not an eye lit up with
the glad recognition of former surroundings.

It was not, however, the lines of suffering in those faces that
impressed me, but that uncanny sameness of expression, an
expression of hopeless gloom so deep that it made me forget that
the sun was shining from an unclouded sky. The dejection of the
police, of the soldier onlookers, of the walking wounded, and those
upturned faces on the white pillows told as plainly as words could
ever tell that the Guard had at last met a force superior to
themselves and their war machine. They knew