MY SECOND YEAR

OF THE WAR

BY

FREDERICK PALMER

Author of "The Last Shot," "The Old Blood," "My Year of the Great War," etc.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1917

Copyright, 1917
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

CONTENTS

• Back to the Front
• Verdun and Its Sequel
• A Canadian Innovation
• Ready for the Blow
• The Blow
• First Results of the Somme
• Out of the Hopper of Battle
• Forward the Guns!
• When the French Won
• Along the Road to Victory
• The Brigade that Went Through
• The Storming of Contalmaison
• A Great Night Attack
• The Cavalry Goes In
• Enter the Anzacs
• The Australians and a Windmill
• The Hateful Ridge
• A Truly French Affair
• On the Aerial Ferry
• The Ever Mighty Guns
• By the Way
• The Mastery of the Air
• A Patent Curtain of Fire
• Watching a Charge
• Canada Is Stubborn
• The Tanks Arrive
• The Tanks in Action
• Canada Is Quick
• The Harvest of Villages
• Five Generals and Verdun
• Au Revoir, Somme!

MY SECOND YEAR OF THE WAR

I

BACK TO THE FRONT

"I've never kept up my interest so long in anything as in this war," said a woman who sat beside me at dinner when I was home from the front in the winter of 1915-16. Since then I have wondered if my reply, "Admirable mental concentration!" was not ironic at the expense of manners and philosophy. In view of the thousands who were dying in battle every day, her remark seemed as heartless as it was superficial and in keeping with the riotous joy of living and prosperity which strikes every returned American with its contrast to Europe's self-denial, emphasized by