Out here in France now there is a field of honour, stretching for more than a hundred miles, held by British soldiers; and that is a true field of cloth of gold, for everywhere behind the deep belt of cratered land, so barren and blasted that no seed of life is left in the soil, there are miles of ground where gold grows, wonderfully brilliant in the warm sunshine of these days.
"From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917"
Philip Gibbs
This mound had been cratered by deep mines in those bad old days of fighting, but the enemy did not know that new shafts had been tunnelled under them, and that explosive forces enormously greater than in the first mines were about to be touched off.
"From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917"
Philip Gibbs
The ground was damnable-cratered and full of water and knee-deep in foul mud-and beyond them was high ground, struck through with gully-like funnels, through which the enemy could pour up his storm troops for counter-attack; and away in the mud were the same style of concrete forts as up north, still unbroken by our bombardments and fortified again with new garrisons of machine-gunners, taking the place of those who on July 31 were killed or captured when this ground was stormed and, later, lost.
"From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917"
Philip Gibbs