It was as late as June that General Anthoine's soldiers had taken their
stand to the left of the British armies, and after the tremendous fights
along the Chemin des Dames and Moronvillers in April, it might well be
believed that they were tired. They had borne the burden from the very
first; they had been on the Marne and the Yser in 1914, at the
numberless and costly offensives of 1915 in Artois, Champagne, Lorraine
and Alsace; and in 1916, after the Verdun epic, they had had to fight on
the Somme. Indeed, they had only ceased repelling the enemy's attacks in
order to attack in their turn. Among the Allies, they represented
invincible determination, as well as a perfected military method. Those
troops arriving on June 15, on ground they had never seen before, might
well have been anxious for a respite; yet on July 31 they were in the
fighting line with the British. Two days before the attack they crossed
the Yser canal by twenty-nine bridges without losing one man, and showed
an intelligence and spirit which added to their ascendancy over the
enemy and increased the prestige of the French army.
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