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1917 was an awful year.

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All the divisions of the world
and all its conflicts

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seemed to be resolved
into one conflict and one division.

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The conflict was the war. The
division was between those who were
truly in it and those who were not.

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It was a world war. No continent
was spared. Few countries of any
stature were able to stand aside.

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Japan was in. America was in.
Bulgaria was in. Romania was in.

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Greece was in. Portugal was in.
Bolivia was in.

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Russia was going out.

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By now, whatever men might wish
or plan, whether they believed
in it or whether they did not,

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one front had inexorably
become the centre, the very heart
of the war - the Western Front.

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470 miles long. The great battles
of four years had created
on either side of the trench lines

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a deep zone of military endeavour,

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a hideous, ravaged wilderness.

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The zone of the armies.

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SHELLS EXPLODE

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This zone was a place apart,

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a separate region,
a landscape of madness.

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The scenes which four years
of modern war had created within it

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could never be imagined
by those outside.

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Only the artist's eye could fathom
what man had inflicted upon himself
in this zone.

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SHELLS FLY OVERHEAD

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MACHINE-GUN FIRE

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The separateness was absolute.
You could almost draw a line
where it began.

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For one war artist, Sir William
Orpen, just beyond the valley
between Amiens and Albert:

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Suddenly one felt oneself
in another world.

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For Wyndham Lewis, it began
just past the line of guns:

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At this point, civilisation ended.

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"From here onwards," said Lewis,

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"there was only
shell-pitted nothingness,

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"an arid and blistering vacuum."

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GUNFIRE

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The artist filled this vacuum
each in his own way

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with a frieze
of tragic and heroic figures.

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The lost and tiny soldiers
and their weapons
amid the desolate expanse.

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Each one differently depicted
the terrible footprint of man.

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Paul Nash turned his brush
and pencil into weapons
to assail the cruelty of war.

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Other war artists

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only SAW an explosion. But the
explosion took place inside Nash.

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Paul Nash revealed
the Earth herself exploded.

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And with wonder, at particular
times in particular places,

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each artist observed
the extraordinary beauty
of this man-made desert.

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Nash wrote to his wife
in March 1917: Here in
the back garden of the trenches,

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it is amazingly beautiful.

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The mud is dried to a pinky colour,

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and upon the parapet

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and through the sandbags, even,

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the green grass pushes up
and waves in the breeze

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while dots of bright dandelion,
clover, thistles and 20 other plants

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flourish luxuriously -

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brilliant growth of bright green
against the pink earth.

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Orpen revisited the year-old
battlefields of the Somme.

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Now, in the summer of 1917,
no words could express
the beauty of it.

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The dreary, dismal mount was baked
white and pure - dazzling white.

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White daisies, red poppies and a
blue flower, great masses of them,
stretched for miles and miles.

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The sky a pure, dark blue, and the
whole air, up to a height of about
40 feet, thick with butterflies.

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Everything shimmered in the heat.

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Clothes, guns, all that had been
left in confusion when the war
passed on had been baked by the sun

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into one wonderful
combination of colour -
white, pale grey and pale gold.

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Amid this macabre beauty
and unspeakable ugliness,

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the ant-like armies
in their millions came to terms
with the war's afflictions.

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On the Western Front,
a continuous accompaniment of sound
diseased their nerves.

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RELENTLESS EXPLOSIONS

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MACHINE-GUN FIRE

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CONTINUOUS GUNFIRE

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After the Germans had stopped
shelling a little while, we heard
one of their big ones coming over.

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Normally you could tell if one was
going to land anywhere near, or not.

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If it was, the normal procedure
was to throw yourself down
and avoid the shell fragments.

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This one, we knew, was going
to drop near. My pal shouted
and threw himself down.

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I was too damn tired
even to fall down.

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I stood there. Next I had a terrific
pain in the back and the chest,

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and I found myself
face downwards in the mud.

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In this permanent zone of
destruction where war seemed to be
a fixture from time immemorial

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stretching forward to invisible
duration, sound was always there,

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the smell was always there.

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The familiar trench smell
of 1915 to '17 haunts my nostrils,

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compounded of stagnant mud,
latrine buckets,

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chloride of lime,
unburied or half-buried corpses,

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rotting sandbags,

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stale human sweat,
fumes of cordite or lyddite.
Sometimes it was sweetened

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by cigarette smoke and the scent
of bacon frying over wood fires -
broken ammunition boxes.

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00:13:03,320 --> 00:13:06,240
Sometimes it was made sinister

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by the lingering odour
of poisoned gas.

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Within this unquiet zone,

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sharing such compensations as
it had, dwelt a population apart -

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the armies of Germany, France,

86
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the British Empire and Belgium.

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00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:44,640
When the infantry looked upwards,
admiringly, hopefully or fearfully,

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they saw dotted against the clouds

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the airmen - counted in thousands
now, yet still able to preserve
in this vast, anonymous war

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individual identities which
the muddied infantry might envy.

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They fought a war of champions.

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The names of the aces rang through
every country - Guynemer,

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Fonck, Nungesser, Ball,

94
00:14:10,520 --> 00:14:13,960
McCudden, Mannock, Boelcke,

95
00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:16,280
Immelmann, Richthofen.

96
00:14:29,360 --> 00:14:33,400
Looking down from
their swaying cockpits,

97
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the fliers saw below them,

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as no-one else could see,
unfolding mile beyond mile,

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the incredible pock-marked
devastation of the Western Front,

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the world within a world.

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Down there on the ground,

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men had few intimates.

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Beyond the narrow horizon
through a periscope or bordered by
a trench or the lip of a crater,

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there was someone else whom one
had learnt to know better, perhaps,
than one knew one's own people.

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Sometimes as little as 20 yards
away, sometimes half a mile,

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he was always there,
living exactly as one lived
oneself - the front line enemy.

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I never had any feelings towards
any personal enemy.

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For me, and also for most
of the boys, it was THE enemy.

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Whether is was British or French,
we didn't mind, and I think that
the British thought in the same way.

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As soon as we made prisoners,
the feeling of enemy was gone.

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Then we took care of them.
We looked after them.

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We asked them if they were thirsty.
Most of them were very thirsty,

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because warfare makes thirsty.

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You are very much excited.
You perspire.

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You are afraid.
Everybody is shivering.

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The nerve strain is a terrible one.

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But never one forgets

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what each man on both sides
has to undergo.

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The enemy was Jerry

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or Old Fritz. Front line soldiers
spoke openly of "German comrades".

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Even the French had learnt
to use the word "Boche"
in a half-friendly way.

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For Frenchmen, fighting
on their own soil and always
on the same worn-out, blood-soaked

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stretches of their soil,
the sense of separateness

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came with a peculiar shock.
They realised they were becoming
strangers in their own land.

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The army came to be looked on as an
exile from the life of the nation.

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The military world had no connection

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with the life of the country.
Two universes were juxtaposed - the
one civilian, the other uniformed -

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and they knew nothing of each other.

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00:17:25,080 --> 00:17:29,920
If you were to ask me who it is
we despise and hate the most,

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my answer would be, first of all,
the war profiteers,
businessmen of all kinds.

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With them,
the professional patriots,

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the literary gents who dine
each day in pyjamas and red leather
slippers off a dish of Boche.

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Every army hated "literary gents".

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A German soldier wrote:
According to the newspapers,

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the French were degenerates,
the English, cowardly shopkeepers,
the Russians, swine. The disparaging

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and calumniating of the enemy was so
disgusting that I sent a paragraph
to an editor. He returned it

137
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with a letter that made me despair.
"One had to bear in mind

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"public opinions."

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And thus was that public opinion
bred which the men at the front
came, in time, to spit upon.

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The jargon of war on the home front
was very different from
the language of the fighting men.

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A gunner received a book of verse.
The writer served in his battery.

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About your book - I've read it
carefully, and candidly
I don't think much of it.

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The piece about horses isn't bad but
the rest, excuse the word, is tripe.

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The same old tripe we've read
a thousand times. My grief,
but we're fed up with war books,

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war verse, all the eyewash stuff

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that pleases the idiots at home.

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What's the good of war books if
they fail to give civilians an idea

148
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of what life is like in the firing
line? You might have done that much.

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From you, at least, I thought we'd
get an inkling of the truth. But no.

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You rant, rattle, beat your drum

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and blow your tuppenny trumpet
like the rest. "Battle's glory."

152
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"Honour's utmost task." "Gay,
jesting faces among daunted boys."

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The same old boy's own paper
balderdash.

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Hang it, you can't have clean
forgotten things you went to bed
with, woke with, smelt and felt.

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All those long months of boredom
streaked with fear. Mud. Cold.

156
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Fatigue. Sweat.

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Nerve strain. Sleeplessness.

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And men's excreta

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viscid in the rain.

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And stiff-legged horses lying
by the road, their bloated bellies
shimmering, green with flies.

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Images of war could never fade from
the minds of those who knew them

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and could scarcely be conceived
in the minds of those who didn't.

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Arriving home on leave,
I went to my aunt's house.

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And, er...

165
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I found that people wanted
to take me out to dinners

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and theatres

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and didn't want to know much about
what we were doing out in the front.

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But I did explain to them that
the conditions were really terrible

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and that the food also was bad.

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But they didn't want to know at all.

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When you stepped off the train at
Victoria, the first effect was just
that you were home for the holidays.

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But very soon,
that began to wear off.

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And at any rate, from 1917 onwards,

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one felt that there was
something unreal about leave.

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I'm bound to say that I got myself
into a state of mind

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where it was the trenches
that was the real world,

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and it was London and my family
that was unreal.

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It was a Frenchman who summed up
for all the fighting men

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exiled in the zone of the armies.

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When we get back and tell our story,

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it's we who will be wrong.

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Soldiers couldn't communicate the
truth about the war because nothing
like it had ever happened before.

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Never has such vast armies

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wielding such an immense apparatus
of killing and destruction

185
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battled each other for so long
in one place.

186
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Flesh and blood and nerves
could only stand so much.

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00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:24,120
Well, there's a limit to everything.

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00:22:24,120 --> 00:22:29,160
But what with the mud of the Somme
and the mud of Passchendaele,

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to see men keep on sinking into the
slime, dying in the slime, I think
it absolutely finished me off.

190
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Because I knew for three months
before I was wounded
that I was going to get it.

191
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There was one time when
ammunition wagons were coming up.

192
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I'd been in this mud right up to
my waist and I thought, "This is it.
I'll put my leg under the wagon."

193
00:22:55,560 --> 00:23:01,000
And I got as close to that wagon
as possible. I just couldn't do it.

194
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I think I was broken
in spirit and mind.

195
00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:11,680
By the end of 1917,
every army had shown the effects
of this unremitted strain

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00:23:11,680 --> 00:23:14,200
eating away morale.

197
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:20,640
Newcomers might still be eager,
still imbued with the enthusiasm
of earlier years.

198
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:24,200
They were startled
at what they found.

199
00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:31,240
You see, when I joined up,
I was dead scared I wouldn't get
out to France before it was over.

200
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:36,280
I thought it would be over before
I'd get there. And when I got there,

201
00:23:36,280 --> 00:23:38,800
when I got into the line,

202
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:46,040
I remember writing back home saying,
"But the heart's been blown out
of these people."

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00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:49,400
GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

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This was now almost entirely
a citizen army, a vast force
approaching five millions,

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nearly two millions of them
on the Western Front.

206
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:08,320
In all the time that this army
remained in the field, there were
304,000 trials by court martial.

207
00:24:08,320 --> 00:24:11,560
3,080 death sentences were passed.

208
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:15,000
346 were carried out.

209
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,240
He stood, tied to a post,

210
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:20,880
against a wall.

211
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:25,040
And he was in civilian clothes.

212
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:32,080
And there was a little white piece
of paper pinned over his heart.
We had to fire at that.

213
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:39,320
We did not know what our rifles
were loaded with. Some were loaded
with ball, others with blank.

214
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:41,880
We then had the order

215
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:43,920
to...

216
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,160
fire.

217
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:48,720
And pull the trigger.

218
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:51,760
One knew by the recoil if...

219
00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:54,800
it was loaded with ball or not.

220
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:58,440
Then...

221
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:04,800
that deserter's name was read out
on three successive parades
as a warning.

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00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:09,840
The majority of these executions
took place on the Western Front.

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00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,880
More than three quarters
were for desertion.

224
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:18,600
The next most frequent crime
was murder. Firing party...

225
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:22,120
fire!
SHOTS RING OUT

226
00:25:22,120 --> 00:25:29,160
Despite depressing circumstances,
the discipline of the British
soldiers did not break down,

227
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:34,040
but every last shred of humour and
optimism was needed to maintain it.

228
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:39,160
Yet the Western Front had
its compensations. "The war years,"

229
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:43,320
said one British soldier,
"will stand out

230
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:50,160
"in the memories of many who fought
as the happiest period
of their lives." He went on:

231
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:52,560
In spite of differences in rank,

232
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:57,680
we were comrades,
brothers dwelling together in amity.

233
00:25:57,680 --> 00:26:04,920
We were privileged to see in each
other that ennobled self which in
the commercial struggle of peacetime

234
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,760
is atrophied for lack of expression.

235
00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:14,840
We could note the intense affection
of soldiers for certain officers,
their absolute trust in them.

236
00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:20,200
We saw the love, passing the love of
women, of one pal for his section.

237
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,080
We were privileged, in short, to see

238
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:30,120
a reign of goodwill among men
which the piping times of peace,
with all their organised charity,

239
00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:37,160
their free meals and Sunday sermons,
have never equalled. Otherwise
we could not have stuck it.

240
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:44,480
The code of front line behaviour
became the only one worth having.

241
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:56,880
Hateful, disgusting, terrifying -
the zone of the armies
was nevertheless

242
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,320
the only place to be.

243
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:05,840
For my part,
I am more glad of that experience
than of anything else I've known.

244
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:14,040
The ultimate test of optimism,
by now, was the front itself.

245
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:21,080
Was it hopeless, was it insane
to expect a decision on this
static, immovable battlefield?

246
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:28,120
The argument had lasted
right through the war. It reached
the extremes of bitterness in 1917.

247
00:27:28,120 --> 00:27:35,520
On the one hand were those who
believed that the Western Front was
a hopeless arena. Their spokesman

248
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:39,760
was Britain's Prime Minister,
David Lloyd George.

249
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:44,400
The Allied strategy in France
had been a sanguinary mistake

250
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:48,600
which nearly brought us
to irretrievable defeat.

251
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:55,240
The Allied generals were completely
baffled by the decision
of the Germans to dig in.

252
00:27:55,240 --> 00:28:01,480
In their hopeless efforts
to break through,
they could think of nothing better

253
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:06,480
than the sacrifice
of millions of men. By 1917,

254
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:12,760
Lloyd George's detestation
of the Western Front was adamant,
and he expressed it freely.

255
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:19,400
He said that he was
"not prepared to be a butcher's boy
driving cattle to the slaughter"

256
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,200
and that he would not do it.

257
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:27,040
To the British generals, the front
had a different significance.

258
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:31,880
Chief of Imperial General Staff
Sir William Robertson said:

259
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:38,440
The decisive front was fixed for us
by the deployment of the enemy
in France and Belgium.

260
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:44,040
Britain's allies endured mixed
fortunes as 1917 drew to an end.

261
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:51,120
The October Revolution threw Russia
out of the war, robbing the
alliance of her limitless manpower.

262
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:58,160
And the United States of America,
after eight months of war, could
only place four divisions in France

263
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:00,600
and only one in the line.

264
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:05,320
Italy lost over 300,000 men
in three weeks at Caporetto.

265
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:12,120
British and French divisions
had to be rushed to her aid.
The one satisfactory feature

266
00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:14,840
was the revival of France.

267
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,680
Nursed by its commander in chief,

268
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:23,960
General Petain, the French army
slowly recovered
its courage and dash.

269
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:30,560
The French nation, too,
found new spirit -
embodied, as so often, in one man.

270
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:35,600
On November 15th, Monsieur Georges
Clemenceau became France's premier.

271
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:41,600
He was 76 years old,
a radical of the sternest breed
called the Tiger.

272
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,760
Winston Churchill wrote:

273
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:50,800
As much as any single human being
can ever be a nation, he was France.

274
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:55,800
When Clemenceau addressed
the French Chamber of Deputies,

275
00:29:55,800 --> 00:29:58,240
he told them:

276
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:03,680
We stand here with but one thought -
to pursue the war relentlessly.

277
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:06,320
No more pacifist campaigns.

278
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:09,360
No treachery. No semi-treachery.

279
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:13,000
Only war. Nothing but war.

280
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:20,280
Clemenceau believed firmly
in the Western Front, where
the deadlock now seemed complete.

281
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:24,320
In a sense,
the deadlock WAS the war.

282
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:31,640
The evil of the Western Front
was its immobility. The immobility
was created by the deadlock.

283
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:38,680
The deadlock was the even balance
of trenches, barbed wire and
machine guns against the artillery

284
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:41,920
which alone could destroy them,

285
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:48,520
but in doing so turned the ground
into a wilderness of craters
and made impossible the movement

286
00:30:48,520 --> 00:30:51,040
it was intended to produce.

287
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:53,480
Now it was November.

288
00:30:53,480 --> 00:31:00,920
Haig planned a final stroke on the
front of the British Third Army
under General Sir Julian Byng.

289
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:05,440
Here, opposite Cambrai,
the ground was firm.

290
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:10,680
Grass grew across a no-man's-land
which was reasonably level.

291
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:15,880
No shattering bombardments had torn
this up and turned it into a bog.

292
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:18,320
This was tank country.

293
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:24,960
November the 19th. General Ellis,
commanding the Tank Corps,
issued a special order.

294
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:30,000
Tomorrow the Tank Corps will have
the chance it has been waiting for,

295
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:34,040
to operate on good going
in the van of the battle.

296
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:41,080
I leave the good name of the corps
with confidence in your hands.
I shall lead the centre division.

297
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,840
They were attacking
the Hindenburg line.

298
00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:49,880
There were three lines of trenches,
each trench up to 15 feet wide.

299
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:54,920
In front of the main line lay
acre upon acre of dense wire.

300
00:31:54,920 --> 00:32:02,760
Nowhere was it less than 50 yards
deep. Here and there it jutted out
in salients flanked by machine guns.

301
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:08,360
Never before had we been faced
with such a wilderness of wire.

302
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:48,080
At 6.20am on November the 20th,
with their general

303
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:51,200
flying his flag at their head

304
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:57,520
in the tank Hilda, the machines
of a new epoch rolled into battle.

305
00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:00,720
476 tanks. Over 50 supply tanks.

306
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:04,080
32 specially for destroying wire.

307
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:09,120
Two for bridging. Nine wireless
tanks. One for laying cable.

308
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,160
378 fighting tanks.

309
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:18,760
We got in, shut down our tanks,
and away we went.

310
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:26,200
We had rough compasses in the tanks
and we got our course and
we set course for the enemy line.

311
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:28,760
The first thing that happened...

312
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:35,280
It was dead silent
until we got to the enemy wire,
which was zero hour for the guns.

313
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:40,320
That, again, was a first-class show.
Crystal Palace had nothing in it.

314
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:42,960
No answer from the Germans at all.

315
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:48,000
It was the first time we saw the Hun
being blown up all over the place.

316
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:53,040
The troops were frightfully pleased.
No gunfire, so we opened our tanks.

317
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:57,880
And then we got into this belt
of wire. It was quite terrifying.

318
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:04,720
It was about seven feet high.
Very, very thick wire. It was
over 120 yards deep in places.

319
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:09,960
If we'd stopped or got our tracks
ripped off, we'd have been for it.

320
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:16,320
Instead, the tanks
made great swathes in the wire.
The Jocks, who were with us,

321
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:19,920
they came through
the gaps we'd made.

322
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:26,840
We all emerged the other side
into a deep valley
known as the Grand Ravine.

323
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:29,400
I crossed the first line.

324
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:36,440
The wire didn't prove to be
any obstacle at all. The artillery
had done their job very well.

325
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:42,960
The element of surprise -
the heavy shelling,
no preliminary bombardment -

326
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:46,000
had made it almost a cakewalk.

327
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:51,640
Almost a cakewalk. In four hours,
the British Third Army

328
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:58,840
advanced between three and four
miles right through the Hindenburg
defences, took over 4,000 prisoners

329
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:01,480
and over 100 guns.

330
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:11,320
Their own losses were astonishingly
light. It was one of the most
remarkable victories of the war.

331
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:15,920
In November 1917, victory
of any kind was badly needed.

332
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:22,000
The government decided
that the time had come to ring
the church bells of Britain.

333
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:25,040
PEALING OF BELLS

334
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:32,480
It's the first time the peals have
been rung since the outbreak of war.

335
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:37,640
I went up Ludgate Hill

336
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:42,080
to hear St Paul's carillon.
It hasn't been heard

337
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:49,920
since it celebrated the declaration
of peace after the South African
War. There was a crowd on the steps.

338
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:55,280
After the clock struck 12, the big
bell known as Great Paul boomed out,

339
00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:57,720
followed by the whole peal of bells.

340
00:35:57,720 --> 00:36:02,080
The people cheered.
The bells of the other churches

341
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:06,720
helped to swell the rings of sound
carrying the joyful news.

342
00:36:06,720 --> 00:36:11,360
One of Haig's staff officers wrote
on November the 23rd:

343
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:13,840
All at home seem to have gone crazy

344
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:17,880
about the last success.
It was a very fine effort,

345
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:22,920
but no greater than other shows.
It does not deserve hysterics.

346
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:26,960
When the really big,
decisive victory comes,

347
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:33,280
it will be time enough
to ring church bells
and sing the national anthem.

348
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:35,800
The doubters were right.

349
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:43,560
On November the 30th
the Germans counter-attacked,

350
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:47,920
taking most of the British troops
by surprise.

351
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:55,040
In the fight which followed,
they won back

352
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:58,680
almost all the ground
that they had lost.

353
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:03,720
When the battle died down, losses
on both sides were roughly equal.

354
00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:11,240
It was a sad end for the British
army, which had put forth such
tremendous efforts during the year.

355
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:22,760
The iron of disappointment
entered deep into men's souls.

356
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,400
A British diplomat wrote to Haig:

357
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:28,680
Even now, this war could have

358
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:32,680
a glorious ending for us,
but it won't.

359
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:47,400
Christmas came, and an officer
at Haig's headquarters wrote

360
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:53,200
in his diary: The fourth Christmas
at war. Though the outlook is black,

361
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:57,560
yet still I think it will be
the last war Christmas.

362
00:37:57,560 --> 00:38:01,400
How different each Christmas
has been.

363
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,040
We cannot fail to win.

364
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:08,600
Each year inevitably shows success
more certain.

365
00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:13,840
But for the next few months,
the prospect is the most gloomy

366
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:16,280
since 1914.

367
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:28,200
1917 expired, having brought
nothing but frustration
to the Allied cause.

368
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:30,840
The Western Front remained,

369
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:33,280
baffling, bloody,

370
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:37,320
ruinous, and still
the very heart of the war.

371
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:42,160
All that men could look forward to
was Clemenceau's promise.

372
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:44,520
Only war.

373
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:46,960
Nothing but war.