The Meeker herald. [volume] (Meeker, Colo.) 1885-current, 1917-08-11
The British side-Ai,er Three Years

With the British Armies In the
Field. July sO-Today Britain Is on
top. At the close Of the the third
year of the war the British bulldog is
no longer on the bottom. The "con-
temptible little army" which the
kaiser sneered at In 1914 has taken
its medicine and, despite the ham
mering 1t has received. now has
Crown Prince Rupprecht's men
rather more than matched.
The first year of the fight the
small new army recruited by Lord
Kitchener to take the place of the
first hundred thousand of the regu-
lar army, simply caught Hail Column
bia. But though their heads were
bloodied, they held their own. The
second year saw more troops, more
guns, more ammunition, but even as
late as Loos the Prussian was too
strong for the new British army,
still lacking as 1t was In all the ma
chinery of war.
But, at the beginning Of the third
year. England had caught up. For
the first time since Armageddon be-
gan the British army faced the ene-
my on fairly equal footing. There
we're plenty of men and plenty of
machinery and with these in hand
Sir. Douglrs Haig, In July, 1918, be-
| gan the battle of the SOmme.
For two years the Prussians had
been preparing the Somme positions
and, at the time Sir Douglas began
the great adventure, Field Marshal
Hindenburg considered the line i'm
pregnable. History had never seen
anything approaching 1t. Behind
first line trenches, deep and REIN
forced with concrete and steel, were
reserved lines just rs deep and just
as strong. Machine guns, in beton-
ed emplacedment fairly bristled
along the fire trenches and many
more were in hidden pits further
back, while every wood and thicket
had been turned into impossible en-
tanglements made of special barhed
wire as thick as a child's finger with
wicked barbs every inch. Conceal
ed turrets of armor-plate steel had
been sunk in the ground at strate-
gic points leaving only their recol-
wing tops and gun muzzles above the
level of the earth a0d in between
were redoubts and strong points
labyrinths, tunnels, quadrilaterals
and every other device cunning Hin
denburg could put into play.
The French and British struck to-
gether, the French below the Somme
river, the British north of 1t, to-
wards Bapaume, Combles and Per-
onne. British artillery for the first
time In the war shows superiority
over the German and its continual
roll rumbled day and night. Prus-
sian airmen tried to give Prussian
gunners the range as they had al
ways done In the past, but now
British airmen swooped upon them
like enraged hawks and drove them
down, or back beyond the lines COM
pletely dominating the air. Ger
man observation bolloons were sent
blazing to the earth by British planes
| out in sufficient numbers at last. So
the enemy's guns were blind.
But the fight was anything but a
walk over for the British and the
French. The Germans, accustomed
to winning, always with every adj
vantage on their side, could not
realize that the tide had turned in
this, the third year Of the war, and
from their miraculously strong and
we'll chosen position, fought like
/ tigers.
All through August the British
Tommies kept doggedy at the enc
my, bombing him, bayoneting him,
driving him back inch by inch up
the slopes towards Thiepval, from
Mouquet Farm to Posieres DEVILS
Wood as the South Africans called
Delville Wood, was taken literally
a foot at q time and held despite in
fernal shell fire. The British would
not let go.
In September they got their re-
ward. They had gained to the crest
of the deadly ridge and then, with
one swoop almost they captured viii
lage after village, Guillemont, Gin,
chy, Flers, Martinpulch, Courselette,
Guedecourt, Lesboeufs; Morval, and
Thiepval.
On the, 18th of this month the
tanks went into action for the first
time. On that day the famous Of
Hcial message of an airman read;
"a tank Is walking up the High