This does not detract from, but rather increases, the magnificence of the defence of the 36th Division, and indeed of the whole of the XVIII. Corps, which had sixteen German Divisions, in front and second line, against its four. There is at least every reason to suppose that, had all gone elsewhere as on the front of the XVIII. Corps, the full weight of reinforcements would have arrived before the enemy had forced the lines of the St. Quentin and Somme Canals. In that case the war would undoubtedly have had a speedier ending.
[52] These men were evidently advancing from Saulchoy-sur-Davenescourt, into which a number of the enemy had filtered in the darkness.
[53] Returned prisoners of war informed Captain Miller, whose diary has been drawn upon in this chapter, that the streets of Erches, through which they were marched, were littered with German dead. So, as he remarks in a letter to the writer, the affair "was not so one-sided as it looked."