The completeness of this victory, the march through of our troops, the utter despair of the German troops, was due in an overwhelming way to the guns, and the gunners who served them. It is only right and just that the highest tribute should be paid to these men, who have worked day and night for nearly a fortnight, under the intense strain, in an infernal noise, without sleep enough to relieve the nerve-rack, and always in danger of death. Gunner officers are hoarse with shouting under fire. They are hollow-eyed with bodily and mental exhaustion. The ammunition-carriers worked themselves stiff in order to feed the guns. They have used up incredible numbers of shells. The gunners of one division alone fired 180,000 shells with their field-batteries, and over 46,000 with their heavies. On the same scale has been the ammunition expenditure of all other groups of guns.
An historic scene took place after our troops had gained the high ground of Wytschaete and Messines. An order passed along to all the batteries. Gun horses were standing by. They were harnessed to the guns. The limbers of the field-batteries lined up. Then half-way through the battle the old gun positions were abandoned, after two and a half years of stationary warfare in the salient, searched every day of that time by German shells fired by direct observation from that ground just taken. The drivers urged on their horses. They drove at a gallop past old screens, and out of camouflaged places where men had walked stealthily, and dashed up the slopes. The infantry stood by to let them pass, and from thousands of men, these dusty, hot, parched soldiers of ours, who were waiting to go forward in support of the first waves of assaulting troops, there rose a great following cheer, which swept along the track of the gunners, and went with them up the ridge, where they unlimbered and got into action again for the second phase of the fighting down the farther slopes.
As scouts of the gunners, as their watchers and signallers, were the boys of the Royal Flying Corps. I said yesterday that they were uplifted with a kind of intoxication of enthusiasm. A youthful madness took possession of them. Those squadrons which I saw flying overhead while it was still dark on Thursday morning did daredevil, reckless, almost incredible things. They flew as men inspired by passion and a fierce joy of battle. They were hunters seeking their prey. They were Berserkers of the air, determined to kill though they should be killed, to scatter death among the enemy, to destroy him in the air and on the earth, to smite him in his body and in his works and in his soul by a terror of him. This may seem language of exaggeration, the silly fantasy of a writing-man careless of the exact truth. It is less than the truth, and the sober facts are wild things. Early on June 7 they were up and away, as I described them, passing overhead on that fateful morning before the crimson feather clouds appeared over the battlefield. They flew above German railway stations far behind the lines, and dropped tons of explosives, blowing up rolling stock, smashing rails and bridges. They attacked German aerodromes, flying low to the level of the sheds and spattering them with machine-gun bullets so that no German airmen came out of them that day. One man's flight, told in his own dry words, is like the wild nightmare of an airman's dream. He flew to a German aerodrome and circled round. A German machine-gun spat out bullets at him. The airman saw it, swooped over it, and fired at the gunner. He saw his bullets hit the gun. The man ceased fire, screamed, and ran for cover. Then our airman flew off, chased trains and fired into their windows. He flew over small bodies of troops on the march, swooped, fired, and scattered them. Afterwards he met a convoy going to Comines, and he circled over their heads, hardly higher than their heads, and fired into them. Near Warneton he came upon troops massing for a counter-attack, and made a new attack, inflicting casualties and making them run in all directions.