and more disfiguring than Europe had ever suffered before. The long jagged slash falling across the West from the North Sea to Switzerland cut through Picardy, crossing both the Ancre and the Somme. There, after the first breathless struggle of the rival armies in their sweep toward the sea, they had dug themselves in securely, transforming towns and wooded plantations into formidable fortifications. Farther north, around Ypres, and farther south, near Soissons and Verdun, battles had raged with fearful intensity, but this part of the front had been comparatively quiet. THE HE GERMANS BELIEVE THEIR POSITIONS For more than a year and a half the time had been spent in extensive preparation for a possible future test of the endurance and fighting strength of two great forces. On the one side, the German lines were established with intricate and elaborate detail until they were deemed impregnable. Behind the imposing first position, constructed with systems of trenches for firing, support, and reserve troops, and deep dugouts for protecting the men and machine-guns against bombardment, there was a second position of almost equal strength. Behind this, again, third and fourth positions lay, including various villages and clumps of woodland. Trenches and dugouts were driven far down below the surface, in a soil that "cut like cheese and hardened like brick in dry weather." They were connected by tunnels, provided with manholes, lined with timber, approached by well-built wooden stairways; and in some of the dugouts, thirty feet or more below ground, the luxuries of electric lighting, wallpaper, cretonnes, and pictures were not wanting. Deep cellars in village houses became strongholds and shelters for resistance in later combats. In the woods, matted underbrush was intertwined with thick barbed wire, until the tangle appeared utterly impenetrable around the network of trenches it protected. Without exaggeration one could say, "The great German salient which curves around from Gomme court to Fricourt is like a chain of mediæval fortresses connected by earthworks and tunnels." The arteries that furnished supplies and material of all sorts to the complicated structure were the railways passing through St. Quentin, Cambrai, La Fère and Laon. HE BRITISH PREPARE TO BLAST THEIR THWAY THROUGH. While the German Command were thus building what they considered an immovable wall to stand in defiance against all assault, the Allied leaders were bending their thoughts and energies toward the destruction of the wall. To make the effort adequate required months of labor, planning, and training. In the spring of 1916 the British area had been extended to include the whole front between Ypres and the Somme, but the New Army was not yet ready to undertake a great military project. It was still in a state of preparation, drilling and pulling into form for a supreme effort. The material was of the best-England's choice young manhood, intelligent, ready, eager to give themselves to the work and discipline of army life, or to the ultimate sacrifice in battle, for the great end in view. For them, in the months of waiting, the front was a training-camp. Meanwhile, the manufacture of war material in England was being pushed to the utmost. Guns of all sizes, trench-mortars, grenades were produced in a profusion unheard-of before. At the bases vast reserve stores of munitions were piled up and then sent forward; for the supply required must be more than ten times as great as in any former campaign. With the increase in the calibre of the weapons and the weight of ammunition, the demands made upon lines of communication were broadened and intensified. Railways, tramways, sidings and platforms were built behind the lines. It was necessary, too, to lay as many as one hundred and twenty miles of water of water mains and install wells and pumping stations. As experience brought greater understanding of the needs, trenches were multiplied and improved, and dugouts were prepared THE GERMANS EMPLOYED IN DIGGING A WELL The imperative need for water, wherever an army might be, furnished one of the great problems of the war. Wells were dug behind the lines, and new ones constructed when the lines shifted. Here is one in process of building, the shaft partly sunk and crossbeams prepared for a roof. When leaving a position, the Germans were likely to poison the water in their wells to impede the enemy's advance. remained undemonstrative, except for artillery activities, patrol raids in quest of information, and minor engagements in the way of trench and crater fighting, which held the attention of parts of the enemy forces. But, in adding the region around Arras to their own front, the British had been able to release the French Tenth Army, which had been stationed there. "It would be idle to pretend that the events of the spring and early summer of 1916 were on the whole exhilarating," writes Mr. H. Perry Robinson. "In the spluttering activities well prepared to make it effectual. However, the long, severe strain of Verdun at last called for a strong stroke to divert the enemy from his concentration there. The Somme area had already been determined upon as the scene of the next great effort. It was here that the armies of France and Britain lay side by side and could, consequently, work in direct co-operation. The British were to assume the main responsibility, with the French action subordinate and complementary. Midsummer was set as the latest advisable date for the advance. Since the opening of 1916, the British infantry had appeared for the first time in their new steel helmets, when in March they had made a surprise attack upon the German trenches during a renewal of battling in the Ypres salient. In April the enemy tried various attacks of tear and gas shells, at least one of which was turned back upon his own lines by a shifting wind. On May 6, the Anzacs, newly arrived in France, had their first meeting with the foe on French soil,, and a week later there was a vigorous German bombardment between the Somme and Maricourt, followed by an unsuccessful attack. Then Vimy Ridge became the centre of activity for a few days, with an explosion of mines and gallant fighting by the Lancashires. In the first week of June, the Germans made another concentrated attempt to break into the Ypres salient, where the 3rd Canadian Division, under Major-General Mercer, was stationed. Although stunned by a terrifying bombardment which preceded the attack, the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry and the Canadian Mounted Rifles made a splendid resistance in Sanctuary Wood and around Zillibeke. General Mercer and several other officers were killed, and, in spite of brilliant and determined fighting, the positions at the extreme point of the salient were lost. The line fell back behind the ruins of Hooge, until Major-General Currie with the Ist Canadian Division, by making a successful attack, regained the most important section of that bit of the front. HE ALLIES HAVE THE ADVANTAGE IN TH THE AIR. The air service of the Allies had grown steadily in effectiveness and confidence until it had unquestionably outstripped that of the Central Powers. By the aid of telephoto lenses, photographs could be obtained from a height of three or four thousand feet and panoramic views prepared. Moreover, the Royal Engineers, from airplane observations, were able to con struct accurate detailed maps of the enemy positions. Wireless apparatus on aircraft had taken the place of the cruder signals for regulating gunfire from above. By pursuing hostile craft and by bombing supply stations and bases, as well as attacking infantry lines, the airmen furnished invaluable assistance. After a new method, dropping fire-balls, had been adopted for destroying captive balloons, the eyes of the enemy were considerably impaired. "Sausages" were far less numerous along the German lines, so many had collapsed and crumpled under the touch of the fiery darts falling out of the sky. Sir Douglas Haig's dispatch reports that "on the 25th of June the Royal Flying Corps carried out a general attack on the enemy's observation balloons, destroying nine of them." However, in the greater part of the Somme sector, the German positions were on higher ground, affording better direct observation of the lines of the British than the latter had of theirs, and the Germans were supplied with maps giving correct ranges along each road of advance.. In preparation for the offensive, the point of contact between the French and British troops, previously at the line of the Somme, was shifted to a point a little north of the river in the vicinity of Maricourt. Without the river between them, they could make closer and better co-operation. General Sir Henry S. Rawlinson was entrusted with the main attack, from Maricourt northward to Serre. His command, the Fourth Army, lay across the Ancre and rounded the Fricourt salient. The subsidiary attack, from Serre northward, near Gommecourt, was in the hands of General Sir Edmund Allenby and troops from his Third Army. HE FRENCH HOLD THE POSITIONS SOUTH THE South of General Rawlinson's right wing and extending from Maricourt across the Somme to Fay, the French attacking force consisted of the Sixth Army, under General Fayolle, and the Tenth Army under General Micheler. These were the two armies which had FROM YPRES TO THE SOMME; THE BRITISH FRONT IN 1916, AFTER ITS EXTENSION formerly been commanded by General de Castelnau and General d'Urbal, respectively. General Foch was in supreme control of the French forces in this operation. Ultimate direction of the whole operation was exercised, of course, by General Haig and General Foch. All the troops were in particularly good form and spirit for the attack, as is evidenced by the words of a London Times special correspondent who during the battle visited the A BRITISH HOWITZER ON RAILWAY MOUNTING, SOMEWHERE ON THE WESTERN FRONT Railway-mounted heavy artillery was highly developed in the World War. Thus was the necessary rigidity combined with mobility. Different mounts were used for different cannon. For howitzers and moderately long-range guns, mounts with limited traverse (or lateral swing) were employed. Mounts for small guns allowed all-around fire; while those for very long-range guns were fixed, depending upon curved rails for change of aim from side to side. These diferent types of rail way mounts were adapted to different uses. to have a thorough preparation by the artillery so as to crush and weaken as far as possible the enemy's entanglements and fortifications. In a general way the objective of the British armies was Bapaume and that of the French, Péronne; but their immediate movements were aimed eastward by three simultaneous échelons (or steps). The first of these, by the British centre, was to push toward La Boisselle; the second, by the British right, toward Hardecourt and the Somme; the third, by the French section, had as its goal the Somme beyond Biache and Barleux. And there were three underlying purposes for the offensive:-to relieve the process were pursued with vigor and endurance. On June 24 began the fearful bombardment that ushered in a battle which was to become a five-months' siege. Irregular artillery attacks since mid-June all along the Franco-British front, had led up to this intensified fire, concentrating now here and now there with misleading emphasis. But, during the last week of June, through cloudy, heavy, rainy weather, ninety miles of British guns, with flanking miles to north and south, of Belgian and French guns, poured forth ceaseless volumes of shells and raged with roll upon roll of thunderous roaring. |