The “big push,” as it was popularly called in England, was started by the British and French on both sides of the River Somme, sixty miles north of Paris, at 7:30 o ’clock on the morning of July 1, and resulted on the same day in a great wedge being driven into the German lines along a front of twenty-five miles, with its sharp point penetrating nearly five miles.  The French advance was made in the direction of Peronne, an important center of transportation and distribution long held by the Germans.

An eyewitness who watched the beginning of the battle from a hill said that overwhelming as was the power of the guns, yet as the gathering of human and mechanical material proceeded, “the grim and significant spectacle was the sight of detachments of infantry moving forward in field-fighting equipment, until finally the dugouts were hives of khaki ready to swarm out for battle.”

As the days of the bombardment passed, the air of expectancy was noticeable everywhere through the British army, commanded by Sir Douglas Haig.  Finally the word was passed that the infantry was to make the assault early the next morning.  Then, “at 7:20 A.M. the rapid-fire trench mortars added their shells to the deluge pouring upon the first-line German trenches.  After ten minutes of this, promptly at 7:30 o’clock, the guns lifted their fire to the second line of German trenches, as if they were answering to the pressure of a single electric button, and the men of the new British army leaped over their parapets and rushed toward the wreckage the guns and mortars had wrought.  Even close at hand, they were visible for only a moment before being hidden by the smoke of the German shell-curtain over what remained of the trenches.”

Of the deadly work beneath that pall of smoke, as steel met steel and the new soldiers of Britain fleshed their bayonets for the first time, and fell by the thousand under the murderous fire of machine-guns, history will tell the tale long after the survivors have ceased to recount the deeds of the day to their grandchildren wherever the English tongue is spoken.  Each side gives credit to the other for the utmost bravery and devotion during the battle.  The new English regiments fought like veterans, and fully maintained the traditions of the British army for dogged bravery, while the Germans fought with desperate tenacity, valor and resourcefulness, this last quality being displayed in the devices which had been invented and were used to prevent or delay the Allied advance.  It was indeed wonderful how well the Germans had protected their machine-guns from the devastating effects of the preliminary bombardment, which tore trenches to pieces and utterly demolished barbed-wire entanglements, but failed in many cases to destroy the deep bomb-proofs in which the Teuton machine-guns were protected and concealed.

CONTINUATION OF THE GREAT BATTLE