ALBERT ON EVACUATION.
An official photograph of one of the main entries to the town just after we had regained it in August, 1918. This photograph, and also Plate LXIX, may well be compared with Plates [LXXIX] and [LXXXVIII], as showing the original naked devastation by contrast with the state of places after the sappers had been at work, and the inhabitants had begun to return.
VIII.—ALBERT AND THE ANCRE
(PLATES 67 TO 73.)
Half a dozen miles from Amiens on the road to Albert one crosses the valley of a little stream at Pont Noyelles—an untouched valley, beautiful with tall trees and green meadows like a bit of Middlesex. The road climbs the combe on the eastern bank, and a little farther on crosses the narrow space "that just divides the desert from the sown." Onwards on the high ground from this point all greenness and beauty have disappeared, every tree has gone, and at one bound is reached the "desert" which covers thousands of square miles to east and north and south. Close to the point of change it was cheering to come across the inscription ([Plate 67]), doubtless scrawled by some plucky "Tommy" in the bad spring days of 1918, "Pessimists shot on sight." One hopes that the cheerful artist got through safely; it was just his spirit that gave the army that final victory which they believed in as strongly in our worst hours as at any other time.
The French had compelled the Germans to leave Albert in December, 1914, and it remained in the hands of the Allies until the German advance in 1918, when it was captured on the 27th of March. It was finally retaken by us on the 22nd of August. The little industrial town, originally containing some 7,000 inhabitants, was severely shelled during years by the Germans, and then for four months by ourselves, and reduced absolutely to ruins. [Plate 68] is one of those officially taken, and gives a vivid idea of the condition of one of the principal streets of approach just after we had retaken it.
In April of 1919 ([Plate 69])[30] it remained a ruin, and even a year later it could hardly be otherwise described. (I believe that Plates [68] and [69] correspond to nearly the same places.) But motoring through it some nine months after the Armistice, while it was still to all appearance very much in the condition indicated by the photographs, we were practically held up about 10 o'clock in the forenoon by a stream of some hundreds of people, carrying bags and all sorts of receptacles, making their way towards the railway-station. They must no doubt have found, somewhere, shelter enough to live and sleep in in cellars or otherwise, in spite of the destruction, and were on their way to Amiens to lay in supplies.