Our guns were firing from many batteries, and flights of shells rushed through the air from the heavies a long way back and from the field-guns forward.
"From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917"
Philip Gibbs
By belts of barbed wire between the lines of retirement, down past Loupart Wood, and then past Grevillers and Achiet, and outside Bapaume, as well as by strong bodies of picked troops holding on to these positions until the last moment before death or capture or escape, and by massing guns eastward of Bapaume in order to impede our pursuit by long-range fire from his "heavies," and to hold the pivot while his troops swing back in this slow and gradual way, he hopes to make things easy for himself and damnably difficult for us.
"From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917"
Philip Gibbs
The wind blew strongly across, beating back the noise of guns, but the air was all filled with the deep roar and the slamming knocks of single heavies and the drum-fire of field-guns.
"From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917"
Philip Gibbs