Brewster 'A Glimpse of War through a Private's Eyes', a retrospective account of experiences in World War I, 1915-1917 / John James Brewster - Page 403
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[Page 403]
by decided to let the arm remain and one taking an envelope from his pocket wrote in large letters "Gib it Buckshee" (Backsheesh) & hung it on the dead mans hand. The "show" drew a smile from every one passing, even if the mules snorted a bit.
This road making proved pretty hard & solid digging, a good bit of the ground was frozen & had to be broken in "cakes" whereas where "thawing" out the mud was something awful, however a couple of days saw a road formed right through to Beaulencourt, on the left of Transloy & to the immediate right of Bapaume
About a week more was spent in filling up craters which the Huns had made in the good hard "metal" roads from this place on to the front. The craters were formed by the Huns exploding a few tons of explosives, the object being to delay the approach of artillery.
The country east of Beaulencourt & Bapaume was in very good order very few shell holes appearing, & the roads were splendid excepting of course where they had been blown up but the idea of the Huns in stopping Artillery did not work, for if the crater was too big to fill a way round was soon made for the heavy guns, a corduroy road if in the fields, whereas if in a town the nearest houses would be knocked down so that the very heaviest artillery would not have been kept more than a few hours.
Some of these craters were so large that in one or two of the biggest of them, 1000 men could have been concealed from view in each.
Another cunning ruse was accidentally but luckily discovered in time.
On the road from Beaulencourt to Bapaume which apparently had been left very little damaged so far as could be seen, an ordinary motor car, probably carrying Staff Officers dashed along at a very high rate of speed when a party of road repairers noticed