日本語訳をお願いいたします。
— Griffith
In August 1917, 127 mm (5.0 in) of rain fell, 84 mm (3.3 in) on 1, 8, 14, 26 and 27 August; the weather was also overcast and windless, which much reduced evaporation. Divided into two ten-day and an eleven-day period, there were 53.6, 32.4 and 41.3 mm (2.11, 1.28 and 1.63 in) of rain that August. In the 61 hours before 6:00 p.m. on 31 July, 12.5 mm (0.49 in) of rain fell and from 6:00 p.m. on 31 July to 6:00 p.m. on 4 August, there was 63 mm (2.5 in) of rain. There were three dry days and 14 days with less than 1 mm (0.039 in) of rain during the month. Three days were sunless and one had six minutes of sun; over 27 days there were 178.1 hours of sunshine, an average of 6.6 hours per day. The weather in August 1917 was exceptionally bad and Haig had been justified in expecting that the weather would not impede offensive operations, because rain would have been dried by the expected summer sunshine and breezes. Petain had committed the French Second Army to an attack at Verdun in mid-July, in support of the operations in Flanders. The attack was delayed, partly due to the mutinies which had affected the French army after the failure of the Nivelle Offensive and also because of a German attack at Verdun from 28–29 June, which captured some of the ground intended as a jumping-off point for the French attack. A French counter-attack on 17 July re-captured the ground, the Germans regained it on 1 August, then took ground on the east bank on 16 August. The battle began on 20 August and by 9 September, had taken 10,000 prisoners. Fighting continued sporadically into October, adding to the German difficulties on the Western Front and elsewhere. Ludendorff wrote:
On the left bank, close to the Meuse, one division had failed ... and yet both here and in Flanders everything possible had been done to avoid failure ... The French army was once more capable of the offensive. It had quickly overcome its depression.
— Ludendorff: Memoirs
yet there was no German counter-attack, because the local Eingreif divisions were in Flanders.
