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(7).
into another tunnel thus completing the block. It was some eight hours before those two big vehicles could be moved and by then the stream of traffic was stopped head to tail for 16 miles, all the way from Bapaume to Albert and probably further still.
Light railways soon forged ahead and within very few days we were able to relieve a lot of the road traffic by this means.
The Germans' quality of thoroughness was never better revealed than in the campaign of destruction which he carried on whilst retreating. Not a thing that would be of any use to us did he leave in tact. That much he is entitled to do, but for the acts of wanton vandalism perpetuated by him in the villages, there is no excuse whatever. Memorials, statues, and such like things, always dear to the French heart, were ruthlessly destroyed, and in the Civil Cemetery at Bapaume he had swept aside numerous French tombstones in order to erect a vulgar looking memorial to his own dead soldiers. France can never forget these acts.
Every telegraph pole was sawn off, every little bridge and culvert blown up, not a fruit tree was left standing, whilst he even cut down hundreds of ordinary trees about the villages and along the roadsides for what reason we were at a loss to know. Here and there he would leave some insulting remarks chalked on a wall ending always with his idiotic phrase: "Gott Strafe England". He'll get all the strafe he wants before this year is out!
We didn't stay long about Bapaume, but pushed on after the enemy began, this time acting in support to one of our other Battalions which had located him burning off villages some five miles further on. At the time of writing I fancy