I. BREAKING THE SALIENT 195 II. FROM PILKEM RIDGE TO HOLLEBEKE 201 III. THE BEGINNING OF THE RAINS 206 IV. PILL-BOXES AND MACHINE-GUNS 211 V. THE SONG OF THE COCKCHAFERS 221 VI. WOODS OF ILL-FAME 226 VII. THE BATTLE OF LANGEMARCK 230 VIII. CAPTURE OF HILL SEVENTY 234 IX. LONDONERS IN GLENCORSE WOOD 242 X. SOMERSETS AT LANGEMARCK 246 XI. THE IRISH IN THE SWAMPS 251 XII. THE WAY THROUGH GLENCORSE WOOD 255 XIII. THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSE OF LENS 261 XIV. THE AGONY OF ARMENTIÈRES 269 XV. THE BATTLE OF MENIN ROAD 274 XVI. THE WAY TO PASSCHENDAELE 294 XVII. THE BATTLE OF POLYGON WOOD 298 XVIII. ABRAHAM HEIGHTS AND BEYOND 308 XIX. SCENES OF BATTLE 321 XX. THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 329 XXI. THE ASSAULTS ON PASSCHENDAELE 339 XXII. ROUND POELCAPPELLE 343 XXIII. THE CANADIANS COME NORTH 356 XXIV. LONDON MEN AND ARTISTS 372 XXV. THE CAPTURE OF PASSCHENDAELE 376 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE INTRODUCTION 1917.... I suppose that a century hence men and women will think of that date as one of the world's black years flinging its shadow forward to the future until gradually new generations escape from its dark spell. To us now, only a few months away from that year, above all to those of us who have seen something of the fighting which crowded every month of it except the last, the colour of 1917 is not black but red, because a river of blood flowed through its changing seasons and there was a great carnage of men. It was a year of unending battle on the Western Front, which matters most to us because of all our youth there. It was a year of monstrous and desperate conflict. Looking back upon it, remembering all its days of attack and counter-attack, all the roads of war crowded with troops and transport, all the battlefields upon which our armies moved under fire, the coming back of the prisoners by hundreds and thousands, the long trails of the wounded, the activity, the traffic, the roar and welter and fury of the year, one has a curious physical sensation of breathlessness and heart-beat because of the burden of so many memories. The heroism of men, the suffering of individuals, their personal adventures, their deaths or escape from death, are swallowed up in this wild drama of battle so that at times it seems impersonal and inhuman like some cosmic struggle in which man is but an atom of the world's convulsion. To me, and perhaps to others like me, who look on at all this from the outside edge of it, going into its fire and fury at