An artillery observing officer
is said to have seen flitting shadows of figures in the gray light of
the dawn mists, and, later, an odd glimpse of cautious movement amongst
the trees of a wood some little distance behind the German lines, and
an unbroken passing of gray-covered heads behind a portion of a
communication trench parapet. He also reported, and he may have been
responsible for the dozen or so of shrapnel that were flung tentatively
into and over the wood. An airman droning high over the lines, with
fleecy white puffs of shrapnel smoke breaking about him, also saw and
reported clearly "large force of Germans massing Map Square So-and-so."
But whoever was responsible for the first report matters little. The
great point is that the movement was detected in good time, apparently
before the preparations for attack were complete, so that the final
arraying and disposal of the force for the launching of the attack was
hampered and checked, and made perforce under a demoralizing artillery
fire.
What the results might have been if the full weight of the massed
attack could have been prepared without detection and flung on our
lines without warning is hard to say; but there is every chance that
our first line at least might have been broken into and swamped by the
sheer weight of numbers.
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