The 56th Division

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Charles Humble Dudley Ward. The 56th Division

FOREWORD

CHAPTER I. FORMATION AND THE ATTACK ON THE GOMMECOURT SALIENT

CHAPTER II. THE SOMME

CHAPTER III. LAVENTIE-RICHBOURG

CHAPTER IV. THE BATTLES OF ARRAS, 1917

CHAPTER V. YPRES

CHAPTER VI. CAMBRAI

CHAPTER VII. THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE

CHAPTER VIII. THE ADVANCE TO VICTORY

CHAPTER IX. THE ARMISTICE

APPENDIX. GENERAL OFFICERS COMMANDING

Отрывок из книги

After the declaration of war, when the first news of the Expeditionary Force began to trickle across the Channel, the people of England were told that troops were marching to the lilting tune with the Cockney refrain:

Within a few months territorial battalions were marching in France and singing the same absurd song. But the London, the Cockney spirit, impudent, noisy, but good-tempered and friendly, always wide awake, observant, and ready for a scrap, above all never down-hearted, led the way from the very beginning of the war. It is with the light-hearted crowd of Piccadilly and Leicester Square that we are concerned, for the whole of London some time or other passes through those thoroughfares.

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It was once asked after a severe action for the capture of some rising ground, “What is the use of turning Fritz off a hill? There is always another hill behind it.” Which was true enough. But it is as well to remember that the high ground to the left as far as Blairville, held at this date by the Germans, was in 1918 in our hands, and it enabled Sir Douglas Haig to turn the whole of the old Somme position.

Of the German line Gen. Hull says:

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