RUINS OF MAMETZ
Mametz must have been one of the pleasantest of the villages on the Somme battlefield. It was built on a gentle slope, facing south, a little way off the dusty main road from Albert to Peronne, and large, shady trees were intermingled with the houses. The drawing shows what was left of the village after its capture in the beginning of July. The tall fragment of the parish church stands in the centre of the drawing.
LII
RUINED TRENCHES IN MAMETZ WOOD
In this one drawing may be seen the face of all the hard-fought woods of the Somme battlefield—Mametz, Fricourt, Bazentin, Delville, Thiepval, Foureaux and St. Pierre Vaast. Everywhere in them all there is the same close network of half-filled trenches, the same bristle of ruined tree trunks, the same litter of the leavings of prolonged fighting at close quarters—bits of broken rifles and bayonets, perforated helmets, unexploded hand grenades, fragments of shell, displaced sand-bags, broken stretchers, boots not quite empty, and shreds of uniform and equipment.
LIII
“THAWING OUT”
It is always cold in an aeroplane in flight, but in winter the cold endured by airmen is often atrocious, however perfect their equipment. A pilot, who has just come down from his three hours of duty in the air, is here seen “thawing out” over a spirit stove in his tent. Like the thawing of meat taken from cold storage, the process requires some patience.
LIV
DISEMBARKING
At a base port in France. Officers are disembarking from the upper deck. Many officers arrive under orders simply to “proceed overseas.” At the “A. M. L. O. Office” they receive, through the Assistant Military Landing Officer, exact orders where to go and what to do. The men on the lower deck disembark by a second gangway and the boat is cleared in a few minutes.
LV
SLEEPING WOUNDED FROM THE SOMME
Every soldier on active service has more or less of deferred sleep, as well as deferred pay, due to him. If he be wounded he usually recovers a large instalment of both—the former during his first nights and days in hospital, the latter when he leaves the convalescent hospital for the ten days’ sick leave given to all wounded or sick men who have been sent to England for treatment.
LVI
DISTANT AMIENS
As you walk southward from Amiens, across meadows and cornfields, the ground rises more gently than the immediate south bank of the Somme, on which the Cathedral and the City stand. Thus the city sinks gradually out of sight until nothing is left but the thin Cathedral spire, looking like the mast of a sunken ship. Mr. Bone’s drawing was done from a point, about a mile south of the city, at which the Cathedral roof, the tower of Saint Martin’s Church, and one or two factory chimneys are still unsubmerged.
LVII
SCOTTISH SOLDIERS IN A FRENCH BARN
A typical billet for troops on the march or enjoying a “Divisional rest” between two turns of duty in the trenches. An average-sized barn at a French farm will house about thirty men. If the straw be deep and the roof sound it makes better quarters than anything but a good bedroom. Its chief drawback in the men’s eyes is that smoking has to be forbidden because of the straw. In the winter evenings the men usually cross the farmyard to the kitchen, where they smoke and make friends with the farmer, and buy coffee, at a penny a bowl, from his wife.
LVIII
WELSH SOLDIERS
Characteristic trench attitudes, two of the men with their heads well down, the cheek cuddling the small of the butt, while the N.C.O. beyond directs their fire, with his head a little free. There is just the same soldierly combination of “much care and valour” in the typical Welshman in France to-day as there was in Shakespeare’s Fluellen.
LIX
A BRITISH RED CROSS DEPOT AT BOULOGNE
Dead low water in Boulogne Harbour, and a slack time for the motor ambulances parked on the quay above. The work of the R.A.M.C. inevitably comes in rushes, with lulls in between. The great thing is, when a rush comes, to treat every case with a rapidity exactly proportioned to its urgency, removing instantly to the base hospitals or to England every serious case which will be the better, or none the worse, for a slight delay in operation. To work this system perfectly there must always be in readiness, at every point where wounded are entrained or transhipped, a supply of ambulances equal to the maximum call.
LX
INDIAN CAVALRY
Our Indian Cavalry on the Somme were given a chance of showing their quality at the Bois de Foureaux on July 17th, 1916. They used it. Apart from other soldierly qualities, the grave dignity of their bearing impresses all foreign visitors to the battlefield. They always salute a passing officer as if they were Kings and he an Emperor.
