_About six miles from Rheims, where General Gouraud held up the eastern arm of Ludendorff's "pincers."_]
_At the top of a little ridge above the Crise, south of Soissons. It was stormed by the Highlanders in very notable fashion in July, 1918. The plateau beyond it gave General Mangin command of the German communications farther east._]
_This memorial was erected by the 17th French Division, who took over from the Camerons, with the inscription "Ici fleurira toujours le glorieux Chardon d'Écosse parmi les Roses de France."_]
_An old town with Vauban fortifications, of which the photograph shows the moat, which was taken by storm in November, 1918._]
_A copy from a captured German photograph of a blown-up railway bridge, incidentally showing the deliberate destruction of the fruit-trees in the German retreat of 1917._]
_Everywhere in their retreat of 1918 the Germans naturally blew up bridges in order to hinder our progress behind them. At Hirson the old bridge was still only replaced by a timber structure._]
_One of the very rapidly constructed pile bridges (in this case over the Condé Canal), which the Engineers threw up in place of those destroyed in the German retreat._]
_The River Meuse at Sedan,--where the entrance of Americans and French in 1918 avenged the catastrophe of half a century earlier._]
_The fortifications of Maubeuge, although of an old type, held a considerable force of Germans back in the advance of 1914. The bridge was, of course, destroyed by the retreating Germans in 1918, and the girder bridge has temporarily replaced it._]
_For us the war began here on the 23rd of August, 1914, and ended on the 11th of November, 1918._]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings, inconsistently hyphenated words, inconsistent accent marks, and other inconsistencies.
End of Project Gutenberg's Ypres to Verdun, by Alexander B. W. Kennedy