t came
Orders of the Day warning them, exhorting them, commanding them to hold
fast.

"To the hesitating and faint-hearted in the regiment," says one of these
Orders, "I would say the following:

"What the Englishman can do the German can do also. Or if, on the other
hand, the Englishman really is a better and superior being, he would be
quite justified in his aim as regards this war, viz., the extermination
of the German. There is a further point to be noted: this is the first
time we have been in the line on the Somme, and what is more, we
are there at a time when things are more calm. The English regiments
opposing us have been in the firing-line for the second, and in some
cases even the third, time. Heads up and play the man!"

It was easy to write such documents. It was more difficult to bring up
reserves of men and ammunition. The German command was harder pressed by
the end of September.

From July 1st to September 8th, according to trustworthy information,
fifty-three German divisions in all were engaged against the Allies on
the Somme battlefront. Out of these fourteen were still in the line on
September 8th.

Twenty-eight had been withdrawn, broken and exhausted, to quieter
areas. Eleven more had been withdrawn to rest-billets. Under the
Allies' artillery fire and infantry attacks the average life of a German
division as a unit fit for service on the Somme was nineteen days. More
than two new German divisions had to be brought into the front-line
every week since the end of June, to replace those smashed in the
process of resisting the Allied attack. In November it was reckoned by
competent observers in the field that well over one hundred and twenty
German divisions had been passed through the ordeal of the Somme, this
number including those which have appeared there more than once.

XXIII

By September 25th, when the British troops made another attack, the
morale of the German troops was reaching its lowest ebb. Except on their
right, at Beaumont Hamel and Beaucourt, they were far beyond the great
system of protective dugouts which had given them a sense of safety
before July 1st. Their second and third lines of defense had been
carried, and they were existing in shell-craters and trenches hastily
scraped up under ceaseless artillery fire.

The horrors of the battlefield were piled up to heights of agony and
terror. Living men dwelt among the unburied dead, made their way to
the front-lin