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memoir · by a contemporary
Vive la France!
E. Alexander Powell (1879–1957), 1915
Named on the page for Second Battle of the Aisne.
draft Matched to the battle automatically; not yet reviewed.
Passages that name the battle; the whole book is at Project Gutenberg.
16 April – 9 May 1917
Second Battle of the Aisne
CHAPTER
When the history of this war comes to be written, the great French offensive which began on the 25th of September, 1915, midway between Rheims and Verdun, will doubtless be known as the Battle of Champagne. Hell holds no horrors for one who has seen that battle-field. Could Dante have walked beside me across that dreadful place, which had been transformed by human agency from a peaceful countryside to a garbage heap, a cesspool, and a charnel-house combined, he would never have written his “Inferno,” because the hell of his imagination would have seemed colorless and tame. The difficulty in writing about it is that people will not believe me. I shall be accused of imagination and exaggeration, whereas the truth is that no one could imagine, much less exaggerate, the horrors that I saw upon those rolling, chalky plains.
CHAPTER
The battle-field of Champagne.
CHAPTER
Bringing in the wounded during the battle of Champagne.
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The battle of Champagne.
Public domain. Text from Project Gutenberg.