Page:Breaking the Hindenburg Line.djvu/202

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172
THROUGH THE HINDENBURG LINE

part as great as in the past, but never will its members have reason to be ashamed of the example set in the autumn of 1918.


The work of clearing up the battlefields proceeds apace, but the Scars of War are deep and will not easily be hidden or erased.

To-day, walking along a country road, the author of this account came across a shell hole filled with bloody water. Hard by, the hoof of a horse protruded from a hasty grave. Again, not many yards away, a British soldier's shrapnel-drilled steel helmet lay asprawl upon the ground.

Blood, hoof, and helmet—all three mute witnesses to one small incident in the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen.

To the living are the Fruits of Victory, but let us not forget our glorious Dead. There cannot be a single officer or man of the 46th Division but has cause to mourn the loss of a brother, a comrade, or a friend of more peaceful days. Let us endeavour to make the England in whose defence they fell a better place for ourselves and for our and their descendants. So may we dedicate our lives, as this short history of the exploits of the 46th Division is dedicated, to those who gave their lives for an ideal.

So shall the men who fell at Hohenzollern Redoubt, at Gommecourt, at Bellenglise, at Ramicourt and Andigny, or a thousand other unnamed places, feel that after all their great sacrifice was not made in vain.

Thus we may leave them lying in their oft-times nameless graves in France, but with their memories enshrined