Item 04: G. O. Hawkins letters to his family, 2 January 1915-November 1917 - Page 76
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[Page 76]
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terrible gas cloud had practically wiped out the defenders of the trenches leaving an undefended gap in the fighting line through which whole armies could have swept unopposed and established an irreparable severance of the British front and a gateway to Paris.
Had the enemy know this; and had he known that men already war weary and seeking rest from the trenches were compelled to perform the almost super human task of doubling a distance of five miles to reform and knit together the broken thread of defence, what a different thing from the present success of today would have been the battle on the western front.
So fearfully different indeed that military men even now refer to the incident almost in whispers, as though an unguarded voice might yet cause that then finely poised calamity to, in some mysterious way, fall upon us with an overwhelming disaster.