published photographs do
not give any idea of the indescribable mass of ruins to which our guns
reduced it. The chaos is so utter that the very line of the streets is
all but obliterated.

"It was indeed a scene of desolation into which the Rifle Brigade--the
first regiment to enter the village, I believe--raced headlong. Of the
church only the bare shell remained, the interior lost to view beneath a
gigantic mound of debris. The little churchyard was devastated, the very
dead plucked from their graves, broken coffins and ancient bones
scattered about amid the fresher dead, the slain of that morning--
gray-green forms asprawl athwart the tombs. Of all that once fair
village but two things remained intact--two great crucifixes reared
aloft, one in the churchyard, the other over against the chateau. From
the cross, that is the emblem of our faith, the figure of Christ, yet
intact though all pitted with bullet marks, looked down in mute agony on
the slain in the village.

"The din and confusion were indescribable. Through the thick pall of
shell smoke Germans were seen on all sides, some emerging half dazed
from cellars and dugouts, their hands above their heads, others dodging
round the shattered houses, others firing from the windows, from behind
carts, even from behind the overturned tombstones. Machine guns were
firing from the houses on the outskirts, rapping out their
nerve-racking note above the noise of the rifles.

"Just outside the village there was a scene of tremendous enthusiasm.
The Rifle Brigade, smeared with dust and blood, fell in with the Third
Gurkhas with whom they had been brigaded in India. The little brown men
were dirty but radiant. Kukri in hand they had very thoroughly gone
through some houses at the cross-roads on the Rue du Bois and silenced a
party of Germans who were making themselves a nuisance there with some
machine guns. Riflemen and Gurkhas cheered themselves hoarse."

[Illustration: Map: Bapaume on the North, Albert on the West, Rosieres and
Chaulnes on the South and Peronne on the East.]
SCENE OF THE BLOODY BATTLES OF THE SOMME
The tide of war swept over this terrain with terrific violence.
Peronne was taken by the British in their great offensives of 1916-17;
in the last desperate effort of the Germans in 1918 they plunged
through Peronne advancing 35 miles, only to be hurled back with awful
losses by Marshal Foch. The town of Albert was taken and retaken
several