Undertones of war

20 November – 7 December 1917

Battle of Cambrai (1917)

SHOP- FROM

attack; but without result. What might be happening
to my battalion? It was a relief when at length I
heard that they had been employed in digging and in
carrying, not in these attacks.

To us the news of the Cambrai drama was exciting,
in part, because it suggested that the Ypres aberra-
tion was now at a close. The secret of Cambrai was
guessed by none of us before the event, neither did
anyone anticipate the sequel, which intensified the
gloom of endlessness cloaking all genuine optimism.
The German wireless beat out the remorseless truth
for us. I began to be careless whether I was in the line
or out of it; nothing seemed to signify except the
day's meals, and those were still substantial, despite
the lean supplies of the people at home. The price of
all luxuries in the shops was rising fast, but still one
could manage it; why trouble about getting back
to the battalion? This was the general spirit, and we
did not lament when the course was lengthened and
the year ended with us waving flags in unison in the
snow, or rapping out ludicrous messages to the
instructors' satisfaction, or listening to muddled ad-
dresses on alternating current.

At the moment of midnight, December 31, 1917, I
stood with some acquaintances in a camp finely over-
looking the whole Ypres battlefield. It was bitterly
cold, and the deep snow all round lay frozen. We
drank healths, and stared out across the snowy miles
to the line of casual flares, still rising and floating
and dropping. Their writing on the night was as

MY LUCK

Strewn about this sector were relics of the Cambrai
fight of the previous November, cavalry lances, guns
with crumpled barrels, tanks burned out, German ma-
chine-gun belts and carriers, and a few dead, preserved
by the cold weather. The salvage artists had a little
headquarters in Heudicourt behind, to which with the
aid of the light railway (operated by American engin-
eers, men of splendid but risky ease of mind) they car-
ried tons of miscellanies. Probably it was the principal
sideshow in the divisional area; for of amusement and
the variety of ordinary billets there was nothing here.

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