hing was that the British troops were working up on one
side of Combles and the French on the other side; and the next morning
after the British had gathered in some escaping Germans who seemed to
have lost their way, the blue and the khaki met in the main street
without indulging in formal ceremonies and exchanged a "Good morning!"
and "_Bon jour!_" and "Here we are! Voyla! Quee pawnsays-vous!" and "Ca
va bien! Oh, yais, I tink so!" and found big piles of shells and other
munitions which the Germans could not take away and cellars with many
wounded who had been brought in from the hills--and that was all there
was to it: a march in and look around, when for glory's sake, at least,
the victors ought to have delivered congratulatory addresses. But tired
soldiers will not do that sort of thing. I shall not say that they are
spoiling pictures for the Salon, for there are incidents enough to keep
painters going for a thousand years; which ought to be one reason for
not having a war for another thousand!

As for Thiepval, the British staff, inconsiderate of the correspondents
this time--they really were not conducting the war for us--did not
inform us of the attack, being busy those days reaping villages and
trenches after they were over the Ridge while High Visibility had Low
Visibility shut up in the guardhouse. Besides, the British were so near
Thiepval as the result of their persistent advances that its taking was
only another step forward, one of savage fighting, however, in the same
kind of operations that I have described in the chapter on "Watching a
Charge." The debris beaten into dust had been so scattered that one
could not tell where the village began or ended, but the smudge was a
symbol to the army no less than to the British public--a symbol of the
boasted impregnability of the first-line German fortifications which had
resisted the attack of July 1st--and its capture a reward of English
stubbornness appealing to the race which is not unconscious of the
characteristic that has carried its tongue and dominion over the world.

Point was given, too, by the enormous dugouts, surpassing previous
exhibits, capable of holding a garrison of a thousand men and a hospital
which, under the bursts of huge shells of the months of British
bombardment, had been safe under ground. The hospital was equipped with
excellent medical apparatus as well as anaesthetics manufactured in
Germany, of which the British were somewhat shor