From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 Part 8

ARRAS AND THE VIMY RIDGE

APRIL 9

To-day at dawn our armies began a battle which, if Fate has any kindness for the world, may be the beginning of the last great battles of the war. Our troops attacked on a wide front including the Vimy Ridge--that grim hill which dominates the plain of Douai and the coalfields of Lens--and the German positions around Arras. In spite of bad fortune in the weather at the beginning of the day, so bad that there was no visibility for the airmen, and our men had to struggle forward in a heavy rain-storm, the first attacks have been successful, and the enemy has lost much ground, falling back in retreat to strong rear-guard lines where he is now fighting desperately.

The line of our attack covers a front of some twelve miles southwards from Givenchy-en-Goh.e.l.le, and is a sledge-hammer blow threatening to break the northern end of the Hindenburg line, already menaced round St.-Quentin. As soon as the enemy was forced to retreat from the country east of Bapaume and p.r.o.nne, in order to escape a decisive blow on that line, he hurried up divisions and guns northwards to counter our attack there, while he prepared a new line of defence known as the Wotan line, as the southern part of the Hindenburg line, which joins it, is known as the Siegfried position, after two great heroes of old German mythology.

He hoped to escape there before our new attack was ready, but we have been too quick for him, and his own plans were frustrated. So to-day began another t.i.tanic conflict which the world will hold its breath to watch, because of all that hangs upon it.

I have seen the fury of this beginning, and all the sky on fire with it, the most tragic and frightful sight that men have ever seen, with an infernal splendour beyond words to tell. The bombardment which went before the infantry a.s.sault lasted for several days, and reached a great height yesterday, when coming from the south I saw it for the first time. I went up in darkness long before light broke to-day to watch the opening of the battle. It was very cold, with a sharp wind blowing from the south-east and rain-squalls. The roads were quiet until I drew near to Arras, and then onwards there was the traffic of marching men going up to the fighting-lines, and of their transport columns, and of many ambulances. In darkness there were hundreds of little red lights, the glow of cigarette ends. Every now and then one of the men would strike a match, holding it in the hollow of his hands and bending his head to it, so that his face was illumined--one of our English faces, clear-cut and strong. The wind blew sparks from cigarette ends like fireflies. Outside one camp a battalion was marching away, a regiment of shadow-forms, and on the bank above them the band was playing them out with fifes and drums, such a merry little tune, so whimsical and yet so sad also in the heart of it, as it came trilling out of darkness. On each side of me as I pa.s.sed by men were deeply ma.s.sed, and they were whistling and singing and calling out to each other. Away before them were the fires of death, to which they were going very steadily, with a tune on their lips, carrying their rifles and shovels and iron rations, while the rain played a tattoo on their steel hats.

I went to a place a little outside Arras on the west side. It was not quite dark, because there was a kind of suffused light from the hidden moon, so that I could see the black ma.s.s of the cathedral city, the storm-centre of this battle, and away behind me to the left the tall, broken towers of Mont-St.-Eloi, white and ghostly looking, across to the Vimy Ridge. The bombardment was now in full blast. It was a beautiful and devilish thing, and the beauty of it and not the evil of it put a spell upon one's senses. All our batteries, too many to count, were firing, and thousands of gun-flashes were winking and blinking from the hollows and hiding-places, and all their sh.e.l.ls were rushing through the sky as though flocks of great birds were in flight, and all were bursting over German positions, with long flames which rent the darkness and waved sword-blades of quivering light along the ridges. The earth opened, and pools of red fire gushed out. Star-sh.e.l.ls burst magnificently, pouring down golden rain. Mines exploded east and west of Arras, and in a wide sweep from Vimy Ridge to Blangy southwards, and voluminous clouds, all bright with a glory of infernal fire, rolled up to the sky. The wind blew strongly across, beating back the noise of guns, but the air was all filled with the deep roar and the slamming knocks of single heavies and the drum-fire of field-guns.

The first attack was at 5.30. Officers were looking at their wrist-watches as on a day in July last year. The earth lightened. In rank gra.s.s, looking white and old, scrubs of barbed wire were black on it. A few minutes before 5.30 the guns almost ceased fire, so that there was a strange, solemn hush. We waited, and pulses beat faster than second-hands. "They're away," said a voice by my side. The bombardment broke out again with new and enormous effects of fire and sound. The enemy was sh.e.l.ling Arras heavily, and black shrapnel and high explosives came over from his lines. But our gun-fire was twenty times as great.

Around the whole sweep of his lines green lights rose. They were signals of distress, and his men were calling for help. It was dawn now, but clouded and storm-swept. A few airmen came out with the wind tearing at their wings, but they could see nothing in the mist and driven rain. I went down to the outer ramparts of Arras. The eastern suburb of Blangy was already in our hands. On the higher ground beyond our men were fighting forward. I saw two waves of infantry advancing against the enemy's trenches, preceded by our barrage of field-guns. They went in a slow, leisurely way, not hurried, though the enemy's shrapnel was searching for them.

"Grand fellows," said an officer lying next to me on the wet slope. "Oh, topping!"

Fifteen minutes afterwards groups of men came back. They were British wounded and German prisoners. They were met on the roadside by medical officers, who patched them up there and then before they were taken to the field-hospitals in ambulances. From these men, hit by shrapnel and machine-gun bullets, I heard the first news of progress. They were b.l.o.o.d.y and exhausted, but claimed success.

"We did fine," said one of them. "We were through the fourth lines before I was knocked out."

"Not many Germans in the first trenches," said another, "and no real trenches either, after our sh.e.l.ling. We had knocked their dug-outs out, and their dead were lying thick, and living ones put their hands up."

There were Tanks in action. Some of the men had seen them crawling forward over the open country, and then had lost sight of them. In the night the enemy had withdrawn all but his rear-guard posts to the trenches farther back, where he resisted fiercely with incessant machine-gun fire. The enemy's trench system south of Arras was enormously strong, but our bombardment had pounded it, and our men went through to the reserve support trench, and then on to the chain of posts in front of the Hangest Trench, which was strongly held, and after heavy fighting with bombs and bayonets to the Observatory Ridge, from which for two years and a half the enemy has looked down, directing the fire of his batteries against the French and British positions. Our storm troops in this part of the line were all men of the old English county regiments--Norfolks, Suffolks, Ess.e.x, Berkshires, Suss.e.x, Middles.e.x, Queen's, Buffs, and Royal West Kents of the 12th Division. There was fierce fighting in Tilloy, to the south of Arras, by the Suffolks, Shropshire Light Infantry, and Royal Welsh Fusiliers of the 3rd Division, and afterwards they were held up by machine-gun fire from two formidable positions called the "Harp" and "Telegraph Hill," the former being a fortress of trenches shaped like an Irish harp, the latter rising to a high mound. These were taken by English troops and the Scots of the 15th Division, with the help of Tanks, which advanced upon them in their leisurely way, climbed up banks and over parapets, sitting for a while to rest and then waddling forward again, shaking machine-gun bullets from steel flanks, and pouring deadly fire into the enemy's positions, and so mastering the ground.

North of the Scarpe (north-east of Arras) the whole system of trenches was taken; and north again, along the Vimy Ridge, the Canadians and Highlanders of the 51st Division achieved a heroic success by gaining this high dominating ground, which was the scene of some of the fiercest French battles in the first part of the war, and which is a great wall defending Douai. It was reckoned up to noon to-day that over 3000 prisoners had been taken. They are streaming down to prisoners'

camps, and to our men who pa.s.s them on the roads they are the best proofs of a victorious day.

Those of us who knew what would happen to-day--the beginning of another series of battles greater perhaps than the struggle of the Somme--found ourselves yesterday filled with a tense, restless emotion. Some of us smiled with a kind of tragic irony, because it was Easter Sunday. In little villages behind the battle lines the bells of French churches were ringing gladly because the Lord had risen; and on the altar steps priests were reciting the old words of faith, "Resurrexi et adhuc tec.u.m sum! Alleluia!" The earth was glad yesterday. For the first time this year the sun had a touch of warmth in it--though patches of snow still staved white under the shelter of the banks--and the sky was blue, and the light glinted on wet tree-trunks and in the furrows of the new-ploughed earth. As I went up the road to the battle lines I pa.s.sed a battalion of our men--the men who are fighting to-day--standing in a hollow square with bowed heads, while the chaplain conducted the Easter service. It was Easter Sunday, but no truce of G.o.d. I went to a field outside Arras, and looked into the ruins of the cathedral city. The cathedral itself stood clear in the sunlight, with a deep black shadow where its roof and aisles had been. Beyond was a ragged pinnacle of stone--the once glorious town hall and a French barracks--and all the broken streets going out to the Cambrai road. It was h.e.l.l in Arras, though Easter Sunday. The enemy was flinging high explosives into the city, and clouds of shrapnel burst above, black and green. All around the country too, his sh.e.l.ls were exploding in a scattered, aimless way, and from our side there was a heavy bombardment all along the Vimy Ridge, above Neuville-St.-Vaast, and sweeping round above St.-Nicholas and Blangy, two suburbs of Arras, and then south-west of the city on the ridge above the road to Cambrai. It was one continuous roar of death, and all the batteries were firing steadily. I watched our sh.e.l.ls burst, and some of them were monstrous, raising great lingering clouds above the German lines.

There was one figure in this landscape of war who made some officers about me laugh. He was a French ploughman who upholds the tradition of war. Zola saw him in 1870, and I have seen him on the edge of the other battlefields; and here he was again driving a pair of st.u.r.dy horses and his plough across the sloping field--not a furlong away from the town where the German sh.e.l.ls were raising rosy clouds of brick-dust. So he gave praise to the Lord on Easter morning, and prepared the harvests which shall be gathered after the war.

All behind the front of battle was a great traffic, and all that modern warfare means in the organization and preparation of an enormous operation was here in movement. I had just come from our outpost lines down south from the silence of that great desert which the enemy has left in the wake of his retreat, east of Bapaume and p.r.o.nne, and from that open warfare with village fighting, where small bodies of our infantry and cavalry have been clearing the countryside of rear-guard posts. Here, round about Arras, was the concentration for the old form of battle attack upon entrenched positions, fortified hills and strong natural fortresses, defended by ma.s.sed guns as before the battles of the Somme. For miles on the way to the front were great camps, great stores, and restless activity everywhere. Supply columns of food for men and guns moved forward in an endless tide. Transport mules pa.s.sed in long trails. Field-batteries went up to add to the ma.s.s of metal ready to pour fire upon the German lines. It was a vast circus of the world's great war, and everything that belongs to the machinery of killing streamed on and on. Columns of ambulances for the rescue, and not for that other side of the business, came in procession, followed by an army of stretcher-bearers, more than I have ever seen before, marching cheerily as though in a pageant. In some of the ambulances were Army nurses, and men marching on the roads waved their hands to them, and they laughed and waved back. In the fields by the roadsides men were resting, lying on the wet earth, between two spells of a long march or encamped in rest, the same kind of men whom I saw on July 1 of last year, some of them the same men--our boys, clean-shaven, grey-eyed, so young-looking, so splendid to see. Some of them sat between their stacked rifles writing letters home. And the tide of traffic pa.s.sed them and flowed on to the edge of the battlefields, where to-day they are fighting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LENS, VIMY RIDGE AND ARRAS

London: W^m. Heinemann _Stanford's Geog^l. Estab^t., London_]

APRIL 10

The enemy has lost already nearly 10,000 prisoners and more than half a hundred guns, and in dead and wounded his losses are great. He is in retreat south of the Vimy Ridge to defensive lines farther back, and as he goes our guns are smashing him along the roads. During the night the Canadians gained the last point, called Hill 145, on the Vimy Ridge, where the Germans held out in a pocket with machine-guns, and this morning the whole of that high ridge, which dominates the plains to Douai, is in our hands, so that there is removed from our path the high barrier for which the French and ourselves have fought through b.l.o.o.d.y years. Yesterday before daylight and afterwards I saw this ridge of Vimy all on fire with the light of great gun-fire. The enemy was there in strength, and his guns were answering ours with a heavy barrage of high explosives. This morning the scene was changed as by a miracle. Snow was falling, blown gustily across the battlefields, and powdering the capes and helmets of our men as they rode or marched forward to the front. But presently sunlight broke through the storm-clouds and flooded all the countryside by Neuville-St.-Vaast and Thlus and La Folie Farm, up to the crest of the ridge, where the Canadians and Highlanders of the 51st Division had just fought their way with such high valour. Our batteries were firing from many hiding-places, revealed by short, sharp flashes of light, but few answering sh.e.l.ls came back, and the ridge itself, patched with snowdrift, was quiet as any hill of peace. It was astounding to think that not a single German stayed up there out of all these who had held it yesterday, unless some poor wounded devils still cower in the deep tunnels which pierce the hill-side. It was almost unbelievable to me, who have known the evil of this high ridge month after month and year after year, and the deadly menace which lurked about its lower slopes. Yet I saw proof below, where all Germans who had been there at dawn yesterday, thousands of them, were down in our lines, drawn up in battalions, marshalling themselves, grinning at the fate which had come to them and spared their lives.

The Canadian attack yesterday was astoundingly successful, and carried out by high-spirited men, the victors of Courcelette in the battles of the Somme, who had before the advance an utter and joyous confidence of victory. On their right were the Highland Brigades of the 51st Division who fought at Beaumont-Hamel, and who shared the honour of that day with the Canadians, taking as many prisoners and gaining a great part of the ridge. They went away at dawn, through the mud and rain which made scarecrows of them. They followed close and warily to the barrage of our guns, the most stupendous line of fire ever seen, and by 6.30 they had taken their first objectives, which included the whole front-line system of German trenches above Neuville-St.-Vaast, by La Folie Farm and La Folie Wood, and up by Thlus, where they met with fierce resistance. The German garrisons were for the most part in long, deep tunnels, pierced through the hill as a.s.sembly ditches. There were hundreds of them in Prinz Arnault Tunnel, and hundreds more in Great Volker Tunnel, but as the Canadians and Scots surged up to them with wave after wave of bayonets German soldiers streamed out and came running forward with hands up. They were eager to surrender, and their great desire was to get down from Vimy Ridge and the barrage of their own guns. That barrage fell heavily and fiercely upon the Turco Trench, but too late to do much damage to our men, who had already gone beyond it. The Canadian casualties on the morning of attack were not heavy in comparison with the expected losses, though, G.o.d knows, heavy enough, but the German prisoners were glad to pay for the gift of life by carrying our wounded back. The eagerness of these men was pitiful, and now and then grotesque. At least the Canadian escorts found good laughing matter in the enormous numbers of men they had to guard and in the way the prisoners themselves directed the latest comers to barbed-wire enclosures, and with deep satisfaction acted as masters of the ceremony to their own captivity. I have never seen such cheerful prisoners, although for the most part they were without overcoats and in a cold blizzard of snow. They were joking with each other, and in high good humour, because life with all its hardships was dear to them, and they had the luck of life. They were of all sizes and ages and types. I saw elderly, whiskered men with big spectacles, belonging to the professor tribe, and young lads who ought to have been in German high schools.

Some of their faces looked very wizened and small beneath their great shrapnel helmets. Many of them looked ill and starved, but others were tall, stout, hefty fellows, who should have made good fighting men if they had any stomach for the job. There were many officers standing apart. Canadians took over two hundred of them, among whom were several forward observing officers, very bad tempered with their luck, because the men had not told them they were going to bolt and had left them in front positions. All officers were disconcerted because of the cheerfulness of the men at being taken. I talked with a few of them.

They told me of the horrors of living under our bombardment. Some of them had been without food for four days, because our gun-fire had boxed them in.

"When do you think the war will end?" I asked one of them.

"When the English are in Berlin," he answered, and I think he meant that that would be a long time.

Another officer said, "In two months," and gave no reason for his certainty.

"What about America?" I asked one of them. He shrugged his shoulders, and said, "It is bad for us, very bad; but, after all, America can't send an army across the ocean."

At this statement Canadian soldiers standing around laughed loudly, and said, "Don't you believe it, old sport. We have come along to fight you, and the Yankees will do the same."

By three o'clock in the afternoon the Canadians and the Highland Brigades had gained the whole of the ridge except the high strong post on the left of Hill 145, captured during the night. Our gun-fire had helped them by breaking down all the wire, even round Heroes' Wood and Count's Wood, where it was very thick and strong. Thlus was wiped utterly off the map. This morning Canadian patrols pushed in a snow-storm through Farbus Wood, and established outposts on the railway embankment. Some of the bravest work was done by forward observing officers, who climbed to the top of Vimy Ridge as soon as it was captured, and through the heavy fire barrages reported back to the artillery all the movements seen by them in the country below.

In spite of the wild day, our flying men were riding the storm and signalling to the gunners who were rushing up their field-guns. "Our 60-pounders," said a Canadian Officer, "had the day of their lives."

They found many targets. There were trains moving in Vimy village and they hit them. There were troops ma.s.sing on sloping ground and they were shattered. There were guns and limber on the move, and men and horses were killed.

Above all the prisoners taken yesterday by the English, Scottish, and Canadian troops the enemy's losses were frightful, and the scenes behind his lines must have been hideous in slaughter and terror. On the right of Arras there was hard and costly fighting in Blangy and Tilloy and onwards to Feuchy. On this side the Germans fought most fiercely, and the Shropshires, Suffolks, Royal Fusiliers, and Welsh Fusiliers of the 3rd Division were held up near Feuchy Chapel and other strong points until our gun-fire knocked out these works and made way for them.

Fifty-four guns were taken here on the east side of Arras, and to-day the pursuit of the beaten enemy continues.

II

LONDONERS THROUGH THE GERMAN LINES

The Londoners' attack at dawn was one of the splendid episodes of the battle. They went through the German lines in long waves, and streamed forward like a living tide, very quick and very far, taking a thousand prisoners on their way through Neuville-Vita.s.se and Mercatel. Later in the day they were held up in their right flank by enfilade fire, as the troops on their right were in difficulties against uncut wire and machine-guns, and from that time onwards the London men of the 56th Division had perilous hours and hard, costly fighting. They were forced to extend beyond their line on the left to join up the gap between themselves and the troops to their north, and to work down with bombing parties on the right to gain ground in which the Germans were holding out desperately and inflicting many casualties on our men. In the centre the 56th Division was ordered to attack fortified villages from which machine-gun bullets swept the ground and where our a.s.sault was checked by stout belts of wire with unbroken strands. It was in those hours on April 9 and 10 that many young London men showed the highest qualities of spirit, risking death, and worse than death, with most desperate gallantry.

A young subaltern of the Middles.e.x Regiment saw those wire traps in the centre of Neuville-Vita.s.se, and led the way to them with a party of bombers and Lewis-gunners, smashed them up, and jumped on the machine-guns beyond. It opened the gate to all the other Londoners--Kensingtons, Rangers, and London Scottish--who swept through this village and beyond. Many officers fell, but there was always some one to take command and lead the men--a sergeant with a cool head, a second lieutenant with a flame in his eyes.

It was a boy of nineteen who took command of one company of the Middles.e.x Regiment when he was the only one to lead. He had never been under fire before, and had never seen all this blood and horror. He was a slip of a fellow, who had been spelling out fairy-tales ten years ago, which is not far back in history. Now, he led a company of fighting men, who followed him as a great captain all through that day's battle, and from one German line to another, and from one village to another, until all the ground had been gained according to the first plan. This gallant boy was afterwards reported missing, and his comrades believe that he was killed.

It was a battle of second lieutenants of London, owing to the heavy casualties of commanding officers. One of them was wounded in the head early in the day, but led his men until hours later he fell and fainted.

Another young officer went out with three men in the darkness, when the infantry was held up by serious obstacles, and under heavy fire brought back information which saved many lives and enabled the whole line to advance.

There was a second lieutenant of the London Rangers who behaved with a quick decision and daring which seemed inspired by something more than sound judgment. The enemy was holding out in a trench and sweeping men down with that death-rattle of bullets which is the worst thing in all this fighting. In front of them was uncut wire, which is always a trap for men. Our London lieutenant did not go straight ahead. He flung his platoon round to the flank, smashed through the wire here, and sprang at the German gun-team with a revolver in one hand and a bomb in the other.

The whole team was destroyed except one man, who fell wounded, and above those dead bodies the second lieutenant waved his revolver to his men and said, "Let's get on."

The London men went on for nine days, which is like ninety years on such a battlefield. They went on until they were checked and held by the enemy, who had time to rush up strong reserves and bring up new weight of guns. But they smashed through the Cojeul Switch and broke the Hindenburg line at Hninel.

Sh.e.l.l-fire increased hour by hour. From many hidden places machine-guns poured bullets across the ground. German snipers lay out in sh.e.l.l-holes picking off our men. This sniping was intolerable, and a second lieutenant and sergeant crawled out into No Man's Land to deal with it.

They dragged three snipers out of one hole, and searched others and helped to check this hidden fire. One London rifleman went forward to kill a machine-gun with its hideous tat-tat-tat. It was a bolder thing than St. George's attack on the dragon, which was a harmless beast compared with this spitfire devil. The rifleman armed himself with a Lewis gun, carried at his hip, and fired so coolly that he scattered the German team and captured the gun.

All through those nine days, and afterwards in a second spell worse than those, the London men lived under great fire, those that had the luck to live, and though their nerves were all frayed with the strain of it, and they suffered great agonies and great losses, they never lost courage and kept their pride--London Pride.

One medical officer's orderly never tired of searching for stricken men, and seemed to have some magic about him, with sh.e.l.ls bursting everywhere round about his steps and bullets spitting on each side of him. He organized stretcher-bearer parties, gave some of his own magic to them, and saved many lives. A captain of the R.A.M.C. went out under heavy fire and dressed the wounds of men lying there in agony and brought them back alive. A London private remained out looking after the wounded in an exposed place, and in his spare time saved other men attacked by small parties of Germans, by killing nine of them and taking one man prisoner. Another second lieutenant, one of those boys who have poured out the blood of youth upon these battlefields, took two Vickers guns with their teams through two barrages--only those who have seen a barrage can know the meaning of that--and by great skill and cunning brought his men through without a single casualty, so that the infantry followed with high hearts.

Out of a burning billet and out of an exploding ammunition dump, a transport driver brought out some charges urgently needed for the battle. A man who entered a cage of tigers to draw their teeth would not want greater nerve than this.

When the blinds were drawn across the windows of many little London houses, when dusk crept into Piccadilly Circus and shadows darkened down the Strand, when the great old soul of London slept a while in the night, these boys who had gone out from her streets were fighting, and are fighting still, in the greatest battle of the world, and as they lie awake in a ditch, or wounded in a sh.e.l.l-hole, their spirit travels home again, through the old swirl of traffic, to quiet houses where already, perhaps, there is the scent of may-blossom.