Guns of August

Two armies, now totally committed, surged and gripped and broke apart and clashed again in confused and separate combats over a front of forty miles. A regiment advanced, its neighbor was thrown back, gaps appeared, the enemy thrust through or, unaccountably, did not. Artillery roared, cavalry squadrons, infantry units, heavy horse-drawn field-gun batteries moved and floundered through villages and forests, between lakes, across fields and roads. Shells smashed into farmhouses and village streets. A battlion advancing under cover of shellfire disappeared behind a curtain of smoke and mist to some unknown fate.Columns of prisoners herded to the rear blocked the advancing troops. Brigades took ground or yielded it, crossed each other's lines of communication, became tangled up with the wrong divisions. Field commanders lost track of their units, staff cars sped about, German scot plans flew overhead trying to gather information, army commanders struggled to find out what was happening, and issued orders which might not be recieved or carried out or conform to realities by the time they reached the front. Three hundred thousand men flailed at each other, marched and tiredly countermarched, fired their guns, got drunk if they were lucky enough to occupy a village or sat on the ground in the forest with a few companions while night came; and the next day the struggle went on and the great battle of the Eastern Front was fought out.
-- Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, The Guns of August