Читать книгу The Tank Corps онлайн

76 страница из 102

“October was one long succession of tempestuous gales and drenching rains.

“To understand the difficulties which untoward weather imposed on the Allied advance, it is necessary to grasp the nature of the fifty square miles of tortured ground which three months’ fighting had given them, and over which lay the communications between their fighting line and the rear.... Not the biggest mining camp or the vastest engineering undertaking had ever produced one tithe of the activity which existed behind each section of the battle line. There were places like Crewe, places like the outskirts of Birmingham, places like Aldershot or Salisbury Plain....

“There were now two No Man’s Lands. One was between the front lines; the other lay between the old enemy front and the front we had won. The second was the bigger problem, for across it must be brought the supplies of a great army....

“The problem was hard enough in fine weather; but let the rain come and soak the churned-up soil, and the whole land became a morass. There was no pavé, as in Flanders, to make a firm causeway. Every road became a water-course, and in the hollows the mud was as deep as a man’s thighs....