Author: Philip Gibbs

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-03-18

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780364939697

Excerpt from The Way to Victory, Vol. 1 of 2 IN my last book Of collected dispatches From Bapaume to Passchendaele - I dealt first with the German retreat after the Somme battles to the Shelter, Of their Hindenburg line; then with the Arms battles which began with a strik ing victory and petered out into ininor actions when our troops, with grim perseverance and no light losses, contin ued to hold German divisions so that the French might strike more freely elsewhere; and, in the third part, with the battles in Flanders - those muddy, bloody battles Of last year - ending with the capture Of the ridges. All that fighting, so heroic, SO costly, SO disappointing as it seemed in its immediate and apparent results when in March and April Of this year, 1918, the enemy came sprawling back over all the ground we had gained, must be remembered in order to understand the happenings that followed - the incomplete success of the Cambrai adventure in November, the great retreat in March, the arrival Of the Germans on the Marne with their dreadful threat to Paris, and the strategy Of the French Genera-lissimo, the fine genius of Foch, SO patient in his waiting for the moment to strike back, so terrific when he struck, leading up to the glorious recovery and victories of the British armies in August and September. For in war as in normal life there are no isolated facts. Nothing happens that is not the direct con sequence Of previous events and conditions, and that does not lead like a chain Of fate to results that follow by in evitable laws. The lack Of complete success of the French II. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.