Each section of the defence might thus find itself caught between the “fingers”—outflanked and encircled.
Each body of the advancing enemy was under the command of a specially trained officer, whose leadership generally proved a model of skill and initiative; each detachment was instructed to push on as far as its strength allowed, and every man carried iron rations for several days.
When a regiment had advanced as far as it was able, another took its place, the waves of the advance thus leapfrogging over each other in an endless chain.
The dangers of such tactics are obvious, but on March 21 the system was portentously successful.
II
As in all disasters, events seemed to move with a terrible rapidity.
A moment before the motor accident you are a free man; a moment after and you are involved in an endless line of consequences which have sprung up while you could hold your breath, and amid whose mushroom growth you may wander for the rest of your life.
Five hours after the opening of the German cannonade the world seemed to have changed for the two armies which had stood in the path of the hurricane.
In the course of the next fourteen days the Germans were to sweep forward for forty miles, and their advance was even then to be checked, not by the British Army, but by the gradual attenuation of their supply system.
The whole fourteen days of the retreat were completely confused. Units were inextricably mixed, and communications were impossible.