Low Visibility, a pro-German who was in his element in the Ypres salient
in midwinter, delighted in rain, mist, fog and thick summer
haze--anything that prevented observers from seeing the burst of shells,
transformed shell-craters into miniature lakes and fields into mire to
founder charges, and stalled guns.
High Visibility was as merry as his wicked brother was dour. He sent the
sunlight streaming into your room in the morning, washed the air of
particles enabling observers to see shell-bursts at long range, and
favored successful charges under accurate curtains of fire--the patron
saint of all modern artillery work, who would be most at home in Arizona
where you could carry on an offensive the year around.
During September his was a glad harvest smile which revealed figures on
the chalk welts a mile away as clearly as if within a stone's throw
under the glasses and limned the tree-trunks of ruined villages in sharp
outlines. He was your companion now when you might walk up the Ridge
and, standing among shell-craters still as a frozen sea where but lately
an inferno had raged, look out across the fields toward new lines of
shell fire and newly won villages on lower levels. He helped to make the
month of September when he was most needed the most successful month of
the offensive, with its second great attack on the 25th turning the
table of losses entirely against the Germans and bringing many guests to
the prisoners' inclosures.
These were days that were rich with results, days of harvest, indeed,
when the ceaseless fighting on the Ridge and the iron resolution of a
commander had its reward; when advances gathered in villages till the
British had taken thirty and the French, with fresh efforts after their
own chipping away at strong points, also had jumping-off places for
longer drives as they swung in with their right on the Somme in
combination with British attacks.
The two armies advanced as one on the 25th. The scene recalled the
splendor of the storming of Contalmaison which, if not for its waste and
horror, might lead men to go to war for the glory of the
panorama--glorious to the observer in this instance when he thought only
of the spectacle, in a moment of oblivion to the hard work of
preparation and the savage work of execution. Our route to a point of
observation for the attack which was at midday took us along the Road of
the Entente, as I called it, where French battalions marched with
British battalions, stately British motor trucks mixed with the lighter
French vehicles, and Gaul sat resting on one side of the road and Briton
on the other as German prisoners went by, and there was a mingling of
blue and khaki which are both of low visibility against the landscape
yet as distinct as the characters of the two races, each with its own
way of fighting true to racial bent yet accomplishing its purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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