The German losses in these battles of the Somme were frightful too, and for a time certainly broke the spirit of the German Army, as thousands of letters left in their dug-outs proved beyond doubt. Their agony was as great as that of the British troops. They were pounded to death in their trenches and dug-outs, until all that land stank of their bodies, and one could not walk without treading on them. They were stunned by shell fire, tortured by fear beyond human control as they crawled out of their broken ditches to meet British bayonets. Their heroism was wonderful, as all our men confessed with an admiration which extinguished hate among those—nearly all—who had a sense of chivalry. But their losses, though enormous, were not as great as the British suffered, not half as great, I think, because defence was less costly than attack in those conditions. By the end of the battle of the Somme half a million of the finest manhood of Great Britain had been killed, wounded, blinded, shell-shocked, and broken. The tide of wounded flowed back from the fields of the Somme in endless columns of ambulances, where the bad cases lay under brown blankets with only the soles of their boots visible. To the end of my life I shall remember those upturned soles and the huddled bodies above. The walking wounded formed up in queues outside the dressing stations: silent, patient, dog-weary, caked with a whitish clay. The casualty clearing stations were crammed, and the surgeons were overworked while, row upon row, the badly wounded were laid on the grass outside the tents or on blood-stained stretchers waiting for their turn. The “butcher’s shop” in Corbie had a great clientèle. Whiffs of chloroform reeked across the roadways. Fresh graves were dug in cemeteries behind the lines, in spreading areas. The lightly wounded, after a little rest, came back laughing, cheering and joking. A Blighty wound!... Home again!... Out of it for a few months of grace! THE SPIRIT OF THE VICTIMS