Villers-Bretonneux

Excerpt from The Hunter Region in The Great War, by Greg and Sylvia Ray The winter of 1917-1918 was almost as bad as the one before it, but at least the troops knew what to expect. They expected cold and snow, and they also expected a big German assault as soon as the weather improved. Behind their own lines, the Germans were training for a new phase of long-awaited open warfare.Knowing this, the Allied troops were full of dread. The futile Passchendaele bloodbath had sapped the Australian battalions and weakened the core of the entire British…