Indeed, it may not be far from true that the best days of many lives will be those of the autumn of 1918, when to be alive and well was a thing to be grateful for, and when the British Army was at last obtaining a just reward for all its dogged and patient fighting.
Little was known of the country over which the coming battle was to be fought, but, from aeroplane observation and prisoners' statements, it had been possible to plot on our maps the system of defence known as the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme line where the enemy had turned at bay, and which the 46th Division was now asked to breach. On the map, this line appears as a continuous double line of trenches heavily protected by two strong barbed-wire entanglements. It was apparently stronger at the western than at the eastern end of the objective of the Division, where, however, it was supported by the organized defences of the village of Sequehart and was overlooked and enfiladed by the machine guns and artillery on the high ground to the east. Actually a close examination of the line after its capture by our troops alters the values of the photographic representation considerably. Aeroplane photographs will show a line of trenches well and will betray the chief strong-points, but the details of a carefully-prepared system such as the one under present consideration are not so easily seen. The Beaurevoir-Fonsomme line was both stronger and weaker than it appeared.
The unexpected strength of the line lay in two principal things. The first was the stout heart of the garrison which held it, properly imbued, as the men were, with a sense of its importance as the last of the German outlying lines of defence. The second source of strength was the presence at fifty-yard intervals of strong, well-constructed concrete shelters, where machine-gun crews
