Already my
brain chambered more impressions, all jumbled together in a mass, than I
could possibly hope to get sorted out and graded up and classified in a
month of trying. Yet, in a way, the day had been disappointing; for, as
I may have set forth before, the nearer we came to the actual fighting,
the closer in touch we got with the battle itself, the less we seemed to
see of it.
I take it this is true of nearly all battles fought under modern
military principles. Ten miles in the rear, or even twenty miles, is
really a better place to be if you are seeking to fix in your mind a
reasonably full picture of the scope and effect and consequences of the
hideous thing called war. Back there you see the new troops going in,
girding themselves for the grapple as they go; you see the
re-enforcements coming up; you see the supplies hurrying forward, and
the spare guns and the extra equipment, and all the rest of it; you see,
and can, after a dim fashion, grasp mentally, the thrusting, onward
movement of this highly scientific and most unromantic industry which
half the world began practicing in the fall of 1914.
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