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and first published in September
1916.
"Those who wish to imagine the scene must think of twenty miles of any
rough and steep sea coast known to them, picturing it as roadless,
waterless, much broken with gullies, covered with scrub, sandy, loose,
and difficult to walk on, and without more than two miles of accessible
landing throughout its length. Let them picture this familiar twenty
miles as dominated at intervals by three hills bigger than the hills
about them, the north hill a peak, the centre a ridge or plateau, and
the south a lump.
Then let them imagine the hills entrenched, the landing mined, the
beaches tangled with barbed wire, ranged by howitzers and swept by
machine guns, and themselves three thousand miles from home, going out
before dawn with rifles, packs, and water-bottles, to pass the mines
under shell fire, cut through the wire under machine-gun fire, clamber
up the hills under the fire of all arms by the glare of shell-bursts, in
the withering and crashing tumult of modern war, and then to dig
themselves in, on a waterless and burning hill while a more numerous
enemy charge them with the bayonet.
And let them imagine themselves enduring this night after night, day
after day, without rest or solace, nor respite from the peril of death,
seeing their friends killed, and their position imperilled, getting
their food, their munitions, even their drink, from the jaws of death,
and their breath from the taint of death, and their brief sleep upon the
dust of death.
Let them imagine themselves driven mad by heat and toil and thirst by
day, shaken by frost at midnight, weakened by disease and broken by
pestilence, yet rising on the word with a shout and going forward to die
in exultation in a cause foredoomed and almost hopeless.
Only then will they begin, even dimly, to understand what our seizing
and holding of the landings meant."
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