here was no long fight against the
Irish, who stormed it in a wild, fierce rush which even machine-guns
could not check. The German General Staff was getting flurried, grabbing
at battalions from other parts of the line, disorganizing its divisions
under the urgent need of flinging in men to stop this rot in the lines,
ordering counter-attacks which were without any chance of success, so
that thin waves of men came out into the open, as I saw them several
times, to be swept down by scythes of bullets which cut them clean to
the earth. Before September 15th they hoped that the British offensive
was wearing itself out. It seemed to them at least doubtful that after
the struggle of two and a half months the British troops could still
have spirit and strength enough to fling themselves against new lines.

But the machinery of their defense was crumbling. Many of their guns had
worn out, and could not be replaced quickly enough. Many batteries had
been knocked out in their emplacements along the line of Bazentin and
Longueval before the artillery was drawn back to Grand-court and a new
line of safety. Battalion commanders clamored for greater supplies of
hand-grenades, intrenching-tools, trench-mortars, signal rockets, and
all kinds of fighting material enormously in excess of all previous
requirements.

The difficulties of dealing with the wounded, who littered the
battlefields and choked the roads with the traffic of ambulances, became
increasingly severe, owing to the dearth of horses for transport and the
longer range of British guns which had been brought far forward.

The German General Staff studied its next lines of defense away through
Courcelette, Martinpuich, Lesboeufs, Morval, and Combles, and they did
not look too good, but with luck and the courage of German soldiers,
and the exhaustion--surely those fellows were exhausted!--of British
troops--good enough.

On September 15th the German command had another shock when the whole
line of the British troops on the Somme front south of the Ancre rose
out of their trenches and swept over the German defenses in a tide.

Those defenses broke hopelessly, and the waves dashed through. Here and
there, as on the German left at Morval and Lesboeufs, the bulwarks stood
for a time, but the British pressed against them and round them. On the
German right, below the little river of the Ancre, Courcelette fell,
and Martinpuich, and at last, as I have written, High Wood, which