The whole brigade was practically bogged when we came to move forward. The weight of our equipment sank us into the soft mud and the only way we got onto the road again was by hanging to the stirrups of the horses as they ploughed a way through. We also passed ropes back for the men to grasp and harnessed them to mules, and thus dragged them to firm ground. The road did not carry us far, and we soon had to struggle across the open toward the support trenches. This was not as bad as round the camp, not being churned up by the tramping about of men and horses. We could not use the communication-trenches as they were rivers of liquid mud, but had to wait till dark and go over the top in relieving the front line. On this occasion we took over from the Grenadier Guards, which numbers among its officers many of the English nobility. We "bushies" and "outbackers" from the Land of the Kangaroo stepped down into the mud-holes just vacated by an earl, several lords, and as noble and proud a regiment as ever won glory on a battle-field. The Prince of Wales was a staff-captain in the army of the Somme doing his bit in the mud and misery like the rest of us. There is no "sacred privilege that doth hedge about a king" in the British Empire, and King George is respected among us for his manliness, and we cheered him sincerely when he twice visited us in the trenches, for we do not believe to-day in the divine right of kings, neither do we believe in the divine right of majorities.
In another chapter that tells of my wounding I have pictured our days and weeks as lived in these trenches, so I will bring this chapter to a close by summarizing some of the things that the great push on the Somme accomplished.
(1) It relieved the pressure on Verdun.
(2) It accounted for several hundred thousand German casualties.
(3) It demonstrated our ability to break through.
(4) It led to the perfecting of barrage-fire where-by casualties were reduced in our infantry to an astonishing degree.
(5) It gave confidence to our troops by enabling them to get to hand-grips with the German, and discover that he was individually no fighter.
(6) It weakened the morale of the German army enormously, and convinced the German soldier that his cause was lost.
(7) It gave to us possession of the high ground.
(8) It definitely established our supremacy of the air, and was the turning-point of the whole war.