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PRESTO VERDUN

SIR ALEXANDER BM KENNEDY

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YPRE5 TO VERDUN

COUNTRY

LIF£

First published in 1921.

Ypres to Verdun

A. (collection ol Jrnotograpns ol

THE WAR AREAS IN
FRANCE & FLANDERS

Opecially taken by

SIR ALEXANDER B. W. KENNEDY

LL.D., F.R.S.

Past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers
Associate Member of the Ordnance Committee, etc.

LONDON :

Publislied at tke Oflices of "Country Life, Ltd., Tavistock Street,
Covent Garden, >V .C. 2, and Dy George Newnes, Ltd., iSoutkampton
Street, Strand, W^.C. 2. New York : Ckarlej Scribner s Son*

" Quand pensez-vous que la guerre sera finie?" dit le Docteur.
" Quand nous serons vainqueurs," coupa le G6n6ral.

"Les Silences du Col. Bramble." — Maurois.

PREFACE

N official visit to tlie Front during the great days of
October, 1918, when our chief difficulty and our great
object was to keep up with the retreating Germans,
gave me some first-hand knowledge of the devastation
of the country which had been the result of four years
of war. Familiar — too familiar — as this was to our
soldiers, we at home — if I may take myself as a fair example of the
average man — could really form no idea, even from the most vivid
of the correspondents' descriptions, of what the ruined country was
actually like. Roads, fields, orchards, were a featureless waste of
shell-holes, often already covered with rank herbage altogether
disguising their original nature. Villages were only recognisable
by painted notices, " This is Givenchy," or sometimes " This was
Givenchy "; not a house, not a wall, not a gate-post to show where
they had been. Large towns like Ypres or Lens or Albert were
little more than piles of brick, stone, and timber rubbish, through
which roads were being cleared between immense piles of debris.
In Rheims nearly as many houses were destroyed as the 13,000 said
to have been burnt in the Great Fire of London, and smaller places
like Soissons or Cambrai or Arras had suffered terribly. It was
forbidden in our Army Areas at that time, no doubt for excellent
reasons, to use a camera, but I made up my mind that when per-
mission could be obtained I would do my best to secure some
permanent record of what had happened.

It was only in September of 1919 that I was able, with my friend,
Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Gill, D.S.O., R.A., to make a first

V 6

vi PREFACE

photographic visit to the War Areas, and to get over a hundred views
from Ypres to Verdun. At this time Major-General P. G. Grant was
in charge of affairs at Headquarters at Wimereux. It was not without
pardonable professional pride that I remembered that it was General
Grant, a Royal Engineer Officer, who had on the 25th-26th of March,
1918, been chosen to organise the wonderfully constituted Company
which General Haig's despatch euphemistically called, in enumerating
the elements of which it consisted, a " mixed force." The days were
critical, the French reserves had far to come and had not reached
us, and the " mixed force," brought together in a few hours, proved
sufficient addition to enable us to hold on, until the enemy, exhausted,
could get no farther. General Grant was kind enough to give a
brother Engineer every help, especially through his Area Com-
manders, Colonel Falcon, Colonel Carey, and Colonel Russell Brown,
to all of whom we were much indebted. The result of this visit,
and a second a few months later, has been that I have been able
to take nearly 250 negatives of the places which were so much in
our news and in our minds during the terrible four years of the war.
I have thought that it might be interesting, both to the soldiers
who fought for us all over France and Flanders and to their friends
at home who heard from day to day of the places where they were
fighting, to have something which would show what these places
were really like, to turn the too familiar names into recognisable
pictures, and this is my reason for publishing these photographs.
In 1919 very little had as yet been done by way of reconstruction.
In the spring of 1920, happily, a great deal had been done. But the
photographs which foUow indicate really — as well as the imperfec-
tions of a photograph allow — the condition of the places and of
the country previous to reconstruction, and I am glad to be able
to show my countrymen something of the condition to which our
neighbour's country was brought by the war. Some realisation
of this may enable us to understand better how keenly and over-

PREFACE vii

poweringly the French desire that the terms of Peace with our
common enemies should be such as will definitely prevent for ever
the recurrence of these horrors.

In addition to my own photographs I have to acknowledge, with
many thanks, permission from Sir Martin Conway to use Plates 43,
64, 68, and 73, which were taken officially at a time when outsiders
were not allowed to photograph. I have also to thank Mr. Basil
Mott for the use of his two picturesque views (Plates 49 and 69) of
Lens and Albert under snow, Colonel Douglas Gill for the view on
Kemmel Hill (Plate 32), and Mr. R. Godai for the photograph
(Plate 18) of a destroyed pillbox.

ALEXANDER B. W. KENNEDY.

Albany,

August, 1 92 1.

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTORY

II. THE YPRES SALIENT -

III. ZEEBRUGGE - - - -

IV. THE LYS SALIENT - - .
V. BETHUNE, LA BASSEE, AND LOOS

VI. ARRAS, VIMY, AND LENS

VII. THE SOMME - - - -

VIII. ALBERT AND THE ANCRE

IX. THE OISE AND THE AVRE

X. CAMBRAI TO ST. QUENTIN

XI. RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS

XII. VERDUN, THE MEUSE, THE ARGONNE

XIII. THE MARNE TO MONS

1-4

5-18

19-23

24-34

35-42

43-50

51-66

67-73

74-78

79-87

88-^7

98-106

107-124

LI5T OF PLATE5

I. Introductory

V. Bethune, La Bassee, and

Innsbruck : the Declaration

Loos

of War -

Bethune

6cole Militaire, Montreuil -

Givenchy - - -

Hotel de Ville, DouUens -

La Bassee -

In the Compiegne Forest -

The Canal at La Bassee -

II. The Ypres Salient

A Pithead -

The Double Grassier

39
40

The Menin Gate, Ypres

A Communication Trench

Dugouts in the Ypres Walls

near Loos

41
42

Ypres from the Lille Gate -

" No Man's Land "

The Belfry Tower, Ypres -

The "Tank Cemetery, " Hooge

VI. Arras, Vimy, and Lens

At Gheluvelt

Arras ...

" Stirhng Castle " -

Arras Cathedral

" Clapham Junction "
The Becelaere Road

12
13

On the Vimy Ridge

A Mine Crater on the

"Hill 60"- - 14

At St. Julien

The Passchendaele Ridge -

. 15
16

Ridge -
German Gun Emplace-
ment at Thelus -

47
48

A "Pillbox"

The Road to Lens -

III. Zeebrugge

Lens under Snow -

The Bruges Canal -

Lens

Lock Gate at Zeebrugge -

VII. The Somme

The Guns on the Mole

The Mole at Zeebrugge
"C3" -

22
23

The Somme Road -

Foucaucourt

Mametz ...

51
52
53

IV. The Lys Salient

Trones Wood

Neuve Chapelle

Delville Wood

On the Aubers Ridge

Combles

(Schultze Turm)

The Bapaume Road (Butte

A Double O.P. -

de Warlencourt)-

Merville - . -

Mont St. Quentin -

Estaires - - -

Pdronne - - -

Bailleul

Warfusee (Lamotte)

Armentieres

Villcrs Bretonneu.x

Kemmel Hill

The Chipilly Spur -

Kemmel Hill

Cappy

" Plug Street " Wood

Villers Carbonnel -

A Cemetery in " Plug

The Somme at Clery

Street " Wood -

Brie Chateau

LIST OF PLATES

VIII.

On the Amiens-Albert Road

Albert on Evacuation

Albert in Winter -

Albert Cathedral -

In the Ancre Valley

Aveluy

Beaumont-Hamel -

IX. The Oise and the Avre

The "Big Bertha" Em-

placement

The St. Gobain Forest

Noyon - - -

Montdidier -

The Avre Valley -

X. Cambrai to St. Quentin

Cambrai (Place d'Armes)

Cambrai Cathedral

Bourlon Wood

BeUicourt -

The St. Quentin Canal

The Riqueval Bridge

Bellenglise

St. Quentin Cathedral

Ribecourt -

XI. Rheims, the Aisne, Soissons

Rheims

Rheims Cathedral (West

End)

Rheims Cathedral (East

End)

The Chemin des Dames -

Cemy

Caves above Soissons

The Oise and Aisne Canal -

Fismes

Soissons — St. Jean des

Vignes - - -

Soissons Cathedral

XII. Verdun, the Meuse, the

Argonne

St. Mihiel -

Verdun

Vaux Fort — North Fosse -

100

Vaux Village

lOI

Douaumont Fort -

102

The Mort Homme -

103

The Mort Homme — French

Front Lines

104

The Argonne Forest

105

Varennes -

106

XIII. The Marne to Mons

The Mons-Conde Canal

107

Slag Heaps at Mons

108

The Mormal Forest

109

Landrecies -

Le Cateau - - -

III

The Marne (near La Ferte)

112

Dormans -

113

Epernay

114

The Vesle at Sillery

115

Buzancy Chateau -

116

Monument at Buzancy -

117

Le Quesnoy

118

In the German Retreat,

1917

119

Hirson

120

A Pile Bridge

121

Sedan

122

Maubeuge -

123

Mons - - -

124

YPRES TO VERDUN

I.-INTRODUCTORY

(PLATES 1 TO 4.)

N the 26th of July, 1914, on my return from a pleasant
motor excursion through the Dolomites, I arrived at
Innsbruck, and found the picturesquely situated old
city in a state of unsuppressed excitement owing to
the proclamation of war made on that day between
Austria and Serbia. The crowds in the Maria
Theresien Strasse were reading and discussing the proclamation
(Plate i), and were obviously in excellent spirits, with no premoni-
tion of what would be the unhappy fate of their country when at
length the fire which they had kindled should be fmally extinguished.
Among the mountains we had seen no newspapers for weeks, so
that the news of the outbreak of war came as a complete surprise,
but still as something not at all affecting ourselves. It was not
until some days later (on the 30th of July) that we found ourselves
in the thick of German mobilisation at the Kehl bridge, and were
told that we must find our way home either by Belgium or by
Switzerland, for all roads into France were closed. After some
exciting days, and many interviews with high German authorities,
civil, military and police, we happily succeeded in getting safely
into Switzerland, and so eventually back to England by way of
Genoa, Gibraltar, and the Bay of Biscay.

The Ecole Militaire at Montreuil (Plate 2), a sufficiently un-
interesting building in appearance, is notable for us as constituting,
after the removal from St. Omer in March, 1916, the offices of our

YPRES TO VERDUN

G.H.Q. in France. Here the schemes were prepared, and from here
the orders were issued, which — after so long a time of suspense
and anxiety — resulted finally in the Allied victory of 1918. It is
interesting, and perhaps not uninstructive, to compare the account
of the manner of life at Montreuil, as described by the author of
"G.H.Q. (Montreuil)," with that which prevailed at the German
headquarters in Charleville, of which Mr. Domelier (an eyewitness
throughout the occupation) gives very interesting, if sometimes
scandalous, particulars.*

Life at Montreuil is described as " serious enough . . . monkish
in its denial of some pleasures, rigid in discipline, exacting in work.
. . . Like a college where everyone was a ' swotter.' " The
precautions for safety taken at Charleville differed as much from
ours as its manner of life. We hear of cellars reinforced with con-
crete in walls and roof, of bombproof casemates with several exits
and underground passages, of netted elastic buffer mattresses over-
head to intercept bombs, of felted door joints to keep out gas. And
yet the two places were about the same distance from the enemy's
lines and were equally exposed to the enemy's air raids. The
differences seem to be due to the same difference in mentality as
that which showed itself in so many other matters.

And farther north the King — and the Queen— of the Belgians
" occupied a little villa within range of the German guns, and in a
district incessantly attacked by the enemy's bombing aeroplanes."f

It was at 3.30 a.m. on the 21st of March, 1918, that the great
German attack westwards over the old Somme battlefields com-
menced. The events of the four following days — the days of the
greatest anxiety to most of us since the commencement of the war
— are remembered only too well and too painfully. Our armies,
unavoidably thinned and for days out of reach of reserves, were,

* Domelier, " Behind the Scenes at German Headquarters."
t Maurice, " The Last Four Months," p. 158.

INTRODUCTORY

with the French beside them, continuously driven back, until the
Germans were close to Villers Bretonneux (ten miles from Amiens),
had crossed the Avre to the south, and had taken Albert and
crossed the Ancre on the north, wiping out in a few days all our
gains of 1917. At least one benefit, the greatest of all possible
benefits, resulted from the extreme urgency of the situation. On
the 26th of March a special conference was held at Doullens, which
in 1914 had been General Foch's H.Q. The Hotel de Ville of that
town (Plate 3) , otherwise a commonplace and uninteresting building
— in which the conference met — became at once a building notable
for ever in history. Lord Milner and General Sir Henry Wilson,
who were fortunately in France, attended, with President Poincare,
M. Clemenceau, and M. Loucheur, as well as Sir Douglas Haig, with
our four Army Commanders, and General Petain and General Foch.
As an immediate result, arrived at unanimously by the conference,*
General Foch was made de facto — and a few days later de jure —
Generalissimo of the Allied Armies in France. It was immediately
after this decision (on the 28th of March) that General Pershing
nobly offered to General Foch, for serving under his authority in
any way which he thought most useful, every man whom he had
available of the Americans who had arrived. From the moment
when, under such conditions, unity of command was at length
achieved, and in spite of the further set-backs in Flanders in April
— Ludendorff' s last despairing efforts — the ultimate issue of the war
was no longer in doubt.

Just within the forest of Compiegne, about four miles from the
town, is a certain little knot of railway tracks (Plate 4), close to the
main Compiegne-Soissons road, on which took place, on the 8th of
November, 1918, surely the most memorable conference since 1870.
There were present General Foch and his Chief of Staff, General
Weygand, Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, and Admiral Sims in

* See Lord Milner's account in the New Statesman of the 23rd of April, 1921.

INTRODUCTORY

their saloon on the rails to the left, the German representatives
being brought up on the farther track and crossing over to General
Foch's carriage. An account of the interview which has been
published states that Herr Erzberger said in the first instance that
he had come to receive proposals for an armistice, and that
General Foch refused altogether to discuss matters on any such
basis, and until Erzberger had admitted that he had come " to
beg for an armistice."* The now well-known terms by which an
armistice would be granted, on conditions equivalent to absolute
surrender, were then given to the Germans under the obligation of
their acceptance within three days. With their final acceptance
hostilities ended at ii o'clock on the forenoon of the nth of
November.

* Buchan, " History of the War," vol. xxiv., p. 78.

PLATE I.

THE DECLARATION
OF WAR.

The principal street in Inns-
bruck, the capital of Southern
Austria, on the ^oth of July,
1914, when crowds were
reading the Declaration oj
War between Austria and
Serbia.

PLATE IL

C.II.Q.

The Ecole Miiitairc at
Montreuil, which ims used
as the ounces of our G.H.Q.
during the greater part oj
the war.

ft I n •

I
I

^^t

•II

:■

To face page 4.

PLATE III.

DOULLENS.

The Hotel de Ville at
Doullens, ivhere, on the 26th
of March, igi8, General
Fock was appointed as de
facto Generalissimo of the
A llicd A rmies in F ranee.

PLATE IV.

THE ARMISTICE.

The sidings in the Forest oj
Coinpilgne 'where General
Foch and Sir Rosslyn
W'eniyss, on behalf of the
Allies, met Herr Erzberger
and his colleagues on the
nth of November, 19 18, and
dictated to them the terms on
which an armistice would be
£;yantcd.

YPRES TO VERDUN

II. -THE YPRES SALIENT

(PLATES 5 TO 18.)

HE Ypres Salient was fought over during practically
the whole of the war. The first battle of Ypres,
during the " race to the sea," was in October-
November, 1914, when the Kaiser stayed at Thielt
(twenty-five miles north-east of Ypres) for five days
^ at the beginning of November to be ready to enter
the city, only to suffer one of his many disappointments when the
" old Contemptibles " kept him out. The Germans, however, got
as far as Hooge, only two and a half miles away from the city, and
were there for more than two years. An extremely interesting
account, which is very pleasant reading, of the close co-operation
of the British and French Armies in this first Ypres battle is given
by General Dubois in a book just published.* It was presumably
when French and Foch met on the 31st of October, the most critical
day, that the reported conversation occurred (if it ever occurred),
in which French's view that there was nothing left but to die was
met by Foch with the characteristic rejoinder that they had better
stand fast first — they could die afterwards.

The second battle of Ypres lasted from April to June, 1915,
and during this battle the first use of poison gas was made, at St.
Julien. Except in the St. Julien region the lines remained practi-
cally where they were after the three months' fighting. In spite
of this a captured order issued to the German Army in August,
1915, said that " peace in October is certain "!

Mr. Buchan tells a story characteristic of our Tommies, that

* Dubois, " Deux Ans de Commandement."

YPRES TO VERDUN

during a retirement ordered in May one man " solemnly cleaned
and swept out his dugout before going."* But this was equalled
by the tidiness of the old body in Ypres (mentioned in Sister
Marguerite's Journal), who came out and swept away the debris
of the last shell which had burst in front of her house, quite regard-
less of the continuous bombardment.

The third battle of Ypres began with our capture of the Messines
Ridge on the 7th of June, 1917, and lasted till November of the same
year, by which time Ypres was so far " cleared " that our lines
were close to Gheluvelt (five miles from the city), and extended
from Passchendaele and Houthulst on the north to Messines and
HoUebeke on the south.

Then in April, 1918, came the great German break-through,
when the Allies lost Armentieres and Bailleul, Kemmel and Messines,
and the enemy was in Merville and Estaires, and was inside Zillebeke
and Hooge, and less than a couple of miles from Ypres along the
Menin Road.

But the city itself still and always held out.

Finally our turn came. The Merville area was retaken in
August, 1918 (the 8th of August was Ludendorff's " black day "),
while on the memorable day on which we crossed the Hindenburg
Line on the St. Quentin Canal (28th to 29th of September) the
Germans were driven for the first time back past Gheluvelt by the
Belgians, the French, and ourselves, and two days afterwards they
were in full retreat.

The official despatches and many war books have told about
the salient, about the terrible hardships and the brave doings of
our soldiers there, and those of our Allies who were with us. But
they do not, because they cannot, tell us what was going on within
the walls of the city itself, during those first months of the siege,
while the unfortunate inhabitants were still trying to live there,
hoping — one supposes — from each day to the next that the bom-
bardment would finally come to an end. Something, however, we

♦ Buchan, vol. vii., p. ^y.

THE YPRES SALIENT

know of this from the account of men who were there, either as
soldiers or in the Red Cross service, on equally dangerous duty.
But among the civilians who were neither one nor the other the
names especially of two out of many will always live in the war
history of Ypres, remembered for their devotion and heroism —
Sister Marguerite and Father Charles Delaere. Father Delaere was
the Cure of Ypres in 1914, later on he became Doyen, and not long
ago a letter from him told me that he had been made a Canon.
Sister Marguerite is a native of Ypres, and was, as a nun, attached
to the Convent of St. Marie, engaged largely in teaching at
the outbreak of the war. Her simple duties were suddenly
changed; she became not only nurse and even doctor, but
carpenter, fireman, baker, barber, shoemaker — all trades ! Above
all, she was the universal friend and helper of the poor
creatures who were incapable of helping themselves, for whom
she found shelter while herself without any, and whose children
she mothered when their parents lay buried under the ruins of
their homes, or dying in whatever buildings served at the time for
a hospital.

The Journal* kept by Sister Marguerite, and published in 1918
by her permission for Red Cross benefit, gives a picture of life — or
existence — in Ypres during the first eight months of its siege. It is
so vivid, and at the same time so simply told, that (as I fear that
copies of the Journal may no longer be obtainable) I make no
apology for quoting from it. It is the poignant story of war as it
appeared to a woman suddenly called out of a life of peaceful work
to face its realities in their grimmest form, to do so without the
excitement of fighting and without the comradeship of the regiment,
or even the use of the soldierly mask of humour, to cover up the
unrecordable reality.

The Germans actually entered Ypres on the 7th of October,
the first day on which any shells fell on the town, and one civilian
was killed in his own room. But the children on that day
* " Journal d'une Soeur d'Ypres, October, 1914, to May, 1915."

8 YPRES TO VERDUN

amused themselves afterwards by picking up the shrapnel bullets !
After the Germans were turned out a week later, one of their
companies was found to have left behind a characteristic notice:
" Les Allemands craignent Dieu et hors Lui nulle chose au
monde." They had succeeded in doing a fair amount of pillaging,
as well as making heavy requisitions, during their few days of
occupation.

It is pleasant to find that Sister Marguerite has nowhere anything
but praise for the behaviour of the British soldiers who occupied the
city for so long. She tells of British wounded coming into Ypres,
and with them a German wounded prisoner. A woman ran up to
offer milk to the men, but, with the recollection that her husband
had been killed by a German shell, would not give any to the German.
A soldier, however, who had been wounded by this particular
German, drank only half his milk, and passed the rest on to his
prisoner. She adds: " Ce n'est pas la premiere fois que nous pouvons
admirer pareils actes de generosite."

On the 6th of November an operation was being carried on
involving the amputation of a man's hand ; the Sister who had tried
to act as nurse had fainted, and Sister Marguerite (herself not long
out of the surgeon's hands) took her place:

"Nous commengames done: la main de M. Notevaert etait
demise; quand, vers 2 h. 5, un obus tomba sur notre convent et
detruisit deux classes a 10 metres de I'Ecole menagere ou nous
etions. Les eclats de verre et les pierres arriverent jusqu'a nous et
un grand trou fut fait dans le mur. Le docteur venait de faire la
derniere entaille; nous etions la tons les deux, pales de frayeur,
comme dans un nuage de fumee et blancs de poussiere, lui tenant
encore dans sa main le bistouri et moi la miin demise dans la mienne.
Quelques instants nous restames indecis. Les blesses criaient, et
en un moment tout fut sens dessus-dessous. ' Ta, ta, ta,' dit M. le
docteur, ' ce n'est rien. Continuous notre besogne, car nous n'avons
pas de temps a perdre.' ..."

Among the wounded at this time were three Germans, of whom
one (a Prussian) refused either to eat or drink, alleging that he would

THE YPRES SALIENT

be poisoned ! — presumably an idea encouraged by his officers to
prevent surrender. Eventually he took what the sisters gave him.
A few days later came a real baptism of fire :

" Vers II heures, M. le Cure me dit d'aller chercher rue du Canon
deux vieilles femmes. . . . Comme on bombardait justement ce
quartier, je le priai de me laisser attendre le moment d'une accalmie.
' AUez-y tout de suite,' me repondit-il, ' on pourrait oublier ces
pauvres gens plus tard et leur vie en depend peut-etre.' ' Au nom
de Dieu,' me dis-je, et je partis. Mais a peine avais-je fait quelques
pas dans la rue que . . . ' sss . . . sss . . . pon !' La tete d'un
shrapnel roula dans la rue, tout pres de moi. Je retournai en
courant. Mais M. le Cure avait entendu le son de ma voix et de la
cuisine il me cria : ' Eh bien ! n'etes vous pas encore parti ?' A trois
reprises je retournai pour revenir presque aussi vite. Enfins je
m'enhardis et je revins cette fois avec les petites vieilles, que je
conduisis au convent. Pas moins de cinq shrapnels passerent
au-dessus de nos tetes, et vous pouvez penser si le coeur me battait.
. . . Cependant c'est a partir de ce jour que je devins plus coura-
geuse pour affronter les bombardements."

The " Menin Gate " of Ypres (Plate 5) is nothing now but a
broad gap in the old fortifications, where the long, straight road
from Menin through Gheluvelt bends round to enter the city.
During the whole of the siege of Ypres — that is, in fact, during the
whole of the war — this spot was continuously exposed to German
shell-fire, one of the " hottest " points over the whole war area.
On the left of the " Gate " Canada has purchased a certain amount
of ground for a Canadian memorial. The old walls, however, have
remained, and the " casemates " (Plate 6) on their inner sides were
for many weeks or even months the sole refuge of the poorer inhabi-
tants who possessed no cellars of their own. The story of how these
poor folk had to be removed, perforce, both for safety and foi
sanitary reasons, is best told in Sister Marguerite's words :

5 Deer. — " Chaque famille y choisit son petit coin, y installe
deux ou trois matelas, deux ou trois chaises, une petite lampe,
parfois une petite table et un rechaud a petrole. La lourde porta

10 YPRES TO VERDUN

d'entree* etait entr'ouverte. II n'est pas etonnant des lors qu'apres
peu de temps, des maladies contagieuses s'y declarerent. Des
habitants resterent six semaines dans ce reduit sans voir la lumiere
du jour. J'y trouvai un jour un enfant de deux mois qui y etait
ne et n'avait pas encore respire I'air pur du dehors."

7 Jan. — " Ma mission principale est de servir de guide et d'inter-
prete et aussi de decider les malades a se laisser conduire a I'hopital,
ce qui n'etait pas toujours facile ! Quand les malades y consentent,
I'opposition de la famille souleve de nouveaux obstacles et les pro-
testations injurieuses sou vent ne manquent pas, ces pauvres gens
ne comprenant pas qu'on ne veut que leur faire du bien. Une
fois meme, une vieille femme empoigna la pelle a charbon et le
tisonnier pour me frapper. Heureusement les messieurs anglais,
ignorant la langue flamande, ne comprennent pas les termes delicats
par lesquels on paye leur devouement."

The city was left entirely in ruins (Plate 7 is a view from the
wall at the South Gate), not a single building standing with walls
and roof, or in any condition that could be called habitable. The
ruined tower (Plate 8), of which the foundation dates from 1201,
is all that remains of the once beautiful Cloth Hall, and the Cathedral
of St. Martin behind it is just as completely destroyed. It is to be
hoped that after the celebrations of July, 1920, the miserable
restaurants with their flaunting advertisements, which seemed to
smother the tragic ruins with their commonplace banalities in 1919,
may be done away with. It cannot be impossible to find means
by which the natural interest of visitors, for too many of whom the
salient is the grave of friends and relatives, can be gratified without
vulgarising ground which for generations to come will be sacred
in memory to the Allies whose soldiers fought there, and whose sons
it was who formed the " thin red line " which was for so long the
chief barrier to hold back the German hordes from the north of
France, and, in effect, from our own country.

* Probably tliick wet blankets intended to be dropped when there was danger
of gas.

THE YPRES SALIENT ii

It must be remembered, in looking at such views as Plates 7
and 8, that the clear spaces in the foreground are only clear because
all the buildings upon them have been destroyed, wiped out. Before
the war these spaces were closely built upon, covered all over with
houses. In Plate 7 are seen two or three " reconstructions " started
after the ground had been cleared of the mass of brick and stone
rubbish with which it was thickly covered until the end of the
fighting. It is hardly necessary to say that the general tidiness of
the ground in the Grande Place (Plate 8) belongs to a time months
after the Germans had been driven finally out of range. During
the war there was neither time nor opportunity to clear away the
debris, which covered road and building sites alike.

The Ypres Salient, as we came to know it, is essentially the
ground north and south of the twelve miles of road running from
Ypres to Menin. Ypres itself is about 65 feet above sea-level, and
Menin (on the Lys) about 35 feet. But the ground between them
rises to over 200 feet at " Clapham Junction " (three miles from
Ypres) and remains approximately at the same level for the two
miles fartlier to Gheluvelt. This higher ground circles round to the
south-west (through Hill 60) until it joins Wytschaete (eight miles
south of Ypres) and the Messines Ridge. To the north it continues
from Gheluvelt by Broodseinde, between Becelaere and Zonnebeke,
to the Passchendaele Ridge (180 feet), some seven miles north-east
of Ypres. The unfortunate city was therefore not only at the centre
of a very narrow salient, but one in which it was encircled by higher
ground on three sides within easy observation and shelling range.
For a long time, until our advance in 1917, the German lines were
only distant two and a half miles north, east, and south from the
city, and everywhere were on levels sufficiently above that of the
city to keep it always under observation.

It would have been cold comfort to our poor fellows who had to
face the horrors of the Flanders mud to know that three centuries

12 YPRES TO VERDUN

ago a traveller wrote: " Near Ypres they found the road often
indistinguishable from the fields, and the mud came up to their
horses' girths."*

But in fact the physical difficulties due to the nature of the soil,
churned up by shells on every square yard, were so horrible that
Lord Haig (who is certainly not given to exaggeration in his de-
spatches) says of the 1917 advance rf

" Our men advanced every time with absolute confidence in
their power to overcome the enemy, even though they had some-
times to struggle through mud up to their waists to reach him. So
long as they could reach him they did overcome him, but physical
exhaustion placed narrow limits on the depth to which each advance
could be pushed, and compelled long pauses between the advances.
. . . Time after time the practically beaten enemy was enabled to
reorganise and relieve his men and to bring up reinforcements behind
the sea of mud which constituted his main protection."

The statement made that " nine-tenths of the time our men
were fighting Nature, and the remainder fighting Germans," cannot
be much exaggerated. *

It is, of course, impossible in photographs taken long after
fighting has ceased, and, indeed, in any photographs except those
taken from aeroplanes, I to give an adequate idea of what the surface
of the salient was during the war. Plate 9 gives some idea of the
ground beside the road, near Hooge, after a dry summer,^ and
Plate 10 gives a similar view, after rain, near Gheluvelt. The bit
of " Tank Cemetery " at " Stirling Castle " (Plate 11) on the high
ground close to " Clapham Junction," and the illustrations of
Hill 60, serve also to give some rough idea, but only a very imperfect
one, of the conditions. Even now one has to walk in serpentine
fashion along the ridges between the shell-holes in order to make

* Bates, " Touring in 1600," p. 287.
t Haig's Despatches, vol. i., p. 133.

} See the photograph on p. 30 of the " Michelin Guide to Ypres."
§ Figures in the distance are German prisoners, of whom there were a great
many at the time, occupied in " clearing " operations.

THE YPRES SALIENT 13

an}' progress. But in the war winters each shell-hole was filled
with liquid, sticky mud, and over such ground our men had to
advance time and again, oftener by night than by day, slithering
down the slimy banks into slimier mud, scrambling up the other
side somehow or other, carrying full kit all the time, and continuously
exposed to murderous shell-fire from commanding positions. There
can have been no condition in the whole campaign which brought
out better the indomitable pluck and spirit of our infantry.

Plate 12 is taken at the cross-roads (" Clapham Junction ")
between " Dumbarton Wood " and " Stirling Castle " on one side
and " Glen Corse Wood " on the other. It is at the highest point
of the slope which falls down through Hooge to Ypres. Of the
woods which our men named so picturesquely nothing whatever
remains — in fact, the skeleton avenue on the Becelaere Road
(Plate 13) contained more trees than were to be seen anywhere else
in the neighbourhood, and even these I found to have been cut
down later on. Their only use would be as firewood.

On my last visit to the salient, a year ago, reconstruction in the
shape of what may be called hutments, or something a little more
substantial, had commenced at the eastern end and extended as
far as Gheluwe, while even up to Gheluvelt there were beginnings
of attempts at cultivation. If one had not seen elsewhere what has
actually been done, it would seem physically impossible that soil
so utterly destroyed could be brought again into cultivation for
a generation. But the Belgian and French peasants are capable of
wonders.

" Hill 60 " (Plates 14 and 15) is to all appearance little more
than a heap of spoil from the cutting for tlie railwaj' running south-
eastwards from Ypres to Lille. But it forms an observation ridge
some 150 feet above the level of Ypres and only two and a half
miles distant from the city. It was captured by the Germans early
in the war, and in April, 1915, retaken by the British after very
heavy fighting, in which 3,000 bodies were said to have been left
on its slopes. A month later, however, it was lost again under

14 YPRES TO VERDUN

heavy- gas attacks, and remained in German possession substantially
until the great attack on the Messines Ridge in June, 1917 (the
third battle of Ypres), when we once more regained it, after ten
months of underground fighting and tunnelling. It was lost again
during the German attack in April, 1918, and only finally recovered
in the final advance in September. Long before the end this
historical hummock had been riddled below ground by mines, and
above ground torn up by their explosions and by incessant shell-fire,
so that it is now merely a mass of craters and shell-holes, with the
remains of dugouts in the soft clay.

The two illustrations give some idea of the state of the ground
and a suggestion of the wide horizon commanded by this insignificant
elevation.

It was on the 22nd of April, 1915, that the Germans startled
and horrified the world by the use of " poison gas " at St. Julien
(about three miles north-east of Ypres), making a " scrap of paper "
of Hague agreements, as of everything else. Before the end of the
war they must have bitterly regretted their action, but on the first
appearance of the yellow death-bearing cloud it answered its purpose
only too well — the Turcos were not to be blamed for flying incon-
tinently before this devilish terror. The Allies, naturally, had no
means of defence — even the wet handkerchief was not thought of,
but somehow or other a couple of Canadian brigades held on magni-
ficently— fighting poison gas unprotected must have required even
more pluck than facing machine-guns — and for a time appear to
have been all that stood between Ypres and the enemy. Under the
date of the 22nd of April Sister Marguerite writes in her Journal:

" . . . Au retour de nos visites aux malades, vers 5 heures, des
soldats fran^ais [Turcos] fuyant les tranchees, nous rencontrerent,
criant et hurlant que les Boches les avaient empoisonnes ! Beaucoup
moururent sur la route; d'autres en prie a I'asphyxie demandaient
a grands cris un peu de lait. Je revins a la maison tandis que le
docteur, oblige de continuer, retourna porter ses soins a une femme.
Mais celle-ci, effrayee par le bombardement, s'etait enfuie dans les

THE YPRES SALIENT 15

champs oil le docteur Fox la retrouva apres une heure de recherches.
Au couvent je trouvai d'autre soldats encore, victimes des gaz
empoisonnes ; on leur servait du lait chaud condense."

" 37 nouveaux empoisonnes dans la matinee du 23. Impossible
de les mener plus loin que I'hopital civil ou ils sont loges dans les
caves. . . . Nous aussi, nous resumes notre part: un sur le couvent,
et deux, trois, aux alentours. Voila qui est terrible ! L'eau me
coula des yeux, mes levres bleuirent, j'etais prete a suffoquer."

But the brave lady never suggests for a moment that she should
leave the place, and did in fact remain in the city until the military
insisted on everyone leaving on the 9th of May, when there seems
to have been imminent fear of the Germans reaching the city, and
when, at any rate, the Kaiser was again waiting at Thielt in expecta-
tion of entering it.

St. Julien was taken at the time, and the German line advanced
to the canal some miles in front of it; but the ruined village was
afterwards recaptured and gas drenched by us — a strange Nemesis —
in July, 1917, and remained in our hands until the German advance
in 1918. Plate 16 certainly does not suggest the tragedy which we
must always connect with the name of St. Julien; it is a screen at
the entrance to a Chinese camp which stood there in 1919. It
illustrates, oddly enough, an ancient Chinese superstition that
" spirits " — and of course spirits are always malevolent — can only
go straight forward, so that if any kind of screen is placed in front
of the house entrance the spirit will be unable to get in, not,
apparently, having the sense to go round the barrier. The gentle-
man standing in front of the screen (which is in effect a huge
triptych) gave us to understand that he was the artist, but our
knowledge of Chinese and his of English were too limited to be very
certain. The screen was certainly quite a satisfactory piece of
decoration.

In 1 917 we were preparing for the long-drawn attack which
eventually gave us the Passchendaele Ridge (Plate 17), fighting for
months over such ground as the foreground of the photograph

i6 YPRES TO VERDUN

shows. Defence by such means as the construction of a " Hinden-
burg Line " was quite impossible in the mud and slime of the salient,
and Von Armin devised the scheme of what we came to call " pill-
boxes." Each pillbox was a structure (Plate i8) of reinforced
concrete, often large enough to hold thirty or forty men with
machine-guns, and strong enough to give protection from every-
thing short of a direct hit by a large shell. They were only raised
above ground-level sufticiently to allow the guns to be worked,
their entrances being, of course, at the back. They were echeloned
along behind the front line, and connected and protected by barbed-
wire entanglements. They proved a serious difficulty when we
first had to deal with them in July-August, 1917. General Haig
says:

" Many were reduced as our troops advanced, but others held
out during the day, and delayed the arrival of our supports."*

But a few months later General Plumer had devised tactics
which countered the pillboxes very successfully, and eventually
the German machine-gunners found that it was better to come out
and fight in the open, and even to surrender, rather than be cooped
up and grenaded when our men got round to the entrance. Already
in October captured documents showed that the German High
Command were inclined to prefer their old methods to the new
ones. I

The fight to reach the Passchendaele Ridge (the distant rising
ground shown in Plate 17) lasted in effect from July to November
of 1917. The Germans fought hard and well, but our chief enemy,
as always in the salient, was the weather, and its effect in covering
the whole ground with muddy slime.

The much-coveted Passchendaele Ridge is only about 120 feet

higher than the level of Ypres; it is the continuation northwards of

the rising ground which crosses the Menin Road at Gheluvelt and

passes through Becelaere and Broodseinde. But, once attained, it

* Despatches, p. 118. t Buchan, vol. x.. p. 106.

PLATE V.

THE MEN IN GATE
OF YPRES.

This gap in the old 'dialls of
Ypres is the entrance of the
road from Menin, which
runs for some eleven miles
straight across the middle of
the Salient by Hooge, Ghelii-
vclt and Gheluwe, known
throughout the war as the
" Menin Road."

PLATE VI.

DUGOITS IX THE
WALLS OF YPRES.

The Casemates and Dugouts
on the inner side of the old
fortifications of Ypres H'ere
the refuge of hundreds of the
inhabitants of Ypres — especi-
ally tliose who had no cellars
of their oicn — /;; 1914-15.

Tu face page 16.

PLATE VII.

YPRES FROM THE
LILLE GATE.

This viet!' is taken from the
City Wall above the South
or Lille Gate of the City.
The church of iMch some
nliite ruins are seen is
St. Pierre. The u^hole of
the hare ground in the fore-
ground ii<as once covered
closely with buildings, but of
these hardly a trace remains.
Some beginnings of recon-
struction are already to be
seen.

PLATE VIII.

THE BELFRY
TOWER AT YPRES.

The Belfry Ton'cr of the
beautiful Cloth Hall of
Ypres ti'as the oldest part
of the building. The upper
part of the tower itself has
gone entirely, and of course
also the beautiful spire.
The foundation of the Tower
was laid in 1201.

The Cathedral of St. Mar-
tin, of which a few ruins are
seen, stood behind and to the
west of the Cloth Hall. It
is entirely in ruins.

PLATE IX.

THE "TANK CEME-
TERY," HOOGE.

/;; the Salient south of the
Menin Road, at Hooge,
ahoiit three miles from Ypres.
With so much t.'utcr lying
after a hot summer, it can be
imafi^ined what the shell-holes
K'cre like after continuous
rain. The country was
hopeless for tanks, and horri-
ble beyond description for our
poor felloK's ji'ho had to fight
in it.

PLATE X.

GHELUVELT.

The Village of Gheluvelt, on
the Menin Road in the
Salient, no longer exists.
But some parts of it stood on
and round about this wet
piece of ground.

PLATE XI.

"STIRLING
CASTLE."

Why this Uttk shell-holed
hummock received its name
is unknown. It is on the
south side of the JMenin
Road between Gheluvelt and
Hooge, and is obviously a
portion of the " Tank
Cemetery."

PLATE XII.

"CLAP HAM
JUNCTION."

At the cross-roads on the
highest point of the Menin
Road, some i^o feet higher
than Ypres itself. The half-
derelict Tank was one of the
many such ivrecks which
strewed the Salient.

-L»vH

PLATE XI H.

THE ROAD TO
BECELAERE.

Most of the Road Avenues
in the Salient east of Yprcs
have disappeared entirely, hy
shell-fire and poison gas in
the first instance, and then
by cutting down. This
particular Avenue, a branch
from the Menin Road, still
remained at the end of the
war showing at least what
it might once have been.
The dead trunks have now
been cut doim.

PLATE XIV.

" HILL 60."

Many elevations in Flanders
and France are known by
their heights, in metres, over
sea-level. On so fiat a
country the importance oj
"■Hill 60," and many
another such point, as a posi-
tion for observation, is of
course out of all proportion
to its absolute height. This
Hilt, so bitterly fought over,
is only some 60 or 70 feet
higher than the surrounding
country.

PLATE XV.

"HILL GO."

What is left of a mine
crater on " Hill 60," with a
suggestion of the wide hori-
zon over the Salient obtained
from this horrible heap of
cliunicd-up liny.

PLATE XVL

ST. JULIEN.

On the site of the German
first gas attack, on the 22nd
of April, 1915, stood in igig
a large camp of Chinese, em-
ployed in clearing and level-
ling the shell-strnck ground
and preparing it to some
extent for agricultural opera-
tions. 7 he painted screen
guarded the entrance to the
ramp.

— .V

PLATE XVII.

THE PASSCHEN-
DAELE RIDGE.

A photograph taken in the
north of the Salient with the
long low line of the Passchen-
daele Ridge in the distance.
It gives some idea of the way
in 7^'hich the jg'hole land sur-
face is covered with weeds
and shell-pits.

PLATE XVIII.

A " PILLBOX."

The wreck of one of the
German Pillboxes, of very
heavily reinforced concrete,
such as were brought into
use 7,'ith some flourish oj
trumpets in July, 1917, but
very successfully countered by
General I'liimer's methods
later on.

Pi"^-

THE YPRES SALIENT 17

affords a clear view over the flat Belgian country towards Roulers
for many miles, just as in the hands of the enemy it afforded a
clear view over Zonnebeke and St. Julien to Ypres.

The fight for the ridge was a long, tedious, and costly affair of
many months, and although we gained it, and incidentally gained
the knowledge of how to circumvent the pillboxes, the delays
which had been caused by the weather conditions prevented us from
attaining the full advantages that had been — quite reasonably —
hoped for and expected.

YPRES TO VERDUN

III-ZEEBRUGGE

(PLATES 19 TO 23.)

HERE would be no object in recapitulating here the
story of the attack on Zeebrugge on St. George's Day
of 1918. Every schoolboy for generations wUl, it is
to be hoped, know it by heart.

Plate 19 shows the magnificent proportions of the
canal which covers the eight miles from Bruges to
Zeebrugge. It was used continuously during the war for the passage
of submarines from their enormous concrete shelters at Bruges —
which had resisted all the attacks of our bombers — to the sea.
Bruges, in fact, is really the port; there is no port at Zeebrugge
except a small dock and the open water under the shelter of the
great curved mole. The gates of the lock at the seaward end of
the canal are huge caissons (Plate 20) which slide into place from
recesses on the western side of the lock, one of which can be seen
in the photograph, in which the seaward gate is shown in its closed
position. Between the two gates the lock is crossed by a girder
bridge which can be swung to one side in the usual way to allow
the passage of vessels. It is a m^atter of history that the lock gates
of 1798 were blown up by a British naval party, but our bombers
had not been successful in hitting the gates of 1915, so that they
were intact at the time of our attack, and remained so till the end.
By way of preparation for any possibilities, however, the Germans
had got a spare caisson standing beside the canal ready to be put
in place if either of the others should be destroyed.

It will be remembered that the great curved mole at Zeebrugge
is a mile long, and about 175 feet in breadth over much of its length,
carrying several lines of railway and huge warehouses. Many of

PLATE XIX.

THE BRUGES
C A N A L .

The Canal which runs from
Bruges to the sea at Zee-
hriigf;e, and iithich formed a
chief access for the German
submarines to the Channel.
The concrete submarine
shelters at Bruges remained
undestroyed until the end of
the war.

PLATE XX.

LOCK GATE AT
ZEEBRUGGE.

One of the sliding caissons
which formed the lock gates
of the Canal at its Zee-
brugge end. The dock into
which the caisson slides to
open the lock can be seen
beyond the little footbridge.

I'o face page i8.

PLATE XXI.

ON THE MOLE.

Tk'o of the guvs still
standing on the Mole at
Zeehrugge near its outer end.

PLATE XX H.

THE MOLE AT
ZEEBRUGGE.

The inner side of the Mole
at Zeehrugge, showing the
part of the structure tfhich
was a viaduct carried on steel
piles. The two heavy con-
crete piers ivere erected by the
Germans to make the Mole
again usable after the de-
struction caused by the ex-
ploded submarine.

ZEEBRUGGE 19

the latter are at present destroyed, and a postcard purchased on
the spot gives an illustration of some of these, with the quaint
superscription: " Magazins des AUemands incendies par les Tommies
pour detruire les innombrables puces !" which may or may not be
a true statement. Towards the landward end of the mole a con-
siderable length of it becomes a viaduct, and was carried on open
steel piling, so as to leave a clear waterway for tidal purposes. The
mole was defended by artillery (Plate 21) as well as by machine-
guns, and the execution which these, especially the latter, did on
our brave fellows in the attack is still fresh in our minds.

It was, of course, against the open part of the structure, the
steel viaduct, that Lieutenant Sandford steered his old submarine,
full of explosives, with the object of blowing up the viaduct, and
so preventing any help from the landward side getting to the men
who were resisting our landing farther on. The viaduct is said to
have been covered with soldiers watching the approach of C 3, and
unsuspecting their fate. The boat was rammed into the structure,
the Lieutenant and his crew got away safely, the fuse did its duty,
the viaduct disappeared with everyone on it, and communication
with the land was cut off. Plate 22 shows the viaduct, seen from
the bend of the mole on the inner side, looking shorewards. The
two concrete blocks supporting the landward end of the viaduct
were, of course, built by the Germans after the attack — they show
exactly the place where C 3 did its work. Plate 23 was taken from
the outer side of the mole, and shows the present temporary viaduct
on its concrete piers, and in deep water beside it a flagstaff carrying
a white ensign which has been placed on the spot, very charmingly,
by the Belgians, as a memorial of the pluck of the men who, under
that flag, carried out the great exploit.

YPRES TO VERDUN

IV. -THE LYS SALIENT

(PLATES 24 TO 34.)

HE region between the Ypres Salient and the La
Bassee Canal, extending from the high ground by
Wytschaete and Messines to Kemmel and then south-
westwards by Bailleul and Meteren to Merville, and
finally sharply eastwards to Festubert and Givenchy,
forms the ground which the German advance in
April, 1918, made into the " Lys Salient," which was to have opened
the way for them to the Channel ports, and to have cut the Allied
Armies in two.

Neuve Chapelle lies on the main road four miles north of La
Bassee, near the southern end of what became the Lys Sahent later
on, and was the scene of the first great action in March, 1915, after
the hold-up by the mud of the winter. It had been lost very early
in the war, and was regained after heavy fighting and great losses
on both sides. The German papers complained characteristically
that our artillery firing " was not war — it was murder " ! All
counter-attacks failed to recover it for the Germans, but, on the
other hand, our own troops were not able to make any further advance
towards the higher ground, known to us as the Aubers Ridge, which
lay between them and LiUe. After the attack the reports told us
that two crucifixes still remained standing. One was at the cross-
roads, and has since fallen or been removed. The other (Plate 24)
was in the churchyard, and is still standing, with a dud shell em-
bedded in its shaft. The village itself, like all the others, has dis-
appeared; my photograph was taken from a heap of stones which
represented what was left of the church. An attack in May made
a valiant attempt to carry the Aubers Ridge, and some detachments

THE LYS SALIENT 21

succeeded in getting close to the Lille suburbs, but the ground
could not be held. It was on this ground, at Escobecques, about
six miles from Lille, that I found the late German Divisional H.Q.
in farm-buildings fortified with something like 2,000 tons of rein-
forced concrete. " Bauern Gefecht Stelle " seems to have been the
name of the buildings when in German occupation — " Fin de la
Guerre " has come from the French. The " ridge " is by no means
visible as a ridge, but is shown by the contours as a stretch of country
from 30 to 50 feet higher than its surroundings. The deserted and
blown-up pillboxes (Plate 18) of reinforced concrete are very much
in evidence here, as they are farther north in the Passchendaele
region, and the villages are often quite destroyed. But where the
land has not been keenly fought over the shell and trench damage
is not considerable, and cultivation is being carried on actively.
At La Fresnoy, on the liigher part of the ridge, a farm known to
our people as " Somerset Farm " was utilised by the Germans as
an O.P. (Plate 25) and a light signal station. An engraved stone
tablet (m the wall (barely visible on the right of the photograph)
records that it is the " Schultze Turm," and that it was built in
six weeks — certainly an excellent record. The O.P. tower still
stands, a fine piece of solid construction, although the barn within
which it was built, and which must have effectually concealed it,
is a good deal damaged.' Plate 26 shows, for comparison, a British
double O.P. which I found standing (and which probably still
stands) not far from La Bassee. The concrete and brick towers
have resisted all attempts at their entire destruction, but the
buildings which must originally have enclosed and concealed the
towers appear only as heaps of brick rubbish.

In April, 1918, the German advance on the Lys — which, like its
predecessors, succeeded all too nearly, but just not quite enough —
and which proved to be Ludendorff' s final despairing effort, started
at Neuve Chapelle, then held by the Portuguese, who were to have
been withdrawn the next day. The troops were hopelessly out-
numbered, and gave way at once under the attack, and the British

22 YPRES TO VERDUN

divisions right and left of them were uncovered. Givenchy and
Festubert held firm* and Bethune was saved, but farther north
everything gave way.

It was at this critical time that Haig issued the famous order
which indicated at once the serious nature of the situation and the
General's confidence in his troops:

" There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every
position must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement.
With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause,
each one of us must fight to the end. The safety of our homes and
the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one
of us at this critical moment."

It must have been the greatest of trials to the General to be
compelled to order retirements a few days later on, but he had not
deceived himself as to the quality of his men: they did fight to the
end — fought the enemy to a standstill first, and later on drove him
back over all the country he had overrun.

Estaires was taken on the next day and Merville two days later,
this town forming the farthest progress westward in the April
advance. An interesting note in Haig's Despatch! says:

" There is evidence that the German troops that had entered
Merville had got out of hand, and instead of pressing their advantage
wasted valuable time in plundering the town. On the I2th the
5th Division arrived and secured this front."

Finally the Ypres Salient was almost wiped out (the enemy
was within a mile and a half of the city), Armentieres and Bailleul,
Wytschaete and Messines, had to be evacuated, and the Lys Salient
came into existence. Mount Kemmel was taken on the 25th, the
French, overwhelmed, dying without surrendering. An advance
of about ten miles had been made by the Germans over a very
considerable distance, and over country which was of enormous

* See p. 25. t Despatches, p. 225.

PLATE XXIII.

"C 3."

The outer side of the Zee-

JS^\ Ijy'gg': Mole at the place

\ ji'hcre " C 3 " was driven

against it and blown up on

St. George's Day, in 1918.

The white ensign forms a

I graceful remembrance, on the

part of the Belgians, of

Lieutenant Sandford's great

exploit.

To face page 22.

THE LYS SALIENT 23

importance to the Allies. North of Ypres, happily, the Belgians
had been able to stand firm, and recovered at once, by counter-
attacks, a small area on which they had had to give way. But once
more sheer exhaustion, probably hastened by rashness after what
must have been the unexpected success of the first onslaught, helped
to bring the enemy to a stand, while the splendid stand of the
Belgians to the north and our Territorials at Festubert and on the
canal at Givenchy indicated clearly enough that no further advance
could be gained. The fighting died down for two or three days,
and then at last came the crucial attack, directed north-westwards
across a line from Meteren to Voormezeele, where French and
British were fighting side by side "with their backs to the wall."
The attack failed, and on the next morning the German lines were
considerably farther back than they had been at the start. This
proved to be the real end of the fighting, and only minor changes
in the lines due to our advances and those of the French occurred
until our final advance. Towards the end of July, when the great
attack of Foch from the Mame to the Aisne had declared itself,
the Germans commenced a withdrawal of their stores from the Lys
Salient. Merville and Estaires had both been knocked about very
much by our artillery during the German occupation. Merville
was retaken on the 19th of August, and after that date our advance,
and the retreat of the Germans, went on continuously. Kemmel
Hill was again in the hands of the Allies by the 5th of September,
and by the 6th the Lys Salient had disappeared. " Plug Street "
Wood and Messines were cleared of the German rearguards on the
29th of September, at the time when Belgian and British troops
together were finally annihilating the Ypres Salient, and succeeding in
forty-eight hours in covering ground which had required four months
in 1917. Armentieres was again in our possession early in October.
Plates 27 to 32 are photographs of places which became of special
interest — and anxiety — while the Germans were succeeding in
creating the " Lys Salient." Merville (Plate 27) and Estaires
(Plate 28) were totally wrecked by us while they were in German

24 THE LYS SALIENT

occupation, but with them, as with Bailleul (Plate 29), reconstruction
is going on rapidl}^ Agricultural operations in this area are going
on vigorously, and the damage was chiefly confined to the villages
and little towns. The western half of Armentieres had been pretty
thoroughly rebuilt between my visits of 1919 and 1920, but the
eastern half (Plate 30) was still largely ruinous.

The top of Kemmel Hill is about 350 feet higher than Ypres,
and looks from the salient — even at a distance of seven to eight
miles — as quite a little mountain. Plate 31 is a view taken from
north of "Plug Street" Wood, about three miles from the hill, and
Plate 32* was taken on the hill itself near the top. The hill was
originally largely covered with woods, but only groups of bare stems
are now remaining.

On the way from Armentieres to Plug Street we found the ruins
of a little estaminet, within which an O.P. of 1914 had been con-
structed by Colonel Gill. Towers with walls 3 feet thick had not
been thought of in those days, and the light steel framework of the
O.P. stood up, spidery, above the brick rubbish. At a farmhouse
still standing across the road it was interesting to find a kindly
French peasant woman who had now been able to return to her
house, where she had stayed with her family for six months during the
earlier fighting, living in the cellar. Her children seemed to cherish
affectionate recollections of a certain kindly English " Capitaine
Frederic," who was " rouge " and who gave them chocolates,
and whom by these particulars I was afterwards able to identify.
I suppose we are likely always to call Ploegsteert " Plug Street."
The village is, of course, in ruins, but the wood, of which Plate 33
shows only a corner, is too large to have been totally destroyed like
the woods north of the Somme. At " Hyde Park Corner " (there
were several " Hyde Park Corners " in Flanders) one came across %

the sight, only too familiar in many parts of the war area, of a |

British cemetery (Plate 34). It had been carefully tended and
looked after, as we found to be always the case.

* This photograph is from a negative taken by Colonel Gill.

PLATE XXIV

NEUVE CHAPELLE.

Two crucifixes remained itandiug at Naive
Chapelle after the Action of March, 1915.
One of them lias disappeared ; the one photo-
graphed stands in what must have been the
churchyard. A dud shell has split the shaft
without hrinsinf' it down.

To face page 24.

PLATE XXV.

ON THE AUBERS RIDGE.

The Schultze Tumi, a very substantial
German O.P. enclosed in ''Somerset Farm."
An inscription states that it vas built in six
it'eehs.

PLATE XX VL

AN O.P.

A British double O.P.
between Bethune and La
Bassce. The buildings
which once concealed it lie
round it in a heap, hit the
toK'crs have still some sub-
stance.

PLATE XXVII.

MERVILLE.

The farthest west point
reached in the Lys Salient
iliiri/ig the German advance
In April, 1918. The town
,\'as practically destroyed by
our shell-fire during the
German occupation.

<rX

PLATE XXVIII.

ESTAIRES.

Lihe Merville, mhich lies
four miles -west of it,
Estaires was terribly dam-
aged by our shelling during
its occupation by the Ger-
mans from April to A ngust,
1918.

PLATE XXIX.

BAILLEUL.

Not to be confused with the
village of the same name
north of Arras, close to the
Vimy Ridge. It was
thoroughly ruined by the
fic^hting in both directions
during 1918.

PLATE XXX.

ARMENTIERES.

/;; 19 19 very little had been
done by way of reconstruction
in Armenticves, but a year
later the western half of the
town had been largely rebuilt,
although the other half was
still in the condition shown in
the photograph.

PLATE XXXI.

•-i^'AV,

% f

KEMMEL HILL.

Thii plwlograph was taken
from a distance of three miles,
from 'which, ho u'ever, the hill
looks hardly as bold as if
does from the higher part of
the Meuin Road. Its siim-
iiiit is about ■^^o feet higher
than Ypres, ultich it entirely
commands.

I'L.ITE XXXII.
KEMMEL HILL.

The upper part of the hill
itself, which was once largely
covered ivith trees of tt'hich
only the stems remain. It
Teas captured, after an heroic
French defence, in April,
igi8, and held until the
final retreat of the Germans
began four months after-
wards.

PLATE XXXI II.

"PLUG STREET"
WOOD.

Ploegsteert will probably be
"Plug Street" for all time
in this country. Many trees
are still standing in the
wood. Tlie turning to the
left is the road to Mcssines.

PL. ATE XXXIV.

A CEMETERY AT
"PLUG STREET."

.-! Royal Berks Military
Cemetery at the north-east
corner of " Plug Street "
I Vood.

^^ma'M-'p!^

PLATE XXXV.

BETHUXE.

The lighter -colourci masonry halfu'ay up Ike
fine old tower shows where houses were
staitdiug built closely round it. Their debris
has been entirely cleared away and the
Grande Place is as tidy as it is, unhappily,
empty.

YPRES TO VERDUN

V -BETHUNE, LA BAS5EE, AND LOOS

(PLATES 35 TO 42.)

HE pleasant little town of Bethune, with its friendly,
Scotch-like name, lies just beyond the coal district,
a dozen miles north-west of Lens and seven miles
west of La Bassee. Our front lines during most of
the war crossed the Bethune-La Bassee road about
the line of Festubert and Givenchy, two and a half
miles short of La Bassee. Although so near the German lines, it
was not seriously shelled until the attempted German advance in
March and x\pril, 1918, when in two months the whole centre of the
town was reduced to ruins. Colonel Gill, taking me through it a
few months later, had some difficulty even in recognising " Bond
Street," which for years had been a tolerably safe place for buying
tobacco, or visiting a barber, or taking lunch, or meeting friends.
We walked over 2 feet of brick debris along what must have been
the roadway. The outlying parts of the town are comparatively
little damaged. The fourteenth-century belfry tower (Plate 35)
was closely encircled by houses, built up against it, which have
altogether disappeared, and the tower itself shows hideous cracks
over practically its whole height. The Church of St. Vaast is so
completely destroyed that one can only tell one end from the other
by the orientation of its site.

In the great German attack of April, 1918, the town was saved
by the Lancashires when the Portuguese had failed us near Neuve
Chapelle, and when we were compelled to give way from Armentieres
to Merville, a few miles farther north. The same troops (" second-
rate troops" the Germans called them) held Givenchy, on the La
Bassee Canal. The village has entirely disappeared. Plate 36

26 YPRES TO VERDUN

was taken from a mound on which I believe that the church once
stood (but there were not even stones visible on the surface to mark
the place), looking back over the British lines. Lord Haig* tells
\iow two batteries each left a gun within 500 yards of the draw-
bridge at Givenchy, and, assisted by a party of gunners who held
the bridge with rifles, succeeded in stopping the German advance
at this most critical time.

The countrj^ between Bethune and La Bassee and northwards
and southwards for miles from that line, was in 1919 a desert, bare
of trees, of houses, of crops, of people, growing nothing but shell
craters and barbed wire, with thousands of tons of buried broken
shells likely to be very offensive to agricultural implements ! The
seven miles of road between the two towns runs eastward through
the desolation, never very far south of the canal, and at Cuinchy
close to the brickfields and the " railway triangle," the scene of
specially hard fighting in 1915. The triangle again defeated our
attack in September, 1916.

The little town of La Bassee (Plate ;^y), the name of which was
for long so familiar to us, is, of course, a heap of ruins. I remember
a statement in a German paper in 1914 to the effect that. La Bassee
and the canal (Plate 38, which shows a reconstructed bridge) being
in their hands, their final success was quite assured ! The eight
miles of road from La Bassee to Lens passes Hulloch and Loos and
Hill 70, and enters Lens by the Cite St. Laurent, a suburb which was
in our hands long before we were in the town itself. The road from
Bethune to Lens passes between Loos and the " Double Grassier."
The ruined pithead (Plate 39) near Hulloch is only an example of
the condition to which the Germans reduced all the colliery \\orkings
in the district on which they could lay hands.

The story of the great fights at Loos is full of splendid episodes,
although the results of the fighting were very much less than had
been hoped for. In April, 1915, the German front lay from a point
west of Loos and Lens southward nearly as far as Arras, covering

* Despatches, p. 226.

■■' iimii II I'l 1 1 n

PLATE XXXVI.

GIVENCHY.

The British positions at
Givenchy, north of the La
Bassic Caniil, looking back
from the site of the village.
The holding of these positions
in April, igi8, prevented
Ludendorff's final attack
from reaching Bethwne.

PLATE XXXV IL

LA BASSEE.

The ruined village as it zcas
left, li'hen the roadways Kiere
cleared, after the evacuation
by the Germans in their
retreat in 19 18.

To face page 36.

PLATE XXXVIII.

THE LA BASSEE
CANAL.

TJic temporary lifting bridge
over the canal at La Bassee.
The buildings are, of course,
reconstruction. The German
newspapers proclaimed that
the capture of the canal here,
in 1 91 5, made the result of
the war quite certain !

PLATE XXXIX.

A PITHEAD.

Pithead work near Hulloch
— a fair example of the state
to which all pit works in the
district were reduced before
the Germans left.

BETHUNE, LA BASSEE, AND LOOS 27

the colliery villages and the Lorette and Vimy Ridges. It was first
broken by the great attack in 1915, which gave the French all the
Lorette Ridge except its extreme east end. Opposite Loos, across
the Lens-Bethune road, lay the twin slag heaps known as the
Double Grassier (Plate 40), where for many months the opposing
front trenches were literally within a few yards of each other, the
Germans holding the slag heaps. There are stories of mutual
courtesies and jocularity between Saxons and our own men under
these conditions, which came to an end (from the German side)
when Prussians replaced Saxons. But if the trenches had been
in our Midlands, with Yorkshire laid waste beyond them, instead
of in a foreign country, probably our boys would have felt differently-
We did not hear of, or expect to hear of, any similar friendliness
where the French poilus were concerned. Farther north came the
strongly fortified " Fosse No. 8 " and the Hohenzollern Redoubt
close to Haisnes, and just short of the canal at Givenchy. What
we got to know as the Loos battle began on the 25th of September,
1915. The Double Grassier was taken at once. A man in the
London Irish is said to have kicked off a football from the parapet
in this attack and dribbled it across No Man's Land to the German
first lines.* The Hohenzollern Redoubt was penetrated, the High-
landers got to the northern suburbs of Lens, and the front line
passed to the east of the Lens-La Bassee road. But further progress
became impossible, and early in October our front line was for the
time " stabilised " west of the road. The great redoubt still remained
practically in German hands. In this fighting the 47th Division
London Territorials took part, the first complete Gockney division
to take the field.

Of the Loos episodes there will not be forgotten that which got
Piper Laidlaw, of the 7th K.O.S.B., his V.G., for marching up and
down on the parapet (close to the Cite St. Laurent, a suburb of
Lens) with his pipes until all the men were out of the trenches, and
carrying on until he was himself wounded. Nor will it be easily

* Buchan, vol. x., p. 174.

28 YPRES TO VERDUN

forgotten how Mdlle. Moreau, the daughter of a miner, devoted her-
self, during the first German occupation, to saving and nursing
British wounded soldiers, or how later on, when we arrived there,
she met our entering troops and, obtaining a rifle, was able to shoot
sundry German soldiers who were attacking wounded men. She
lost father and brother during the war. One is glad to know that
she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and that some of the soldiers,
to whose welfare she was so devoted, regardless of her own safety,
have bought land at Bethune and built a little house on it where
she can carry on business, which one hopes will be most successful.

The zigzag communication trench, which will be familiar to
many of our soldiers (Plate 41), forms a bit of roadside scenery
typical of the country here over which the fighting went on in
1915 and for long afterwards. Loos itself was afterwards handed
over to the French, who were not, unfortunately, able to retain
it. Just beyond Loos, after it had been regained in 1918, I was
stumbling over a bit of ground covered with all sorts of debris
beside what had been lately German trenches, and which was even
then being occasionally enviously shelled, when I saw growing in a
crevice below the brick rubbish a garden pansy. I was, no doubt,
walking over some cottager's garden, but garden and cottage were
all now the same and all equally unrecognisable. The bright little
flower, blowing uninjured at the bottom of its rubbish heap, seemed
a pleasant emblem of the freeing and recovery of France which was
just then coming so near.

Near to my discovery of the heartsease I found some of Colonel
Gill's men in charge of a height-finder. They had comfortable
enough quarters in a German dugout in which I found, and secured
as a prize, a little booklet left behind by its late occupants. It is
entitled " Wer da?" ("Who goes there?"), and contains a dozen
chapters of a very pious and didactic kind on the duties of a soldier,
his oath, his honour, his religion, and so on. The chapter on " Der
Kriegsherr und der Eid " is rather pathetic in view of subsequent
events. Here is a paragraph from it:

BETHUNE, LA BASSEE, AND LOOS 29

" It is thoroughly alter germanisch and entirely in correspondence
with the character of the German people to follow a King, who
represents the might of God in earthly things . . . who is a father
to his country and a guide and war-lord to his soldiers. Between
this prince and the soldiers there exists the most special and intimate
relationship. He is the head and the heart of the Army; it is his
shield and his sword. It protects his rights and his sacred person.
He cares for it and shares its troubles and dangers."

What a cynical comment on this sort of stuff that the precious
Kriegsherr ran away from his country and his beloved army a few
weeks later ! Then, again :

" We speak of ' deutscher Treue.' It is a national heirloom
handed down to us from our ancestors. ... It shows itself through
unbreakable adherence to the oath the soldier has made to his
Fiirsten und Kriegsherrn !"

Presumably this particular oath did not belong to the category
of scraps of paper. Ninety-eight pages out of the hundred of which
the book consists are devoted to this sort of statement and exhorta-
tion. But it is only fair to the reverend author to mention that,
on the last two pages, under the heading " Im Krieg," he enjoins
consideration, as a matter of " Christliche Liebe," for the people of
the conquered countries, ending by an emphatic warning that the
soldiers should think what would happen to their homes if the
enemy were not imbued with the same Christian spirit ! Unfor-
tunately, this not very exalted motive for decent behaviour did
not prove itself sufficiently vigorous to have any effect on the
people whose parsons had gloried in the " merriness of war " four
years earlier, when they thought that the fighting would be over
and their own side victorious in a couple of months.

When one passes beside or over miles of No Man's Land, such
as looks picturesque enough in Plate 42, one has to remember that
one is not seeing a miniature landscape of chalk hills, such as would
delight any youngster on Hampstead Heath, but seeing, perhaps,

30 BETHUNE, LA BASSEE, AND LOOS

a garden, perhaps a cottage home, an orchard, a piece of green
meadow, turned into ruin by the Huns. Surely the ghosts of these
inanimate things must haunt, with the ghosts of thousands of
innocent men, the people who turned their neighbour's country,
animate and inanimate, from a joyful and living reality into wilder-
ness and a graveyard !

PLATE XL.

THE DOUBLE
GRASSIER.

/;; front of the two long spoil
heaps which went by this
name the opposing trenches
were for a long time within
a few yards of each other.
The Double Grassier was
taken by us in the Loos
battle of September, 1915.

PLATE XLL

A COMMUNICATION
TRENCH.

A British Communication
Trench near Loos. The
rising ground in the distance
is a part of the Lorette
Ridge.

Xo fai:e p.ijjc 50.

PLATE XLII.

"NO MAN'S LAND."

Between Hulloch eind Lens,
a fair example of the eie-
stroyed pasture land where
the churned-np chalk was too
near the surface for the
groivth of the weedy vegeta-
tion such as appears in
Plates XV J I and XV in.

PLATE XLIIL

ARRAS.

The central part of Arras
seen from a height. The
photograph shows what a
town looks like even when it
is, compared to others, not
very badly destroyed .'

YPRES TO VERDUN

VI.-ARRA5, VIMY, AND LEN5

(PLATES 43 TO 50.)

RRAS was in the possession of the Germans for three
days in September, 1914, but they evacuated it in
their retreat after the first battle of the Marne. It
was only by very plucky fighting, however, that the
French were able to keep them even a mile or two
away, and for a long time they remained at St. Laurent-
Blangy, which is practically in the north-eastern suburbs of the
town. In October, 1914, therefore, they were only a couple of
miles away, and from this short distance the centre of the city was
bombarded severely by heavy artillery. The beautiful Hotel de
Ville and the belfry were destroyed, and the centre of the city
generally much injured, as the view from above (Plate 43, an official
photograph) shows very painfully. In April, 1916, the British
being then in this zone, Arras was practically " cleared," the enemy
being forced backwards for six miles. In the offensive of March,
igi8, the Germans succeeded in getting two miles closer in on the
south, but to the north the 1916 positions were held, and the enemy
was finally driven twelve miles away towards Cambrai in our
August offensive in 1918.

Outside the centre of the city the damage did not appear — when
I first visited it while it was still under occasional long-range shell-
fire — to be nearly so great as in the centre. Many houses were
standing and at least more or less habitable, if windowless, and a
few poor shops in the outskirts had started business. But published
statistics indicate that more than half the houses are damaged
beyond possibility of reconstruction. The cathedral, which is
altogether in ruins (Plate 44), is an eighteenth-century basilica,
and is happily not one of the glories of France. Some of the columns

32 YPRES TO VERDUN

of the main arcade, standing by themselves with a piece of architrave
still remaining in place, reminded one a little of the two beautiful
Roman columns still standing on the stage of the theatre at Aries.
A notice stood beside the ruins in 1918 — I think it is still there —
to the effect that it was intended to leave them unrestored to form
an enduring reminder of the Huns. I hope it is not disrespectful
for a great lover of French Gothic architecture to say that probably
this particular building may really be more impressive in its ruined
condition than it can ever have been when it was standing.

It was really remarkable to find in 1919 that the half-ruined
town was already full of people going to and from the station, and
obviously doing their best to carry on in spite of the surrounding
conditions. We lunched at an hotel showing very many signs of
dilapidation, but obviously serving a very considerable number of
customers — quite a cheering sight.

I am not likely soon to forget a drive from Cambrai to Arras,
on a very dark night, by by-roads which our Engineers had not yet
visited, and while traffic regulations still prohibited even the very
feeble illumination which could be obtained from an official head-
lamp. But the discomfort was much mitigated by the pleasure of
watching a fine display of miscellaneous coloured fires to the south
of our line, due to the discovery by our Tommies that the Germans
had left large stores of signal lights behind in their retreat !

On from Arras to Cambrai runs the road which is the continua-
tion of the Cambrai-Le Cateau road. It goes straight and level
over fine rolling uplands like a Scotch moor, but with grass and
herbage instead of heather, and (in 1918) with endless craters,
trenches, and entanglements, and no hills in sight except the ridges
away to the north left far behind.

The Vimy Ridge (Plate 45) rises at Bailleul, five miles north-
east of Arras, and continues in a north-westerly direction for about
the same distance to Givenchy.* It is steep on its eastern side

* Not to be confused with the Bailleul near Armentieres, or the Givenchy north
of the La Bassee Canal, which were much more notable places in the war.

ARRAS, VIMY, AND LENS 33

and gently sloping on the western, and the highest part of the ridge
is about 200 feet above the lower land to the east. The height is
not great, but is amply sufficient to give the forces occupying it
complete observation over the surrounding country in all directions.
I was on it first on a brilliant afternoon in 1918, when the Germans
were still trying to make a stand a little east of Lens. Away some-
where in the direction of Douai a great explosion was followed by
a column of white smoke, brilliant in the sunshine, and spreading out
into a huge white flower 3,000 feet above the ground — clearly a huge
German "dump" blown up to prevent it falling into our hands.
Below us a battery of field-guns was pounding away at the German
lines, still only two or three miles beyond them. A German
'plane came in sight, engaged in the singularly futile business of
dropping " propaganda " literature from a height which kept it out
of the reach of 13-pounders. From away over Lens, where under
a dark cloud the Germans were still trying, in despair, to avoid
their Nemesis, came the dull noise of the fighting. Behind the
ridge lay the shell-marked slopes up which the Canadians rushed in
April, 1917, and from which afterwards even the wild German push
of a year later failed to move us. In the distance behind the
ridge towards the west stood the tower of Mont St. Eloi, battered
about in fighting from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth; and
having now again seen the Prussians on the soil of its country, and
surely rejoicing — even as inanimate masonry — when at last " der
Tag " had arrived, and the land had become once more its own,
with peace and victory not far away.

The capture of the somewhat higher Lorette Ridge (a continua-
tion of the Vimy Ridge across the gap at Souchez) in 1915 was one
of the finest achievements of the French Army; the position was
enormously strong and most stiffly defended. The ridge, with its
commanding observation to the north, was held against all counter-
attacks until the war was over. The northern portion of the Vimy
Ridge, however, which was taken at the same time, could not be
held. It was eventually taken by the Canadians in April, 1917,

34 YPRES TO VERDUN

under General Byng (now Lord Byng " of Vimy "), after great
preparations, for its possession by the Germans had put us under
much disadvantage. Mining operations on a very great scale formed
part of the scheme of attack. Plate 46 is a view of one of the largest
of the mine craters on the ridge above Neuville St. Vaast, near the
elaborate defences known as the " Labyrinth." The well-concealed
German gun-emplacements below the ridge (of which Plate 47
shows one of a number at Thelus) had given us great trouble and
caused much loss. They were all taken with the ridge, and hence-
forth the guns from Vimy fired in the opposite direction.

Over the country, tres accidentee, west of the ridge one might
have thought oneself, in 1918, as in some queerly altered part of
England. At all the principal road-crossings men in khaki regulated
the traffic, everywhere were conspicuous public notices in English,
and in the villages the shops exhibited signs such as " Tommy's
House," " Entree libre," or — very frequently — " Eggs and Chips."
But driving eastwards through this green and pleasant country
and the busy villages one came with startling suddenness and with
a drawing of one's breath upon the wilderness. Here, just as north
and east of Amiens, villages ceased to be; only disconnected bits of
brickwork and general ruin were left, very often not even so much,
and nothing but a large painted signboard with a name on it gave
any indication whatever of the site of a village. Gardens and
fields were all one mass of ragged, chalky shell-holes overgrown
with hateful-looking weeds. Trees had disappeared. Only the
roads themselves had been engineered into something like decent
condition by the levelling up of shell-holes and the clearing away
to the sides of brick and timber debris. At a later time the timber
had been utilised either for construction or for firing, and the bricks
were being systematically cleaned and trimmed and stacked for use
in the reconstruction that has been continued since with ever-
increasing rapidity.

The villages — Gavrelle and others — on the \^alenciennes road
east of Arras are practically blotted out, but the towns farther east,

ARRAS, VIMY, AND LENS 35

which were out of the fighting area, are not much, if at all, damaged
structurally. But no doubt the Germans either destroyed or stole all
the machinery and industrial appliances they could lay their hands
on, in the benevolent desire to ruin French industry for the benefit
of their own, for which Lille and Tournai and Roubaix have had to
pay so dearly.

From Arras to Lens runs northward the ten miles of straight
road, crossing the Vimy Ridge on the way (Plate 48), down which
our people must have so often looked on the little town which, until
the very end of the war, resisted all attempts of our Allies or of
ourselves to enter it. The photograph was taken from outside
Lens, looking towards the ridge, which forms the higher ground in
the distance.

Lens itself, a prosperous little town having in 1914 some 28,000
inhabitants, in the centre of the French coal-mining district, is one
of the many places which, unimportant even within its own country
and quite unknown beyond it, has now become a name familiar
over the whole world. It was occupied by the Germans in October,
1914, and was almost continually fought for until the British finally
entered it four years later. It became eventually the centre of a
very narrow salient which covered even its suburbs, but the town
itself, drenched with gas and horrible to stay in, held out bravely
to the end.

The town is destroyed as thoroughly as Ypres, and more com-
pletely than any other place in France. Some idea of the state of
Lens early in 19 19 is given by Mr. Basil Mott's photograph (Plate 49),
taken when it was under snow.

The town is too large to be entirely wiped out, as the villages
are, and converted into chalk-pits and shell-holes. But standing
on the mound which once was the Church of St. Leger, or on any
other point of vantage, one saw in 1919 nothing but a waste of
bricks and stones and timber (Plate 50), with no semblance of
standing buildings beyond the sheds which had been put up in some
space sufficiently cleared to allow of their erection. If one had not

36 YPRES TO VERDUN

seen so much appalling destruction in so many places it would have
been unbelievable that a town larger than Bedford or Doncaster
should be as entirely turned into small fragments as if some gigantic
harrow had been drawn across it.

In 1920 I found that a considerable amount of rebuilding had
taken place, although still by far the greater part of the town remained
in ruins.

To the west of Lens, northwards and southwards, the whole
country is given up to coal-mining. The mines, as everyone knows,
were destroyed wantonly, and with great thoroughness, by the
Germans. It must be years before they can be working fully again,
but the French have not lost much time in taking steps to reinstate
them. Even while fighting was still going on a few miles away, I
found that in a large colliery near Givenchy (Lievin), where an
" Archy " section was at work, and where the whole of the buildings
and the pithead work were a mass of ruins, pumping machinery was
already at work, and the water pumped up was being utilised in the
neighbourhood.

In 1920 a good many of the pits were actually at work, and on
the roads one welcomed the familiar sight of miners going to and
from their work. The colliery villages (Lievin is nearly as large as
Lens) had at first sight a very deceptive appearance of substan-
tiality, but closer inspection showed that what seemed to be im-
injured terraces of cottages were nothing much more than bare and
roofless walls. Later on one found these ruins being blown up
in order to clear the ground, as well as to provide bricks for
rebuilding.

General Haig adopted in this neighbourhood, in 1917, a system
of feint attacks which he describes as quite successful in their
object, although they had the disadvantage that they frequently
prevented him from denying German accounts of the bloody re-
pulse of British attacks which in fact had never occurred at all !
The most noteworthy of these feint attacks took place near
Lievin, as to which he says : —

,..-r-^-;''^

PLATE XLIV.

ARRAS CATHEDRAL.

Ruins 'a'hicli it has been proposed to leave in
their present condition, if they will stand,
lis a metnorial of the once too near neighbour-
hood of the Germans.

-S-iO -:%)^v^w^^^'^

PLATE XLV.

Tin-: VIMV RIDGE.

This Ridge, betu'een Arras
and Lens, is several miles in
length, and over 200 feei
above the surrounding coun-
try. Its possession was
therefore of extraordinary
value for observation and
artillery purposes. We cap-
tured it in April, 191 7, and
the Germans were never able to
recover it. The very similar
Lorette Ridge, taken earlier
by the French, forms a con-
tinuation of it some six miles
long, towards the north-west.

To face pngc 36.

PLATE XL VI.

A MINE CRATER.

One of the mine craters hloini on the Viniy
Ridge as a first step in the attack which
captured the Ridge in 1917.

,■*■

PLATE XLVIL

AT THELUS.

One of the German gun
emplacements on the north of
the Vint}' Ridge which,
being outside our direct
observation, made it so im-
portant that the Ridge
should be taken.

PLATE XLVIIl.

THE ROAIJ TO
LENS.

From the Vimy Ridge (seen
in the distance in the photo-
graph) our men could look
straight along the four miles
of road to Lens ; but it was
eighteen months after the
capture of the Ridge that
they actually got possession
of K'hat was left of the toimi.

PLATE XLIX.

LENS UNDER
SNOW.

The tt'ildcrness that ti'as once
Lens, as it appeared early in
1919.

b^rtr-JfilbLdi^flt

PLATE L.

LENS.

Later on in 1919 some sheds
and temporary buildings were
to he seen vJierever space had
been cleared for their erection.
Another visit some months
later showed that very much
progress had been made in
the K'ay of reconstruction,
but of course, as a whole, the
toicn is still a mass of ruins.

ARRAS, VIMY, AND LENS 37

" On this occasion large numbers of dummy men and some
dummy tanks were employed, being raised up at zero hour by pulling
ropes. These dummies drew a heayy lire and were shot to pieces.
The Germans duly reported that an attack had been annihilated,
and that rows of British dead could be seen lying before our
lines."*

From Lens eastwards towards Lille the surface destruction
diminishes rapidly. Trees have been cut down (probably in 1918),
but cultivation seems to have gone on uninterruptedly — for the
benefit of the invader, of course — during the war.

* Despatches, p. loi.

YPRES TO VERDUN

VII. -THE 50MME

(PLATES 51 TO 66.)

HAVE been able to traverse several times since the
war the great stretch of country in Picardy which is
generally spoken of at home as " the Somme " —
country over which much of our hardest fighting took
place in 1916 and 1918, and where thousands of our
brave men are now lying. We became only too
familiar with the names of places within it, which might have
peacefully remained for centuries more in the happy oblivion in
which they had rested for centuries past, had not the war waves
broken upon them and destroyed them while making them immortal.
Much of the country had been so completely devastated that there
was nothing in it or on it to show in a picture — nothing beyond an
irregular expanse of ground broken everywhere into shell-holes and
covered over with an untidy wild herbage of rank weeds. But the
interest of this country to all of us at home — and " at home " in
this case more than ever includes the homes overseas — is so close
and so poignant that it is probably worth while to add here some
little description of the characteristics of the great area which we
call " the Somme," and the positions of the places which we
fought over.

In the thirty miles from Amiens to Peronne the Somme runs
from east to west in a narrow valley, with eight immense double
bends round spurs which project alternately from the higher country
(some 200 feet above the river-level) on the north and south. The
main road eastwards from Amiens lies south of the river, and rises
gradually to the higher level at Villers Bretonneux, about ten miles
from the city, and then continues dead straight and nearly level.

THE SOMME 39

till it drops again at Brie (twenty-nine miles from Amiens), to the
Somme valley, after the river has taken its sharp bend to the south
at Peronne, which is four miles north of Brie. As one goes east-
wards from Amiens the route becomes more and more war-worn.
At first the ordinary avenues of trees still stand, farther on the
trees become fewer and fewer, and finally disappear entirely
(Plate 51), and a region of total destruction is reached, where only
rough indications remain of the sites of the villages.

But in 1919 I found German prisoners at work filling up shell-
holes (the French and ourselves did not make prisoners dig front-
line trenches), levelling the ground, and clearing up generally, and
some reoccupation of land had already started, peasants and "store"-
keepers living in such temporary bungalows as they could construct.
Somehow or other the owners of different strips of land along the
road seemed to have discovered which particular strip belonged to
each one, ploughing was already going on, and cultivation had been
started in quite a number of places.

The river itself lies always too low down in its valley to be visible
from the road, from which the view to the north looks right over
to the high ground between the Somme and the Ancre. The Avre,
coming from Montdidier and Moreuil in the south, falls into the
Somme close to Amiens, and the Ancre, coming from Albert in the
north, joins the main river at Corbie, four miles north of Villers
Bretonneux.

Albert is about eighteen miles north-east of Amiens by a straight
road through Pont Noyelles, wliich continues to Bapaume, eleven
miles farther. On the high ground between the Ancre and the
Albert-Bapaume road stood Thiepval and the German redoubts,
and on the Bapaume road itself Pozieres, Courcelette, and Warlen-
court.

In the angle between the Albert-Bapaume road and the northern
bank of the Somme every village and every wood became part of
a tragic history — Mametz, Contalmaison, Longueval, Guillemont,
Combles, with Trones Wood, Delville Wood, and the others. South

40 YPRES TO VERDUN

of the Somme and between the river and the road lie Hamel and
Chuignes, while on the main road itself, east of Villers Bretonneux,
once stood the villages of Warfusee (Lamotte), Estrees, Villers
Carbonnel, and others, while the town of Peronne — protected by
Mont St. Ouentin on the north and by the Somme and a tributary
on the other three sides — lies just at the bend. South of the road
and in the triangle between it and the Avre lie the uplands on which,
very generally, the French were fighting to the right (south) of
the British, and in which the village names are therefore less familiar
to us than those farther north.

The first battle of the Somme commenced on the ist of July,
1916, and lasted, with more or less quiescent intervals, until the
late autumn. British and French were fighting side by side — the
British on the northern half, from the Upper Ancre to the Albert-
Peronne road; the French to their right, facing Peronne, crossing
the Somme, and extending southward as far as Chaulnes.

The German defences in the north, which had been under con-
struction for more than a year, were enormously strong, the " first
line " alone being a maze of trenches half a mile wide.

Their position stretched southward from below Arras to Gomme-
court, and covered Beaumont-Hamel and the heights east of the
Ancre valley, crossed the Albert-Bapaume road two miles north of
Albert, passed eastwards through Fricourt, crossed the Somme some
miles short of Peronne, and then ran southwards west of Chaulnes.
The story of the fighting, both French and British, as it can be read
even in Lord Haig's official despatches, and still more in the un-
official accounts, is a continuous record of episodes every one of
which would have been called Homeric in any other war, but which
in this gigantic struggle seem to have become ordinary events.
The ordinary civilian of common life from workshop or warehouse
or office or studio turned out to be in essence exactly the same
being as the noble and adventurous heroes of the stories and histories

THE SOMME 41

of our youth. And while he would grumble seriously about his
baths or his meat or his shaving facilities, he would yet go into
action cheerfully without hesitation, although he knew well enough
the horror of his own work and the great chance that he might
never return.

The village of Mametz (Plate 53), like nearly all the villages in
" the Somme," has disappeared; it was among those taken by the
British on the first day of the battle. It was in this attack that
East Surrey men are said to have gone forward dribbling footballs,
some of which they recovered in German trenches, in front of them.*

The French on our right got within a mile or two of Peronne,
but its defences were too strong and it was not actually captured
until 1918.

Trones Wood (Plate 54) was cleared early in July. Here a
small body of 170 men of the Royal West Kents and Queensj held
out all night, completely surrounded, until relieved the next morning.
Delville Wood (Plate 55) was captured the next day. The fighting
in these woods has left nothing of them but churned-up ground
and a few bare stems, although the rank undergrowth makes some
of them appear quite green from a distance. Combles (Plate 56)
was not taken until the 26th of September, when the British and
French entered the town simultaneously (from the north and the
south respectively), and captured a company which had not been
able to get clear away in time. The little town is not so entirely
wrecked as many other places, but the house which is shown under
reconstruction in the photograph is perhaps one of the least damaged.

Thiepval and the redoubts on the Thiepval plateau were not
finally secured until November. The Germans had said beforehand
that we " would bite granite " in trying to take them. We did
bite granite, but our teeth proved the harder.

Along the Albert-Bapaume road the villages of Pozieres and
Courcelette have disappeared altogether. Sometimes a big iron
gate, or half a gate, or a stone gatepost, shows where an entrance

* O'Neill, " History of the War," p. 604. t Haig's Despatches, p. 29.

42 YPRES TO VERDUN

once existed to some more or less pretentious mansion, but the
building itself has gone entirely, and its site is grown over with rank
herbage, which hides every indication even of where the house once
stood. The whole Thiepval plateau is now a wilderness of weedy
vegetation, and the weeds seem to have swallowed up the redoubts
altogether, as well as Thiepval itself.

The defences on the Upper Ancre still barred the way to Bapaume
along the road by Le Sars and the Butte de Warlencourt (Plate 57).*
The Butte was the centre of the German position, as strongly pro-
tected by trenches and wire as even the Thiepval plateau itself.
Fierce attacks in October and November, 1916, failed to secure it,
and the chalky hillock was only finally taken in February, 1917.
It now carries five crosses erected in memory of the units which
fought there.

The mud, our chief enemy, made active operations impossible
for a time. It was an even worse enemy than the Germans. General
Haig saysf that the trenches were channels of deep mud and the
roads almost impassable, making all problems of supply most serious.
General Maurice calls it, later on, a " morass of stinking mud."
We were, in fact, at that time — and at other times as well — fighting
the elements as well as the Germans. On the 17th of March, 1917,
however (after the Warlencourt Ridge had been carried), Bapaume
itself, which had been systematically destroyed by the Germans
before they evacuated it, was at last entered.

Bapaume in 1919 was, like Albert, being rapidly reinhabited,
and the new buildings (perhaps due to their being closer to the main
road) were more in evidence than in most other places.

The villages north of Bapaume on the Arras road (Behagnies,
Ervillers, and others) are, like those nearer the Somme, practically
wiped out. But here, also, peasants and small shopkeepers were
returning " home," and sheltering themselves as best they could
in some sort of hutments.

* This view is taken looking eastwards towards Bapaume, with the Butte on
the south side of the road. f Despatches, p. 47.

THE SOMME 43

On the i/th of March, 1917, also, the Germans having just
commenced their great retirement, Mont St. Quentin was taken, and
the next day Peronne itself. Plate 58 shows the dry bed of the
Nord Canal where the road crosses it just at the rise on the back
(north) of Mont St. Quentin. Plate 59 shows the ruin of the Church
of St. Jean at Peronne. The little town itself, originally of about
5,000 inhabitants, was in parts systematically burnt and destroyed
by mines by the Germans before they evacuated it in 1917, and
further damaged by Franco-British shell-fire in 1918. On the spot
I was told that the great church had been among the buildings
deliberately burnt by the Germans; in any case it is now, like the
rest of the town, a mere ruin. The outrages perpetrated by the
Germans in their masterly retreat in 1917 extended across the whole
area of the retirement (see Plate 119), and have been sufficiently
described, so far as it has been possible in any decent paper to
describe them. But the burnt and shattered houses were not the
matters, bad as they were, which caused the intense feeling of
loathing in addition to anger among the French, when they were at
last able to return to their desecrated homes.

For a year after March, 1917, the Somme area ceased to be
fought over, as the German retirement in 1917 had removed them
far to the east. A year later the tables were turned, when on the
2ist of March Ludendorff's great attack, cleverly directed against
our weakest spot, began to drive us back from St. Quentin towards
Amiens, and succeeded so rapidly that on the 23rd the Germans
were at Peronne and on the 25th near Estrees, three miles east of
the Somme on the Amiens road. On the 25th our Allies, on our
right, had been compelled to fall back as far as Noyon. At this
critical moment there was got together surely the most remarkable
auxiliary force that a British General has ever had under his com-
mand. General Haig says:

" As the result of a conference on the 25th of March, a mixed
force, including details, stragglers, schools personnel, tunnelling
companies, army troops companies, field survey companies, and

44 YPRES TO VERDUN

Canadian and American Engineers, had been got together and
organised by General Grant, the Chief Engineer to the Fifth
Army."*

The Hne on which this " mixed force " was placed passed through
Warfusee (Plate 60). Some of the men collected were Engineer
civilians with no previous training, and no knowledge of rifie-
shooting. I have been told that they were pronounced most plucky,
" but somewhat dangerous " ! In the result, however, they did
yeoman service in helping to hold back the onslaught until the
distant reserves could arrive and until the attackers had eventually
exhausted themselves.

On the next day came the historic conference at Doullens, which
resulted in the appointment of General Foch in supreme control of
the united forces (p. 3). But General Haig found it necessary to with-
draw his troops still farther, and the German advance was finally
checked only at Warfusee-Ablancourt, some ruins of which appear
in Plate 60. The enemy never succeeded in reaching the crest of
the high ground from which he could so completely have com-
manded Amiens (p. 38), although he was able to hold ViUers
Bretonneux, after a new attack on the 24th of April, for a few hours,
after which he was turned out by the Anzacs and never got back.
It was in this attack that British tanks met German tanks and
beat them.

It was not until the 8th of August, 1918, after Foch had carried
on his successful attacks on the Marne Salient for three weeks, that
the great counter-attack on the Somme was fully started, although
before that day there had been some important gains. Especially
had a notable combination of Australians, Americans, and Tanks
had a great success on the 4th of July, after a heavy barrage, in
capturing Hamel, a village on the Somme just north of Warfusee.
Both the Australians and the Tank Corps have given picturesque
accounts of this fighting, with a somewhat amusing preference, in

* Haig's Despatches, p. 205.

THE SOMME 45

each case, for the service with which the writer is connected. It
was here that the AustraHans are credited with having pronounced
their new colleagues from across the Atlantic to be " good lads, but
too rough " !

Most elaborate (and successful) precautions* had been taken to
make sure that the attack of the 8th of August (Ludendorff' s " black
day ") should be a surprise. In spite of all these precautions, some
anxiety may have been felt by those who knew that a sergeant,
who was well acquainted with everything that was on foot, had
been taken prisoner by the Germans a few days before. Oddly
enough, the minutes of the cross-examination of this N.C.O. were
afterwards captured, and it was found that, like a plucky English-
man, he had given nothing whatever away.j

Villers Bretonneux had been throughout in our possession, but
only its ruins were standing, the one " hotel " which I found there
in igig being a tarpaulin-covered shed (Plate 61) calling itself the
" Hotel des Trois Moineaux," and bearing a cryptic message from
" Toto " which I am unable to explain. The first day's advance
swept far beyond Warfusee, just south of which the village of
Marcelcave was captured by a tank whose Lieutenant demanded —
and obtained — a receipt from the Australians before he would hand
over his spoils to them. Abreast of Foucaucourt (Plate 52) and
between it and the Somme lies Chuignes, where the Australian
advance captured a 380-mm. gun on an elaborate emplacement,
which had been put in position, but I believe too late to be used,
for the purpose of a long-range bombardment of Amiens. The
gun was dismantled before we reached it, and lies on the ground
shorn of some 10 feet of its muzzle end, which had been cut off by
its captors to send home as a " souvenir."

The Chipilly spur (Plate 62), north of Warfusee on the north side
of the river, caused some heavy fighting, but was taken by the
Londoners on the second day of the advance, with the help of two

* See Haig's Despatches, p. 259.

t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, vol. vi., p. 30.

46 YPRES TO VERDUN

companies of Americans who are said to have lost touch with their
own division and to have been quite ready to lend a hand in any
fighting that was going on. The photograph gives some idea of
the river itself at a place where it is navigable over a great breadth.
Cappy (Plate 63) is a little farther upstream, where the river has
divided itself into various channels, the particular one seen being
the navigable canal, the rest of the river spreading over a quarter
of mile of marsh land to the north bank.

The land beside the Amiens-Peronne road becomes more and
more ruined as one goes eastwards. Plate 51 shows something of
what the actual road looks like, but no picture can indicate the state
of the land itself, the country that was once fertile fields and farms.
On my last visit (early in 1920) it was pleasant, but pathetic, to see
that many peasants had somehow been able to find out which strip
had been theirs before the war, and had built themselves hutments
— they could hardly be called houses — in which they could at any
rate live beside the land which they loved and which they are
trying once more to cultivate. Towards Villers Carbonnel the
countryside shows itself as more and more destroyed. Plate 64
(an officially taken photograph) indicates the appearance of that
village immediately after we passed through it in 1918 and before
the clearing-up work had commenced. A little later the broken
woodwork would be collected for firing and the bricks from the fallen
walls (if enough were left) would be trimmed and stacked ready for
use again in making such dwellings as will anyhow make it possible
for the peasants to get back again. In France they do not wait
for trade union permissions, or " skilled " labour, or the sanitary
(and other) regulations of County Councils, but go straight ahead
and build. It seems certainly the best way of getting houses.

General Haig tells us how in March, 1917, when we were trying
to keep up with the retreating Germans along this road, the part
of it between Villers Carbonnel and the Somme at Brie was almost
knee-deep in mud, so that it took the troops sixteen hours to cover
the last four and a half miles. The difficulty of this crossing can

THE SOMME 47

be well understood by everyone who has seen the breadth and
character of the flat marshy ground which, over a great part of the
distance from Amiens, represents the bottom of the Somme valley.
Some indication of the difticulty of troops crossing the river can
be gathered from Plate 65, wliich is taken from below Clery, close
to the point at which the Australians crossed the river on the
31st of August, 1918, and made the magnificent attack on Mont
St. Quentin, which resulted in the capture of Peronne the next
day, and earned such warm praise from the Commander-in-Chief.*

The Chateau of Brie (Plate 66) lies on the Somme only half a
mile south of the crossing of the main road from Amiens to
St. Quentin, and therefore some four miles south of the great bend
of the river at Peronne. On the 27th of September, 1918, it was
the scene of a wonderful dress rehearsal for the crossing of the
Hindenburg Line at the St. Quentin Canal two days later (see p. 58).
Rafts, collapsible boats and life-lines, and some of the 3,000 life-
belts which had been hurried up from the coast, were all tested, to
make sure that there should be neither hesitation nor failure in
their use in the attack on the " absolutely impregnable " section.
And, as everyone knows, there was neither hesitation nor failure;
the St. Quentin Canal was carried by the Terriers on the appointed
day, and with this success, and the crossing of the " Kriemhilde "
Line by the Americans in the middle of October, the last standing
places for the retreating German armies vanished.

On the road east of the Somme from Brie to Peronne one saw
a curious phenomenon which I seldom saw elsewhere, and cannot
explain. In some way the trees in the felled avenue had been able
to reassert their life, and for a considerable distance the road was
lined in an unsightly fashion with what looked like gigantic bushes
growing out of the stumps of the once tall and beautiful trees.

I have said nothing in this section as to Amiens itself; it had
serious enough troubles, although it was never in the fighting zone,
having been evacuated by the Germans after only ten days' occupa-

* Haig's Despatches, p. 270.

48 THE SOMME

tion in September, 1914. That time, however, was sufficient for
a requisition of half a million francs to be enforced, and for a number
of civiUans to be deported.

Some parts of the city, including the railway-station, were
seriously damaged by bombing and by heavy shells, and the city
suffered much from April to June in 1918. The civihan inhabitants
left it early in April. Several shells hit the cathedral, and houses
within a few yards of it are entirely wrecked, but happily very
little damage was done to the structure itself, from which the stained
glass had been safely removed.

PLATE LI.

THE SOMME ROAD.

A stretch, close to Villers
Carhonncl, of the main road
from Amiens towards Brie
and Pironne, which lies on
the higli country above the
Somme. What was once
the avenue of trees is even
here not so entirely destroyed
lis in many other places.

'■'■\<r,.

PLATE LII.

EOUCAUCOURT.

The remains of a church beside the Somme
road.

To face pnge 48.

PLATE LI II.

MAMETZ.

The village of Maiuetz has
practically disappeared ; the
immediate foreground covers
what had once been cottages ;
the cottages on the other side
have equal I}' disappeared.
{The cross is a war
memorial.)

PLATE LIV.

TRONES WOOD.

Shell-holes, chalk trenches
and hare trunks are all that
remain of the it<ood, the
trunks much more numerous
than in the Ypres Salient.

PLATE LV.

DELVILLE WOOD.

There is here less than in
Ti'ones Wood of chalky
holes, everything is thickly
covered with rank weeds, but
along the roadsides even the
stumps of the trees disappear
after a short distance.

PLATE LVI.

COMBLES.

Remembering the amount of
fighting li'hich i^'cnt on round
Combles before the French
and the British entered the
village simultaneously from
opposite sides, there are possi-
bly more buildings left than
might have been expected.
They are mostly, however,
iven more damaged than the
one 'li'hich is here being
examined by its owner li'ith a
view to rebuilding.

PLATE LVII.

THE BAPAUME
ROAD.

Thf road from Albert to
Bapaiime by Le Sars. The
chalky mound on the right
is the Butte de Warlenconrt,
the end of the Warlenconrt
Ridges, Kihich was the scene
of some notably plucky fight-
ing in November, 1 9 1 6.

PLATE LVIIL

MONT ST. QUENTIN.

A bridge, not entirely de-
stroyed by the Germans, over
the dry bed of the Canal da
Nord, where its course circles
round the rising ground
knoK'u as Mont St. Quentin,
which formed so important a
defence for Pcronne on the
north.

PLATE LIX.

PERONNE.

The Church of St. Jean at
Pii'oiine, according to people
on the spot, ii'ai deliberately
destroyed by the Germans
before they n'ere compelled
finally to evacuate the town.

PLATE LX.

WARFUSEE
(LAMOTTE).

This little village church, on
the Somme road, was just at
the cross-roads leading to
Hamel in one direction and
M arcelcave in the other, both
villages having some special
interest both for Australians
and Americans and for the
Tank Corps, in the advance
of August, 1 918.

PLATE LXI.

VILLERS
BRETONNEUX.

The village had a notable
history as the vantage-point
over Amiens which was the
special objective of the Ger-
mans in March and April,
igi8, hnt which' they only
succeeded once in holding for
twenty - pour hours. The
Hotel of the Three Sparrows
was the only one ivhich I
found in 19 19.

PLATE LXIL

THE CHIPILLY
SPUR.

A little salient of rising
ground on the north of the
Sommc, filling up a bend in
the river, taken by the
Londoners after very hard
fighting in August, 1918,
ziiith the friendly aid of a
fetv Americans ivho are said
to have lost their bearings,
hut were ready for a fight
ivherever they found them-
selves.

PLATE LXllI.

CAPPY.

One oj the many destroyed
villages along the Soinine.
7 he water here is only the
canalised branch of the river,
the rest of the stream spreads
itself out to the north on the
flat valley bottom.

uH OJM.l^.'.ii. Ui..ii;iJi / iJ\A\

PLATE LXIV.

VILLERS
CARBONNEL.

A n official photograph of the
village just after we had
passed it and before the
debris was tidied up. The
aspect of solidity about the
cottages is much more appar-
ent than real. In lyiy
scarcely anything was visible
which could he called a
bnildine.

life--

PLATE LXV.

CLERY.

Clay lies a little north of
Pcromie and hcloK' the great
bend of the Sommc. The
•bhotograph gives some idea
of the difficulties ichich ivt
had to encounter in getting
an army across the river at
Brie, and jvhich the Austra-
lians had to meet, close to
Cliry, in the memorable
crossing on the 315^ of
August, 1 91 8, after which
they ivere able the next day
to take Mont St. Qucntin
and enter Pcronne.

PLATE LXVL

THE CHATEAU OF
BRIE.

At Brie the road from
Amiens crosses the Somme,
continuing on to the east for
St. Qucntin, and turning
north to Pcronne.

It was here that the trials
-were made — on the Somme —
in September, 1918, of the
various appliances used two
days later in the audacious
crossing oj the deep water
Torming a part of the
llindenburg Line at the
St. Quentin Canal, which
proved so splendidly suc-
cessful.

PLATE LXVII.

ON THE AMIENS-
ALBERT ROAD.

At a liffle village (Lahoiis-
soye), beyond Pont Noyelks
on the road to A Ibert, stands,
or stood, this dilapidated
barn, carrying the scrawl
written by some cheerful
" Tommy " — " Pessimists
shot on sight."

PLATE LXVIIL

ALBERT ON
EVACUATION.

A n official photograph of one
of the main entries to the
toK'n just after %ve had
regained it in August, 1918.
This photograph, and also
Plate L.Y/A', may well
be compared with Plates
LXXIXand LXXXVIII,
as showing the original naked
devastation by contrast with
the state of places after the
sappers had been at ivork, and
the inhabitants had begun to
return.

To face page 49.

YPRES TO VERDUN

VIII. -ALBERT AND THE ANCRE

(PLATES 67 TO 73.)

.\LF a dozen miles from Amiens on the road to Albert
one crosses the valley of a little stream at Pont Noyelles
— an untouched valley, beautiful with tall trees and
green meadows like a bit of Middlesex. The road
climbs the combe on the eastern bank, and a little
farther on crosses the narrow space " that just divides
the desert from the sown." Onwards on the high ground from this
point all greenness and beauty have disappeared, every tree has
gone, and at one bound is reached the " desert " which covers
thousands of square miles to east and north and south. Close to
the point of change it was cheering to come across the inscription
(Plate 67), doubtless scrawled by some plucky " Tommy " in the
bad spring days of 19 18, " Pessimists shot on sight." One hopes
that the cheerful artist got through safely; it was just his spirit
that gave the army that final victory which they believed in as
strongly in our worst hours as at any other time.

The French had compelled the Germans to leave Albert in
December, 1914, and it remained in the hands of the Allies until the
German advance in 1918, when it was captured on the 27th of
March. It was hnally retaken by us on the 22nd of August. The
little industrial town, originally containing some 7,000 inhabitants,
was severely shelled during years by the Germans, and then for
four months by ourselves, and reduced absolutely to ruins. Plate 68
is one of those officially taken, and gives a vivid idea of the condition
of one of the principal streets of approach just after we had re-
taken it.

In April of 1919 (Plate 69)* it remained a ruin, and even a year

♦ From a negative taken by Mr. Basil Mott.

50 YPRES TO VERDUN

later it could hardly be otherwise described. (I believe that
Plates 68 and 69 correspond to nearly the same places.) But
motoring through it some nine months after the Armistice, while it
was still to all appearance very much in the condition indicated by
the photographs, we were practically held up about 10 o'clock in
the forenoon by a stream of some hundreds of people, carrying bags
and all sorts of receptacles, making their way towards the railway-
station. They must no doubt have found, somewhere, shelter
enough to live and sleep in in cellars or otherwise, in spite of
the destruction, and were on their way to Amiens to lay in
supplies.

It was on the tower of the pilgrimage Church of Notre Dame de
Brebieres that there stood for so long a statue of the Madonna in
a position which appeared to defy gravity, and which provoked
the prophecy that its fall would indicate the end of the war. The
prophecy was not exactly fulfilled, but the great heap of rubbish in
front of the church (Plate 70) is all that was left of the tower after
our shelling of the town in 1918.

The road northwards from Albert to Miraumont (Plate 71) runs
in the broad marshy valley of the River Ancre. The valley was
originally thickly wooded, but was in 1918 covered with fallen tree-
trunks, and Plate 72, which was taken close to Aveluy, gives some
idea of its appearance. The ground on each side of the valley rises
somewhat steeply for some 300 feet. The high ground on the east
of the valley is that on which Thiepval and the German redoubts
lay. On the west, farther north, lie Beaucourt, Beaumont-Hamel,
and Miraumont, all of which were repeatedly the scenes of very
heavy fighting. Beaucourt and Beaumont-Hamel were taken only
at the very end of the 1916 campaign, in a short spell of possible
weather.* Haig describes the defences here as of special and
enormous strength.

At Beaumont-Hamel there was literally hand-to-hand fighting
of the most severe kind. Mr. O'Neill describes the action graphically :

* Haig's Despatches, p. 50.

PLATE LXIX.

A L r, E R T [IN
W^ I N T E R .

1 Ju- ruins of Albert under
siio;,' in the early spring of

t 1919-

PLATE L.V.V.

ALBERT
CATHEDRAL.

The great heap of stone and
brick rubbish was once the
tower on which stood for a
long time a statue of the
Madonna at an angle which
appeared to defy gravity. I
am afraid that it was our
shelling in igi8 which
eventually brought it down.

To face page 50

PLATE L.VA7.

IN THE ANCRE
VALLEY.

The road along the Ancre
Valley, entering Albert from
the north.

PLATE LXXIL

A\ELUY.

The swampy, hut once well
wooded, valley of the A ncre,
with the Thiepval Ridge as
its farther bank.

ALBERT AND THE ANCRE 51

" On many occasions sandwiches of Scots and Germans wrestled
and strove in the constricted space. . . . Bodies of men were
prisoners and captors many times over before the struggle ap-
proached a decision. ... In the midst of the fighting vast stores
were tapped, and the men began to smoke as they went about their
business. Some of them found time to change their underclothing
when a large supply of spare shirts was found."*

And these men were not even the " Contemptibles," but only
" mercenaries " who had been civilians till a year or so before !
Truly the German preconceived notions as to the British must have
suffered rude shocks.

Plate 73 (again from an official photograph) was taken after the
191 8 fighting, which covered episodes as noteworthy as those of
four years earlier. The photograph is taken from a point near
the " cross-roads " at Beaumont-Hamel, looking across the Ancre
valley to the northern (lower) end of the Thiepval Ridge, and beyond
it to the higher ground on which Bapaume stands.

The final attack across the Ancre began under Thiepval, when
troops of the 14th Welsh crossed the river, wading breast deep
through the flooded stream under heavy fire, holding their rifles
and pouches above their heads, and formed up in the actual process
of a German counter-attack, along the line held by the two com-
panies who had crossed the previous morning, f A day later a part
of the 64th Brigade (New Zealanders) started at 11.30 p.m. on a
pitch-dark night, crossed the valley, and gained and held positions,
half surrounded, until the covering troops arrived. This was on
the slope near Miraumont seen across the valley in Plate 72 .

* O'Neill, " History of the War," p. 664.
f Haig's Despatches, p. 268.

YPRES TO VERDUN

IX. -THE OI5E AND THE AVRE

(PLATES 74 TO 78.)

N the northern outskirts of the Forest of St. Gobain, a
couple of miles from the village of Crepy, and about
seven miles east of La Fere and the Oise, are to be
found the remains of the emplacement (Plate 74) of the
" Grosse Bertha," the gun which bombarded Paris
from a distance of about seventy-four miles. On the
spot we were told that there had been three guns, or at any rate
three emplacements, but that the other emplacements were still
more completely destroyed than the one which I have photographed.
The guns and gun-carriages were, of course, removed by the Germans
before we could reach them. We know, however, that the shell was
about 8 inches in diameter and was fired from a large naval gun,
probably similar to the gun captured at Chuignes (p. 45), lined up for
the small shell. The stories that some mysterious new ballistics
were involved in the matter were, of course, entirely " buncombe."
But naturally the trajectory of a shell travelling more than seventy
miles was a matter of interest to all artillerymen. It must have
reached a height of something like five-and-twenty miles, and our
knowledge of atmospheric conditions at that height is somewhat
limited. The alignment of the gun, with the allowances for wind
and drift, must have been very accurately calculated and carried
out, for even the whole of Paris is not a large target under such
exceptional circumstances.

It will not be forgotten, as a characteristic piece of German
mentality — or brutality — that this gun was used on Good Friday
(the 29th of March, 1918), and a shell burst in a Paris church during
service and killed many of the congregation. But the Parisians,

PLATE L XXI II.

BEAUMONT-
HAMEL.

An official photograph taken
from near the cross-roads
at Bcatinwnt-Hamel looking
across the Ancre Valley to
the northern part of the
Thiepval Ridge, towards
Miratimont.

PLATE LXXIV.

THE "BIG BERTHA"
EMPLACEMENT.

A II that is left of an emplace-
ment of the " Grosse Bertha,"
one of the guns in the St.
Gobain Forest between La
Fire and Laon, n'hich
shelled Paris from a distance
of about seventy-four miles.

To face page 52.

PLATE 'LAW

THE ST. GOBAIN FOREST.

The St. Gobain Forest was in German hands
throughout the war; the photograph shows
a German O.P. in a tall tree on high
ground which would command the Oise
valley in the direction of Chauny.

The fine twelfth - century Cathedral of
Noyon is even more entirely ruined, through-
out much of its length, than the Cathedral
of Soissons, and very much more than Rheims.

THE 01 SE AND THE AVRE 53

after the first shock, were to be as little scared by Bertha as the
Londoners by the Zepps.

Crossing the Forest of St. Gobain — which had been continuously
witliin the German lines — by the very worst stretches of road which
I found anj-where, even in Flanders — I came across a German O.P.
(Plate 75) in a tall tree. The forest itself is very fine, quite un-
touched by shell-fire, but the group of large, pleasant-looking country
houses at St. Gobain itself have been much injured. Farther south
reconstruction was in rapid progress. At the little manufacturing
town of Chauny (half-way to Noyon) we found the odd condition
of affairs that half the town had been entirely destroyed and the
other half — the division was quite a sharp one — almost untouched.

In the early part of the war — September, 1914 — when the French
occupied Peronne, there was hard fighting about Noyon; at that
time the Germans were too strong and the French had to fall back,
but they both recovered and relost it later on. In 1917 they took
Noj^on once more during the great German retirement, but again it
passed into German hands during the March advance in 1918, to
be abandoned finally by the enemy on the 29th of August. After
changing hands so often it is not to be wondered at that the town
is a good deal damaged. It is not, however, totally destroyed.
The cathedral (Plate 76) is a building dating from the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, with very interesting architectural features. It
has been greatly injured by shell-fire, roof and vaulting having
mostly gone and the towers being much damaged.

Toward the end of their great advance in 1918 the Germans
succeeded (on the 28th of March) in crossing the little River Doms
(a southern tributary of the Avre), on which Montdidier (Plate yy)
stands, and this little town, which was entirely ruined (but by this
time is largely rebuilt), formed the south-western apex of their
advance. Farther north, on the Avre itself, they took Moreuil and
Morisel on the 29th of March, and within the next few days crossed
the river and reached — from there southwards to Montdidier — the
higher ground on the west of the valley, which forms the back-

54 THE 01 SE AND THE AVRE

ground in Plate 78. They were here, for the time, about ten miles
south-east of Amiens, just as beyond Villers Bretonneux they were
the same distance west. The photograph shows how exceedingly
thin the coating of soil over the chalk in this district is, all the shell-
holes (they are quite small) showing up like patches of snow. The
little Avre River runs under the line of trees in the distance at the
foot of the higher ground which the Germans had reached.

The main road southwards in the Avre valley lies here for a long
distance between banks which are still riddled with German dugouts
and French defences dating from the fighting of 1918.

Five days after Foch had started the great counter-offensive
in July the German lines here were attacked by French troops, with
some British tanks in aid, and were driven back to the Avre. The
attack was in many ways a notable one, perhaps especially for the
tanks, but was only a preliminary before the great advance of the
8th of August (p. 44), when at one bound the Avre was passed and
the Germans pushed six miles westward.

Montdidier was surrounded by the French three days later, its
garrison surrendered, and the great advance continued its inexorable
progress.

PLATE L XXV 11.

MONTDIDIER.

This little town was the
farthest south point reached
by the Germans in their
Somine advance of igi8.
It lies on the Dams, 'ivhich
is practically a continuation
of the Avre.

PLATE LXXVIIL

THE A\"RE VALLEY.

TJie chalk here, Just below
Moreuil, is so near the sur-
face that the shell-holes still
looked like snoic patches more
than a year after they had
been formed. The ground
slwwn is that of the French
counter-attack [ivith English
tanks) a few days before the
advance on the Somme in
August, 19 18.

To face page 54.

PLATE LXXIX.

CAMBRAI
PLACE D'ARMES.

A portion of the Place
d'Armes in Cambrai, hitrui
deliberately by the Germans
in their final evacuation,
after there had been time to
clear aw'ay the ddbris with
ze/hich it had been covered.

PLATE LXXX.

CAMBRAI CATHEDRAL.

The tower of the modern Cathedral of Notre
Dame at Cambrai appears to stand, in its
upper part, in defiance of all theories of
stable construction in masonry.

YPRES TO VERDUN

X -CAMBRAI TO ST. QUENTIN

(PLATES 79 TO 87.)

EST of Cambrai and south to St. Ouentin lay over
thirty miles of the strongest part of the Hindenburg
Line, that " granite wall of 24,000 square kilo-
metres." The southern end of the much-talked-of
" Switch Line " at Queant, ten miles west of Cambrai,
had been forced by the First and Third Armies on
the 2nd of September, 1918, but the defence was still strong, and
it was only on the loth of October that I was greeted, on arriving
at Colonel Gill's quarters, with the welcome news that Cambrai
had just fallen. Two days later I was able to visit the city. The
central part (Plate 79) was still burning, having been fired by the
Germans on their evacuation, but it was possible to get round by
the suburbs; only an occasional shell still reached the town. (It
is hardly necessary to say that the photograph, taken many months
later, shows the Place dArmes only after it had been cleared up,
and not in the state in which it was when the city was entered.)
The railway-station was destroyed, the windows of most houses
had disappeared, and walls were cracked everywhere. But on
the whole the destruction (obviously largely due to bombing as well
as shell-fire) was not nearly so complete or so irreparable as at
Rheims or Ypres or Lens. The tower of the cathedral (Plate 80),
a church rebuilt about sixty years ago, looks as if it could hardly
stand permanently. There were many houses in the suburbs which,
although much damaged, could be made habitable without very
serious difficulty. But it is to be remembered that the wanton
destruction of household property, down to the very toys of the
children, must have caused the returning inhabitants here and in

56 YPRES TO VERDUN

many other places even more intense feeling about the invaders
than the mere destruction of the houses themselves, which had
come to be recognised as an inevitable consequence of the state
of war, and might, in fact, have been caused by combatants on
either side.

I have before me an airplane plan of Cambrai, which I obtained
from the First Army in 1918 and which is an excellent example of the
great skill and success we had obtained in aerial surveys. As it is
printed it is ver}' nearly a map on a scale of 6 inches to the mile,
although it is a mosaic of prints from eight or nine different
negatives, taken, as the direction of the shadows shows, at at least
four different times. But the joins between the different prints
are in many cases invisible, and the map as a whole only wants
the names of the streets to make it complete.

West of Cambrai, about four miles on the road to Bapaume, and
on a little rising ground, stands the Bourlon Wood, which has for
us a history perhaps even more tragic than that of the woods north
of the Somme. The full story of our attempt to take Cambrai in
November, 1917, the first accounts of which induced foolish authori-
ties to have " joybells " rung (a proceeding which they must have
bitterly regretted afterwards), is given in Haig's Despatches
(pp. 153-171)- The large-scale map by which it is accompanied shows
how we gained the wood, and were, in fact, close to Cambrai for a
week, but a week later had lost nearly the whole of our gains. The
photograph (Plate 81) is taken from the viUage at the north-west
corner of the wood, the farthest point which we reached on the
23rd-24th November. It was in this lighting that a small party
of East Surreys were rescued after having held out, surrounded,
for forty-eight hours, while later on a company of the 13th Essex,
entirely surrounded and without hope of relief, fought to the last
man rather than surrender. Bourlon Wood was only recovered, in
our final great advance, on the 27th of September, 1918.

The road from Cambrai to Le Cateau, the scene of so much
fighting both in August, 1914, and in October, 1918 (see p. 78),

CAMBRAI TO ST. QUENTIN 57

runs eastwards from Cambrai. I was able to visit a number of the
villages south of the road in October, 1918 (finding in some houses
the hastily left meals of their late German occupants), while fighting
still continued a few miles farther north, and was surprised to find
that they were very little injured in spite of the indications of heavy
barrage over the face of the ground. The fighting here had gone
over the ground too rapidly to leave behind it the fearful trail of
destruction which is everywhere visible on the land where fighting
was continuous for many weeks, or even months, together.

The south-eastern suburbs of Cambrai and the villages on that
side of the town show no very extensive signs of destruction, but
on the south-west and farther to the south, where the fighting
across the Hindenburg Line was so severe, everything is destroyed.
West of Cambrai, and for many miles to the south, lay the part of
the Hindenburg defences known as the Siegfried Line, the strongest
section of which, and that part deemed by the Germans to be
practically impregnable, included the deep cutting of the canal
between Bellicourt (Riqueval) and Bellenglise. For 6,000 yards
before reaching Bellicourt the canal runs in a tunnel, the southern
end of which, and the high ground above it, as well as the village of
Bellicourt, is seen in Plate 82. The Americans had been told off to
deal with the country over the tunnel, and did so quite successfully,
but they unfortunately neglected to clear up behind them, so that
the Germans, getting up from the tunnel by shafts which they had
provided for the purpose, attacked them from the rear with serious
consequences, and the Australians, following on, had a somewhat
hard time. We had some talk with a good lady and her family
who lived in a house just above the mouth of the tunnel, in wliich
a number of German officers had been quartered. It was curious
to notice how, after beginning to speak quite quietly, she and her
daughter became more and more excited as their recital continued,
under the recollection of the nightmare of the German occupation,
although in this case there had happily been no special brutality to
bring to mind.

58 YPRES TO VERDUN

Southwards for a couple of miles from Bellicourt towards

Bellenglise the canal runs in the deep cutting seen in Plate 83, which

was taken from above the tunnel mouth. The banks of the cutting

are 60 or 70 feet high, very steep, and covered with thick vegetation

— covered also, in 1918, with barbed wire. On the east side the

bank carried, in addition, many concrete machine-gun emplacements.

The water in the canal was very deep near the tunnel, and did not

shallow until it nearly reached Bellenglise. The attack was carried

out by Midland Territorials (Stafford and Lancashire), and had

immediate success. It is specially mentioned by General Haig,

and well described by General Maurice, and with natural enthusiasm

and much detail by Major Priestley.* It was preceded by a barrage,

lasting forty-eight hours, from about 1,600 guns of various calibres,

and then — for once — the weather favoured us, for at zero hour,

5.50, on the morning of the attack (the 29th of September)! the

whole country was covered with a thick fog, under which our men

advanced, invisible to their enemies, although with some difficulty

to themselves. The 46th Division scrambled down the cutting

(where it will be seen that there was no jumping-off place on that

side), and got across by swimming (with life-belts), b}' improvised

rafts and collapsible boats, and all the devices which had been tested

on the Somme at Brie (see Plate 66) a few days earlier. It seems

uncertain whether any of the German foot-bridges had been left

undestroyed, but the Riqueval Bridge (Plate 84) had not been

knocked down by our shelling, and still stood as it was when I last

saw it, carrying a notice that it was safe " for infantry in file only."

Major Priestley tells the story of how Captain Charlton, with a small

party of nine men, found his way by compass to the bridge, charged

down on the sentries (one N.C.O. getting four of them just in time),

cut the wires, and threw the blasting charges into the canal. The

* Haig's Despatches, p. 282, " The Last Four Months," p. 161, and " Crossing
the Hindenburg Line," p. 48.

f We now know that it was on the 28th of September that Ludendorff met the
Kaiser and insisted on the necessity for an armistice.

CAMBRAI TO ST. QUENTIN 59

bridge was saved and held by 8.30, and naturally proved most
useful.

Among Major Priestley's stories of this adventure he tells how
two R.A.M.C. privates (Moseley and George) collected prisoners,
dressed the wounded and made the prisoners carry them, and
finally arrived at quarters as the sole escort of twenty stretcher
cases and seventy-five unwounded prisoners.*

At Bellenglise (at the bend of the canal two miles south of
Bellicourt) the Germans had made for themselves an extraordinary
underground tunnel shelter, of which Plate 85 shows one of the
entrances. We were told by the villagers that it was a kilometre
and a half in length, but did not verify this. In any case it was
certainly fitted up as barracks and quarters of the most extensive
nature, for a thousand prisoners were taken in it with no resistance.
It was also provided with electric light, and we are told that the
captured electricians who were instructed to start the dynamo for us
had to confess the existence of a booby-trap to blow up the whole
affair when the switch was closed, and, of course, to remove it.

St. Quentin is five miles south of Bellenglise, but the crossing
of the Hindenburg Line at the canal tunnel at St. Tronquoy, a
necessary preliminary to taking the city, proved a task almost as
difficult, but quite as successfully carried out, as the Bellicourt
crossing. It was effected on the 30th of September. St. Quentin
itself, which had been within the German lines ever since 1914, was
entered by the French First Army on the next day. When it
became clear to the Germans that they would have to give up the
town, which was but little damaged, they prepared a characteristic
piece of devilment, one which could not by any exercise of imagina-
tion be supposed to have the slightest military consequence. They
cut out large recesses (each of about a couple of cubic feet) in the
walls and columns of the cathedral, with the intention of using the
cavities so made for blasting charges to wreck the whole building
(Plate 86). I did not count the number of these holes, but it was

* Priestley, op. cit., p. 63.

6o CAMBRAI TO ST. QUENTIN

officially stated to be ninety ! Happily the French got into the
town twenty-four hours before their entry had been expected, so
that the church still stands (not, of course, without some other
damage), with the holes and the blocks cut out from them visible
as damning evidence of what otherwise would be no doubt denied.
But very much the same seems to have been done by the same
savages at other places, as far apart even as Peronne and Beersheba.

The region between the Arras-Peronne and the Cambrai-St.
Quentin roads has been fought over both by French and British.
Going eastwards from the crossing of the Somme at Brie the country
already showed signs of renewed cultivation, but some villages, like
Mons and Bernes, were totally destroyed, and others, like Estrees,
Vraignes, and Hancourt, and the little town of Vermand, had been
very badly strafed. Near Cambrai, villages such as Bony and
Vendhuille, Gouzeaucourt and Ribecourt (Plate 87), and of course
Bourlon, were quite in ruins. At Gouzeaucourt very active recon-
struction was, however, going on, and rows of neat brick cottages
had already appeared. To mention all the ruined villages would be
to give almost a complete list of them, but over the whole region
active and obviously successful attempts were being made to carry
on cultivation, the surface having been by no means so badly
damaged as farther north.

Southwards from St. Quentin, also, much cultivation is being
actively carried on, although many of the villages, such as Liez
and Essigny, are badly injured; but after La Fere is reached, and
beyond the Oise, cultivation is complete, and the conditions are
more or less normal as far as the Ailette and the Aisne. North
of Cambrai also, on the east of the Cambrai-Douai road, where
the country was always in German occupation, and behind the
Hindenburg defence lines, its condition is also normal.

PLATE LXXXI.

BOURLON WOOD.

Tlic remains oj Bourlon
village, in the iiorth-Kwst
corner of the wood, which
was fought for, and taken,
and lost again in the Caiu-
hrai battle of November,
uji-j.

PLATE LXXXIL

BELLicorirr.

The south end of the
€>,ooo-yard tunnel on the
St. Qucntin Canal, seen from
the nestern bank of the canal
cutting. 'The village of
Bellicourt lies over the
tunnel mouth, ami the hi-^hei
ground beyond is thnt covered
by the A merieans in the
advance of ihe 2cjth oj
September, i y 1 8.

To face page 60.

PLATE LXXXIII.

THE ST. OUENTIN
CAN~VL.

The canal cutting looking
down from above the tunnel
mouth — an ^^ absolutely im-
pregnable" portion of the
Hindenhurg Line defences.

PLATE LXXXIV.

THE RIOUEVAL
BRIDGE.

The only bridge over the
St. Queniin Canal iMch
was not destroyed by the
Germans before our attack
on their " impregnable "
position in September, 1918.
A small party of the Mid-
land Territorials, under
Captain Charlton, reached
it in the fog just in time to
deal with the sentries, throw
the charges into the tcater,
and so save the bridge.

PLATE LXXXV.

BELLENGLISE.

One Of the entrances to the
immense underground icork-
ings constructed by the Ger-
mans as a part of the
Hindenhurg defences at the
St. Ouentin Canal. The
ilahorate workings were
tinally only a trap for the
thousand Germans who were
secured there as prisoners.

PLATE L.V.V.VI7.

ST. QIJEXTIN
CATHEDRAL.

The Germans cut ninety
recesses in the columns and
walls of the Cathedral (two
are seen in the photograph)
for the purpose of placing
mine charges in them and
destroying the whole building
when they evacuated the
totvn. The unexpected arri-
val of the French frustrated
this diabolical plan, but the
holes and the blocks cut from
them remain as witnesses.

PLATE LXXXVII.

RIBECOURT.

Tills ti'as one of the villn^'i-s
which t.'cre tahcn in the
Camhiai batik, and retained
in the possession of the A Hies.
They are all equally destroyed,
hut some are already half
rebuilt.

PLATE LXXXVIH.

RHEIMS.

This hit of Rheims — tidied
up — is a fair example of the
condition to which perhaps
10,000 out of its 14,000
houses have been reduced.

YPRES TO VERDUN

XI.-RHEIMS, THE AI5NE, 50IS50NS

(PLATES 88 TO 97.)

HEIMS shares with Ypres and Verdun the glory of
having successfully withstood a continuous four j^ears'
siege, and with Ypres the additional distinction of
having been for a long time the central point in an
extraordinarily narrow salient, surrounded by the
enemy practically on three sides. It is truly an
ancient storm centre, unsuccessfully besieged by the English in the
fourteenth century, taken by them in the fifteenth (perhaps more
by intrigue than by fighting), and held until Joan of Arc turned us
out after nine years' occupation. It was entered by the Germans
on the 4th of September, 1870, and again on the forty-fourth
anniversary of that day in 1914. But while after 1870 they held the
city for two years, in 1914 they had to evacuate it after nine days
only. They commenced immediately to shell it, and, according to
the universal opinion in France, to shell particularly the cathedral,
in spite of official assurances that it was not used for observation
purposes, which anyone but a Prussian would have believed. The
north tower, unfortunately, was under repair in 1914, and covered
with timber scaffolding. An incendiary shell set fire to this a week
after the Germans had left the city, and the whole of the roof of
the cathedral was burnt. Later on the vaulting over the transept
and the choir was badly but not irreparably damaged (the state-
ment is made that a number of Germans — the church being used
as a hospital — were killed by a shell which penetrated the vaulting),
and the chevet at the east end is very badly knocked about. The
west end, happily, has not suffered so much, the direction of firing
being generally from Brimont and Nogent lAbesse, respectively

62 YPRES TO VERDUN

north and east of the city. One is glad to know that it was found
possible to save a certain amount of the fine stained glass.

In thinking of the fate of Rheims from the point of view of the
French, it is to be remembered that to them the cathedral stands
in much the same relation as does Westminster Abbey to us. It
is not perhaps the finest, nor the most beautiful, nor the largest
of the glorious churches of France, but it is the one which, more
than any other, represents in itself and its associations the faith
and the history and the life of the country over many centuries
and through endless changes and vicissitudes. Considering the
mentality of the Germans — as judged by the sentiments of their
newspapers at the time — it may probably have been the very
consciousness of the special affection of the French for the
cathedral that induced them to make it their special target.

The figures which are given as to the number of shells fired, and
specially the number fired at the cathedral in 1914, and on certain
days in 1917, are almost unbelievable.*

The city has, or had before the war, about 115,000 inhabitants
and some 14,000 houses. Of the latter an English visitor in 191 8
informed me that about 2,000 had escaped with little damage and
were more or less habitable, 2,000 more might be said to be still
standing, while the remaining 10,000 were entirely destroyed. (As
a comparison it may be remembered that in the Great Fire of London
about 13,000 houses are said to have been burnt, or destroyed to
limit the flames.)

Plate 88 is simply an example of the state of the greater part of
the city, after, of course, the wreckage had been cleared off the
roadways and things in general " tidied up." Plates 89 and 90
show respectively the west end of the cathedral, with its towers, and
the chevet at the east end seen across a mass of ruined houses.
I am afraid that the glass of the great rose windows was destroyed
very early, before it could be removed, and at the east end much

* Buchan's " History of the War," vol. iii., p. 71, and the " Michelin Guide to
Rheims," p. 20, etc.

RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SO IS SONS 63

of the tracery of the windows has been smashed. It is in no way
to the credit of the Germans, either in their intentions or in their
shooting, that the damage has not been immensely greater. One
may be permitted to hope that in the reconstruction of the city,
which is proceeding apace, advantage will be taken of the clearance
which has become unavoidable to leave such space round the building
as will allow its magnificence to be more fully seen than has hitherto
been possible.

After having to evacuate the city in 1914, the Germans made a
very determined stand to the north at the Fort of Brimont, six miles
away, as well as on the east at about the same distance, and even
the desperate fighting of April, 1917, failed to move them. For
the greater part of the war the French and Germans were facing
each other on a north and south line a little to the east of the road
from Rheims to Laon. But on their side the enemy succeeded in
getting closer to the city, and the shelling must often have been at
very close range, a condition of affairs more like that at Ypres than
at Verdun. At one time in 1917 the Germans actually got for
a day into the northern cemetery, just outside the city and only
a couple of miles from the cathedral.

The remains of the French front line to the east of the Laon
road were still not cleared away on my visit, the barbed-wire en-
tanglements hardly visible above the thick growth of rank herbage.
The road itself, running on a slight embankment, in places covers
numerous dugouts, their entrances facing westward.

The end of September, 1918, saw the cit}' freed at last, the
Germans hastily evacuating the forts in their great retreat.

In the great retreat of the Germans in 1914 the Aisne was reached
on the I2th of September, after Soissons had been in enemy occupa-
tion for ten days, during which heavy requisitions were made,
although no pillage is said to have occurred. The first battle of
the Aisne, the end of the German retreat in 1914, continued well

64 YPRES TO VERDUN

into September, British artillery aiding the French north of Soissons,
and Haig's troops, being farther east, attempting to reach the
Chemin des Dames plateau above Troyon. But the Germans had
had time to entrench themselves in the enormously strong positions
afforded by the upper ground, and all the efforts of the Allies failed
to dislodge them. They remained substantiall}'' unmoved until
1917, by which time they also held a sharp salient between Missy
and Chavonne which had carried them across to the southern bank
of the Aisne. By the beginning of 1915 the French held the valleys
of Cuffies and Crouy, with the ridge between them and the western
end of the high ground to the east. On the I2th-i3th of January
they were attacked by greatly superior numbers by Von Kluck,
and, by the misfortune that floods on the Aisne had carried away
their bridges higher up the stream, were cut off from their supplies,
and had to retire south of the river, losing the bridge-head on the
north bank. Soissons itself, however, was not captured, although
the Germans remained within very easy shelling distance of it.

The Aisne winds along a flat valley bottom in great bends,
always bounded on the north by high ground, which rises some
400 to 450 feet above the river, and is traversed by steep and narrow
wooded ravines very much like Surrey combes, which were occupied
and fully utilised by the enemy. Along the top of the plateau runs
from west to east the road which became so familiar to us as the
" Chemin des Dames," although this picturesque name did not
appear on the maps. The main road from Soissons to Laon crosses
the western end of the plateau close to the Malmaison Fort; its
eastern end passes through Craonne, and the ground falls quickly
down to the level of the Rheims-Laon road at Corbeny. Every
foot of the " Ladies' Road " has been fought over; the whole plateau
is shell-pocked almost as badly as ground beside the Amiens-Peronne
road on the Somme, and the road itself is in many places no longer
distinguishable, the whole area being thickly overgrown with rank
herbage. Plate gi gives some idea of what the once well-marked
road now looks like where it crosses the Troyon road, the route by

RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS 65

which Haig's troops tried in vain to reach and hold the high ground.
The village of Cerny, close to the crossing, is wiped out, some hint
only of its former position being indicated by the remains of what
has probably been a sugar factory (Plate 92).

In many places on the slopes above the Aisne there are quarries
and natural caves, greatly enlarged and very fully utilised in the
German defence. Plate 93 shows one of these caves at Crouy, a
now ruined village a couple of miles above Soissons on the side of
the valley in which runs the little stream that descends from Laffaux
on the north to the Aisne at Soissons. Beside and across this stream
our artillery had hard fighting in 1914, in the vain attempt to
dislodge the enemy from the high ground above and to the west,
at a time when the Germans could fire twenty shells to one of ours.

The Aisne valley remained in general fairly quiescent from 1914
until April, 1917, when General Nivelle, after his great success at
Verdun, planned the gigantic blow at the German front from Soissons
to the Argonne, which, in spite of its ultimate success in carrying
nearly the whole of the Chemin des Dames, failed to relieve Rheims,*
and by falling so far short of the hoped-for and too optimistically
predicted success helped to cause considerable, although happily
only temporary, discontent in parts of the French Army, which
was only cleared away by the magnificent way in which Petain
showed his men a few months later, both on the Aisne and at Verdun,
that they still remained more than a match for their opponents.

The last battle of the Aisne formed the third of the series of
great advances which Ludendorff had made in March and April,
1918. In each of the first two the Allies had been driven back so
far and so definitely as to enable the Germans to claim overwhelming
victory. But each of them, all the same, had finally found the
victorious troops face to face with undefeated and immovable

* Captain Tuohy in " The Secret Corps " says that the trial of a spy known as
" Suzette " showed that her machinations played no small part in preventing NiveUe's
success. She is alleged especially to have given the enemy full details as to the
new French tanks, and also full information where and how it was intended to use
them.

66 YPRES TO VERDUN

armies, and found them also too exhausted to press forward to
gain those objectives which had constituted the real intention of
each advance. The third Aisne battle was destined to have a
similar conclusion. The German intentions had been well con-
cealed, and their enormous concentration of troops had not been
discovered, so that the attack which started suddenly on the 27th
of May swept everybody off the ridge and down to the Aisne at
once. The British 9th Corps (four divisions) were on the French
right, brought there to rest after their hard fighting farther north !
They held on at Craonne for a while, but were hopelessly out-
numbered, and had to fall back with the rest of the troops. The
Aisne and the Vesle were lost, and in three days the Germans had
reached the Marne, and held ten miles of the river between Chateau
Thierry and Dormans. Soissons fell on the 28th and Chateau
Thierry a few days later, but the right, on which was still our gth
Corps, beside the French Fifth Army and some iine Italian troops,
held back the invaders and succeeded in keeping them at a distance
from Rheims and Epernay. Then followed counter-attacks, which
were sometimes successful, and a month's quiescence, until on the
15th of July Ludendorff started the Friedensturm which was to
have brought him peace — a German peace — but which ended in his
utter ruin.

The Oise and Aisne Canal reaches (and crosses) the Aisne close
to the foot of the road up to Troyon. The canal was no doubt dry
during the war, as it was when I saw it afterwards (Plate 94), the
bridge on the main road, destroyed during the German retreat,
having been replaced by another.

North of the Aisne, from Soissons to Berrj'-au-Bac, all the
villages except one appeared to be in ruins.

The whole of the country south of the Aisne to the Vesle, and
again south to the Marne, was fought over in 1914, and again in
the German advance in May, 1918, as well as in their final retreat
in July and August. The villages, so far as I saw them, were in
ruins — such, for example, as Fismes (Plate 95) — but were stiU

IJ¥« —

PLATE LXXXIX.

RHEIMS CATHEDRAL^
WEST END.

The ivest front of the Westminster Abbey of
France is happily not irreparably damaged,
but the glass of the rose window has gone,
and some of the statues and the carvings are
injured. The roof of the building has gone
entirely, and the vaulting is broken through
in places.

PLATE XC.

RHEIMS CATHE-
DRAL—EAST END.

The east end of the Cathe-
dral is very much more
injured than the west, having
been more exposed to the ^re
from the forts which were
shelling the city.

To face page 66.

PLATE XCI.

THE

CHEMIN
DAMES.

DES

The road crossing the photo-
graph from right to left is
the Troyon road up from the
Aisne valley. It is still
practicable for motors.
What is left of the Chemin
des Dames itself, at this
place (ttear Certty), starts
from the right-hand corner
of the view, crosses the
Troyon road, and practically
disappears in the ii'ilderness.

PLATE XCIL

THE CHE:\nX DES
DAMES— CERNV.

All that seemed to he left oj
the village of Cerny — the
remains, apparently, of a
sugar factory — K'ith some
water-logged shell-holes.

RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS 67

recognisable as villages without the necessity, as on the Somme, of
a notice-board on the roadside saying " This was ..."

Soissons itself was never far enough from the German lines to
be free from shell-iire until October, 1917; it has not been, however,
nearly so completely destroyed as Rheims, a reasonable number of
houses remaining habitable in the end of 1918. The Germans entered
it again in May, 1918, and remained in possession for two months,
and during this occupation they had apparently repented of their
moderation four years before, for they pillaged and stole systematic-
ally, and destroyed wantonly what they did not wish to steal.

The beautiful towers and spires of the west front of St. Jean des
Vignes (Plate 96), which were all that remained of the once noble
church, are a good deal damaged. It is stated that this church
was pulled down in 1805 on the demand of the Bishop of Soissons
in order to provide material for the repair of the cathedral, but that
the two towers and spires were spared on the entreaty of the
inhabitants.* Certainly only the skeleton of the west end with the
towers has been in existence for a very long time. Apparently there
have been other Huns than the Germans ! The cathedral itself
(Plate 97) has actually been cut in half and its one tower (the northern
tower had never been built) knocked to pieces. The cathedral,
although a small one, was a very beautiful structure, and was more
or less unique in being arranged as two churches, one lying east and
west, and the other across the transepts at right angles. The view
in Plate 97 was taken in 1920 across what is now a fine open space,
but which was, on my pre-war visits to the city, covered closely
with houses and shops, and in 1919 was still a mass of broken walls
and stone rubbish. It can be said, at any rate, that the view of the
cathedral — or what is left of it — is certainly much more complete and
effective than it ever had been before.

West of Soissons the destruction of villages continues for seven or

eight miles along the valley, as far as Pontarchet, but still farther west,

and to the south in the Compiegne forest, there are very few signs

of fighting.

* "Michelin Guide to Soissons," p. 44.

YPRES TO VERDUN

XII. -VERDUN, THE MEU5E, AND THE ARGONNE

(PLATES 98 TO 106.)

FTER the first battle of the Marne, in 1914, the
Germans were driven back to positions encircling
Verdun on three sides (north-west, north-east, and
south-east) at a distance of ten to twelve mUes. They
succeeded, however, in holding a httle salient at
St. Mihiel, on the eastern bank of the Meuse, about
twenty mUes south of Verdun, and with it the village of Chauvon-
court, on the west side of the river. This village was entered by
the French in November, 1914, but immediately blown up (it had
been already mined) by the Germans, and regained by them in a
counter-attack. It remained in their hands until 1918, but they
were so tightly held all round by the French that they could make
no use of it as a bridge-head.

The possession of the St. Miliiel Salient, however, gave the
Germans command of a stretch of the main road in the Meuse
valley, and enabled them to cut the only full-gauge railway which
still connected Verdun with the rest of France. This road and
railway were therefore, until the successful American attack of
September, 1918, entirely useless to the city, and its only railway
was the narrow-gauge line leading southwards to the main line at
Bar-le-Duc, and the one main road to the same place via Souilly.
The latter came to be known as the " Sacred Way " {La Voie Sacree),
and became the principal line of communication for men, munitions,
and stores. It is stated that thirteen battalions of infantry were
occupied in keeping it in such repair as was possible, and that 1,700
lorries passed over it daily. In 1919 the northern part of the Voie
Sacree was still as bumpy for motoring as many of the worst roads
in Flanders.

PLATE XCIII.

C A \' E S ABOVE
SOISSONS.

Beside the Laon road, going
noiilui'ards from Soissons,
arc a number of old limestone
caves, partly natural and
largely artificial, K'hich ivere
made useful by the Germans
in their long occupation of
this region.

PLATE XCIV.

THE OISE AND
AISNE CANAL.

The dry bed of the Oise
and Aisne Canal, Jt'ith the
original bridge blo~u'n up in
the German retreat, and the
French girder bridge replac-
ing it.

To face page C8.

PLATE XCV.

FISMES.

The iownlet of Fismes, on the
Vesle, like many other places
betiL'een the Aisne and the
Marne, has been shelled in
turn by French and Germans.
It is practically destroyed,
but ivithout being levelled to
the ground and sniallowed up
by ti'eeds like villages farther
north.

PLATE XCVL

SOISSONS — ST. JEAN DES
VIGNES.

Only these tico toivers, mth their beautiful
spires, have remained of this church for more
than a century. One of the toK'ers has been
so damaged as to present strange problems to
an engineer in the strength of materials.

VERDUN, THE MEUSE, AND THE ARGON NE 69

The great attack on Verdun was intended to capture the city
in four days and to clear the way to Paris at one swoop, and the
Emperor (whose presence never seemed to bring good fortune to
his troops) was waiting at Ornes, some eight or ten mUes north,
to make his triumphal entry. The attack began with enormous
impetuosity on the 21st of February, 1916, but in four days — with
enormous losses on both sides, but chiefly to the attackers — the
Germans were still held some four or five miles away from their
objective on the east side of the river, and double as far on the
west. But nearer the Argonne their positions had allowed them
alread}' to cut the full-gauge railway to St. Menehould by shell-fire.

A book written by General von Zwehl* gives the number of
guns used in this attack as being about 230 in each of three corps.
He also speaks of the " dejection and pessimism " induced in his
troops by the failure of the artillery to make the clear way to the
city which had been predicted and promised.

The Douaumont Fort was entered on the 25th, and the Emperor
had sent to Berlin the news that the " key of the last defences of
Verdun " was in German hands. But on the next day Petain
began counter-attacks, and although during several months the
Germans made progress from time to time, eventually gaining the
Vaux Fort and most of the Mort Homme Ridge, the great attack
had, in reality, miscarried from the start.

The city itself, from which all civilians had been evacuated by
the 25th of February, was heavily shelled, especially at the com-
mencement of the attack, but as a city it has not suffered to anything
like the same extent as Rheims, to say nothing of Albert, Lens, or
Ypres. The fighting and the tremendous shelling were always in a
zone lying roughly between four and eight miles from the city;
within this zone the ground is as completely shell-marked, the
villages and woods as completely destroyed, as even on the Somme.

The greatest German advance was reached in June, 1916,
Thiaumont Fort being taken on the 30th of June, when at one point
* Reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement of the 7th of April, 1921.

70 YPRES TO VERDUN

the Germans were only three miles from the city. Thiaumont was
retaken when the French offensive started in the following October,
and on the 2nd of November Vaux Fort was recovered and the
Germans had been driven back nearly to the lines they had succeeded
in occupying on the 24th of February. But the Mort Homme
Ridge was entirely regained only in August, 1917, and it was still
another year before it could be said that Verdun was entirely
" cleared." The final success of the French in driving back the
enemy is attributed by General von Zwehl to the overwhelming
superiority of their artillery, the German heavy guns having been
sent elsewhere.

Plate 98, taken from the left bank of the Meuse, shows the
broken bridge at St. Mihiel and the ridge above; the little town lies
chiefly beyond the picture in a hollow on the right. It has been
very little damaged; even the great clock in the church tower is
uninjured. It is easily seen how entirely the ridge, some 300 feet
above the river and filling up an acute bend, enabled the Germans
to dominate the road and railway on the left bank for a long distance.
In April, 1915, a French attack on the north side of the salient took
Les Eparges after severe fighting, but made no further progress.
The neighbouring country to the west of the Meuse is quite un-
harmed until one comes within a few miles of the river. The St.
Mihiel Salient was attacked from the south by the Americans and
by the French from the north on the nth of September, 191S, just
as the Germans had determined to evacuate it, and it was finally
cleared within a week.

The view from the Pont Ste. Croix at Verdun over the Meuse
(Plate 99) shows a portion of the most destroyed area of the city,
in which some sort of reconstruction had already started. On the
opposite side of the river, however, tall buildings were standing
quite uninjured, and entering the city from the south by the Porte
St. Victor one traverses a long length of street without seeing any
serious destruction. The cathedral (not a very interesting building
after many reconstructions) has been badly damaged as to its vault-

PLATE XCVII.

SOISSONS
CATHEDRAL.

The Cathedral of Soissons,
which is so badly damaged
that its reconstruction appears
almost hopeless, is one of the
oldest, and architecturally
one of the most interesting, of
the French Gothic churches.

PLATE XCVIIL

ST. MIHIEL.

The little salient of St.
Mihiel, on the Meuse, twenty
miles above Verdun, jfas
secured by the Germans very
early in the war, and gave
them command of the prin-
cipal road and railway from
Verdun. It was held by
them until the very end,
when Americans and French
together squeezed them out.

To face page 70.

PLATE XCIX.

VERDUN.

A part of the centre of Ver-
dun, on the Meiise. Oddly
enough, buildings Just oppo-
site these, on the other side
of the river, are almost un-
touched. But the fighting
at Verdun — ivith which only
the fighting on the Soinme
and in Flanders are compar-
able— 7i'as concentrated on
the hilly ground some miles
north of the city.

PLATE C.

VAUX FORT-
NORTH FOSSE.

The holding of the fort at
Vaux, one of those nearest
Verdun, by Major Kaynal
and his men, K>as one of the
finest episodes of the war.
The Germans were held at
bay for three months, but
eventually the defenders were
driven doit<n to the under-
ground passages connected to
the North Fosse, and w'ere
overpowered after seven days'
continuous fighting.

VERDUN, THE MEUSE, AND THE ARGONNE 71

ing and roof, but the towers still stand; the Church of St. Saviour
has been less fortunate.

Vaux Fort — although we did not hear so much of it in England
as of Douaumont — was the scene of one of the most gallant episodes
of the war. The fort is somewhat less than five miles north-east
of the city; it was completed only in 191 1, and is a huge mass of
masonry and reinforced concrete, with many underground works,
on an eminence which dominates the country on the side away from
the city and faces the Douaumont Ridge across a valley in which
lies the village of Vaux. The tops of both Vaux and Douaumont
Forts look like a wilderness of shell-holes in a gravel bed ; apparently
the concrete has been covered over with many feet of something
in the nature of gravel as an additional protection. Vaux Fort
was held against three months of incessant attacks by Major Raynal
and his men, the last of whom were finally completely imprisoned
within it, but held out and fought hand to hand in the steep under-
ground passages leading to the northern fosse (Plate 100), the only
outlet remaining to them. Great efforts were made to relieve them,
but without success, and after a final week of continuous fighting,
during the last two days of which they had only water enough for
the wounded men, the little garrison was overpowered on the 8th of
June, 1916. The Germans had the courtesy, in recognition of his
splendid defence, to allow Major Raynal to retain his sword. The
fort was finally regained on the 2nd of November of the same year.

The village of Vaux, which lies in the valley north of the fort,
was fought for strenuously and eventually taken long before the
fort itself. I tried to find some sign of its existence; its site is
certainly somewhere in the centre of Plate loi, but such remains
as may exist are entirely blotted out by the growth of the rank
herbage which fills the whole valley from side to side.

The fort of Douaumont (Plate 102) was that of which the name
was most familiar in this country, owing to its partial capture in
the early attack and also to the absurd boasting of the Emperor,
already alluded to, in connection with it. It lies to the north-west

72 YPRES TO VERDUN

of Vaux, upon a parallel ridge. The fort was taken on the 25th of
February, the fifth day of the great attack in which the French troops
had been fighting continuously against " five times their strength
in men and ten times their strength in guns." The Kaiser was at
Ornes, waiting for its fall; men's lives were to form no hindrance
to the attack; the Brandenburgers* succeeded in getting into it,
and a few of them held on in the ruins, with the French on both
sides of them. But Petain had arrived, and the Germans were
beaten, although at that time neither side knew it, and although
thousands of lives had still to be sacrificed before the end arrived.

In the following May the French retook the fort, but were driven
out after two days by an overwhelming attack. In October, 1916,
it passed finally to the French under General Mangin, after a heavy
bombardment. The troops for this attack had been trained on a
complete model, constructed behind the lines, of the ground and
of the fort, to familiarise them exactly with the position to be dealt
with.

The earlier Verdun attacks were made upon the east side of the
river, but after these were fought to a standstill fighting shifted to
the western side, where it eventually reached an even greater
intensity than before. The Mort Homme Ridge (Plate 103), about
eight miles north-west of Verdun, lies about two miles in front of
the original German positions of the 21st of February, and its posses-
sion was essential to the Germans if they were to be any more
successful in reaching Verdun from the north-west than they had
been from the north-east. Its highest point is about 300 feet above
the city. The artillery attack commenced on the 2nd of March,
and the advance four days later, but the progress made was very
slow, and although the slaughter was absolutely terrific, when the
fighting died down on the 9th of April — forty-eight days after it had
started — the Mort Homme was still untaken. Onwards from this
date the fighting at Verdun was — at least, in comparison with what
had gone before — only desultory. In May the highest point (" 304 ")
* They are said to have worn French Zouave uniforms.

VERDUN, THE MEUSE, AND THE ARGONNE 73

on the ridge had to be abandoned, and by the 21st of May the
Germans had gained the north-east slopes of the Mort Homme.
But the battle as a whole had been lost long before this, and no
local gains could change its result. Plate 103 shows the monument
put up by the French on the southern slope of the Mort Homme to
which they had been driven, a little below point 295. It is very
difficult in a photograph taken from ground-level to give any idea
of the surface of shell-holed ground, but something of it can be seen
in this view and something also in Plate 104, which shows the last
French front-line positions near the top of the southern slope of the
ridge, where the final attack occurred on the 28th of May, 1916.
But the French front still remained unbroken; they had never even
been pushed back to their main positions of defence. The great
counter-attack on the left of the Meuse came in August, 1917, when
the Mort Homme and Cumieres Wood were retaken on the first day,
and the whole original front restored in a week.

The Argonne Forest, in which the Americans had such stiff
fighting in pushing back the Germans in 1918, lies about twenty
miles west of Verdun and covers an area of some 150 square miles
up to the line where the Aire River cuts across it on its way to the
Aisne. Its huge dimensions, and the fact that only a portion of it
was the scene of actual fighting for any considerable time, have saved
it from undergoing the total destruction of so many of the smaller
woods. Plate 105 shows some of the southern portion between
St. Menehould and Clermont, which is practically uninjured,
although the village of Les Islettes (faintly seen in the valley, which
here separates the forest into two sections) is in ruins. Along the
road from St. Menehould to Verdun through the forest (from which
the view was taken) there were in 1919 long lines of fruit-trees quite
uninjured, an unusually cheerful sight. In September, 1914, after
the first battle of the Marne, the Germans in their retreat held the

74 YPRES TO VERDUN

northern part of the forest, practically on the cross-road from
Varennes to Vienne-le-Chateau. From that time until the end of
1915 there was continuous and very severe fighting in the section
of the forest between that road and the St. Menehould road. Fight-
ing in the depths of the forest among thick trees, on wet and slippery
ground traversed by endless ravines, was incessant by day and
night, often hand to hand, and below ground as well as on the
surface. The French did not succeed in dislodging the enemy, but
they were successful in defeating two powerful attacks by the Crown
Prince, in June and July, 1915, directed at the St. Menehould-
Verdun road. The enemy got within five or six miles of Les Islettes,
and the little town was destroyed, but they never got to the road,
and were promptly driven back to their old lines . The to\\Ti of
Clermont, farther east on this road, had been sacked and then burnt
by the Germans in their retreat in 1914.

Varennes (Plate 106) is on the eastern edge of the forest, where
it is crossed by the River Aire, which up to that point had been
flowing northwards east of the i\rgonne, as the Aisne does on the
west. It was the headquarters of the Crown Prince's army in 1915,
and his attacks in that year started from it. It is only a few miles
west of Avocourt and Malancourt, from which started the March
attack on the Mort Homme Ridge from the west in 1916.

After the end of 1915 the Argonne quieted down, but trench
fighting and mining was always going on until the commencement
of the Franco-American offensive on the 26th of September, 1918,
following the American success at St. Mihiel. Among other forms
of defence the Germans here used steel-wire net-screens, 3 metres
high, fixed to the tree-trunks. The Americans had very hard work
in getting through the forest — how severe may be judged from the
fact that there are over 25,000 graves in the great American cemetery
near Montfaucon; but eventually the Germans were compelled to
retreat, and on the 9th of October the French from the west and
the Americans from the east met at Grandpre, at the northern
extremity of the forest.

PLATE CI.

VAUX VILLAGE.

The village lies in a hollozt'
beloii' the fort ; its site is
somewhere close to the place
from which the photograph
was taken. But all signs
of the buildings — 7t>hich ti'ere
reduced to fragments early in
the siege — have absolutely
disappeared.

PL. ATE CIL

DOUAUMONT FORT.

The fort of Douaumont icas
entered, but not held, very
early in the Verdun battle,
and the Kaiser telegraphed to
Berlin the capture of the "hey
to Verdun." But the lock
would not open, Verdun jvas
not taken, and the Kaiser left
it to prophisy elsewhere with
equal zi'ant of success.

To face page 74.

PLATE cm.

THE MORT HOMME.

T/if photograph gives only a
faint idea of the sheU-marhed
ridge t^'hose name became so
familiar to us in the Verdun
campaign. Eventually a
considerable part of it li'as
taken, but the gain was use-
less— Verdun tvas as far of
as ever.

PLATE CIV.

THE MORT HOMAIE.

The French front lines on the
southern slope of the Mart
Homme Ridge. From these
ridges the vieiv in all direc-
tions seems to cover nothing
but shell-pocked ii'astes, the
grave of 400,000 Frenchmen
and probably of very many
more Germans.

;::sas2!«

PLATE CV.

THE ARGONNE
FOREST.

Tliis southern part of the
forest, on the road from
St. Mcnchould to Verdun,
has not been fought over, so
tlnil the trees arc still in
their natural condiliou. In
the central valley, seen over
the trees, lies Lcs Islettcs in
ruins. It icas the farthest
point of one of the Croivn
Prince's fruitless attempts to
get south in UJ15.

PL. ATE CVL

VARENNES.

Varennes, on the margin of
the Argonne Forest, and now
in ruins, urns the Crown
Prince's headquarters during
a considerable period, when
there was every day fierce
fighting with the French, of
wliich at the time xiic heard
very little in this country.

VERDUN, THE MEUSE, AND THE ARGONNE 75

Varennes itself (the little town where Louis XVI. was arrested
in 1791 on his attempted flight from France) is very nearly destroyed.
The Americans took it on the first day of their advance, when it
was defended by a division of Prussian Guards, and on the next day
they captured Montfaucon, the headquarters of the Crown Prince
for his Verdun attack. The ground here is high, and the Germans
had built themselves an excellent O.P. from the materials of the
church. Here also, according to General Maurice, the Crown Prince
had directed operations from a " palatial dugout."

Traces of the American occupation of this district were still
visible months afterwards in the shape of road notices, " Do your
bit ! Obey the traffic regulations !" and it was in the familiar accent
of a young American officer that we received instructions as to
getting our car through the narrow streets of Verdun.

YPRES TO VERDUN

XIII. -THE MARNE TO MONS

(PLATES 107 TO 124.)

N a bright and quiet Sunday morning, the 23rd of
August, 1914, General Smith-Dorrien's men were
ahgned along the Mons-Conde Canal (Plate 107), west
of the town, on the northern edge of a thickly popu-
lated industrial district, with the great spoil heaps of
the mines (Plate 108) like a range of miniature extinct
volcanoes lying behind them. They had only just arrived from
home, and with the failure of " Intelligence," of which they knew
nothing, they were entirely ignorant of the strength and movements
of their opponents. The Sabbatic quietude was broken with startling
suddenness soon after noon, and very shortly the unexpected action
became general along the whole front. The Germans outnumbered
us by two to one both in guns and men ; they were fresh from their
successful outrages in overrunning Belgium, and they were full
of contempt for the British " mercenaries." Their advance was
excellently well covered by the terrain until they were within
fairly short range, and they advanced wave on wave in close forma-
tion. They were decimated again and again by our rifle-fire, but
again and again advanced in spite of it. Our men were sick of the
slaughter, and their fire was so deadly that the German writers have
afterwards attributed it to the enormous number of machine-guns
which we were using, although we were in fact all too short, at that
time, of this particular arm. The defence held out for six hours
in face of the overwhelming odds, but at night we were compelled
to retire, Mons itself having been entered by the enemy. So com-
menced the Mons retreat, so far as our men were concerned. The
French retreat, unfortunately, their men being equally outnumbered,
had commenced twelve hours before. On the next two days the

THE MARNE TO MONS 77

retreat continued, Smith-Dorrien's army on the west of the Mormal
Forest towards Le Cateau, and Haig's on the east of the forest
towards Landrecies. The great Mormal Forest itself (some ten
miles long and from three to five miles wide) has been very much
thinned during the war by the Germans for the sake of its timber
(Plate 109). Even now, although traversed by many woodland
roads, it would be an impossible undertaking to take through it a
great army in retreat, and this made the separation of the two
armies unavoidable. On the 25th of August Haig's men had reached
the old fortified town of Landrecies, on the Sambre. Fifty years
or so before this, R. L. Stevenson — boating down the river on his
" Inland Voyage " — had passed through the old-world fortifications,
and wrote of the town, singularly enough:

" It was just the place to hear the round going by at night in
the darkness, with the solid troop of men marching, and the startling
reverberation of the drum. It reminded you that even this place
was a point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might
on some future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder,
and make itself a name among strong towns."*

Hardly a " strong town " in these days, but certainly it made
itself a name both at the beginning and the end of the war. At
10 o'clock on the night of the 25th of August an alarm was given;
the Germans had made their way through wood roads, and tried
to rush us in the camouflage of French uniforms and French words
of command. Happily the 4th Guards Brigade was on the spot,
although only just arrived, and received the enemy in unexpected
fashion, so that by midnight the attack had collapsed, and a little
more much-needed breathing-time was gained. A Landrecien told
us, in 1919, how he had seen the Germans coming down " in their
thousands," and how the Guards had stood up to them at the railway
and road corner at which my photograph (Plate no) was taken.
In 1918 the tables were turned, and it was the German Guards who
were trying to hold up our infantry, who captured the town on the

* " Inland Voyage," p. 69.

78 YPRES TO VERDUN

loth of October, after crossing the Sambre on rafts. It is of this
attack that the story* is told of three tractor tanks, which made
a bluff at a moment when the infantry were held up, and of which
two got through and successfully made a way for the rifles.

South-west of the forest lies Le Cateau (Plate iii), at one end
of the straight fifteen-mile road to Cambrai, south of which lie the
villages of Caudry, Esnes, Ligny, and many others whose names
we heard first in August, 1914, and again four years later. It was
here that General Smith-Dorrien made the great stand of the 26th
of August, which has been the subject of so much discussion, but
which cerainly gave the opportunity for most gallant fighting, both
of infantry and artillery, while it held back — and, better still, greatly
exhausted — the enemy. By the afternoon the position became
untenable, and then followed the all-night march of the tired men
towards St. Quentin. Le Cateau itself appears to be very little
damaged.

On the " Roman road," running south from Le Cateau to the
Cambrai-St. Quentin road, the villages are now much damaged,
probably rather in 1918 than in 1914, and notices were still standing
— " Do not halt on this road " — at places towards the south.
Another souvenir of 1918 was a notice near Maurois, " Pip Squeaks
6.30 to-night !" A less agreeable reminiscence was a sugar factory,
thoroughly gutted by the Germans in characteristic fashion, beside
the road near Estrees, a village itself in ruins. Along this road,
as in many places on the Somme, the route, now destitute of trees,
is marked by short wooden posts on each side placed at short dis-
tances apart, their object being, of course, to keep lorries on the
track in the dark, or at least to give them notice if they strayed from
it. Here and there many of the posts on one side of the road seemed
to be sloping in one direction, and those on the other side in the
opposite direction. The obvious inference was that the slope of the
posts was due to the frequency with which the lorries had run into
them !

* Major Williams Ellis. "The Tank Corps," p. 268.

THE MARNE TO MONS 79

The Le Cateau battlefield was so quickly crossed both in 1914
and 1918 that many of its villages, some of which I had the oppor-
tunity of visiting while fighting was going on only a few miles farther
north, are very little damaged, and the land surface generally is
almost uninjured in comparison with its condition both farther
north and farther south.

The 1st of September was the anniversary of Sedan, and the
Germans had apparently hoped to celebrate the day in Paris. But
on or about that day, perhaps the day before. Von Kluck had made
the great turn to the south-east, which (whatever its original motive)
eventually allowed the French to get on his flank across the Ourcq,
and paved the way for the great victory on the Marne.

The Germans had progressed so far as to cross the Marne by the
4th of September, and had reached their farthest south position
on the Petit Morin, which joins the Marne at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre.
On the next day Joffre gave his orders for the commencement of
the advance on the 6th, which at one blow turned the much-vaunted
advance into a retreat, and postponed for ever the triumphal march
of the Emperor through the Arc de Triomphe which was found to
have been so elaborately arranged for. The bridge over the Marne
at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre — close to which the photograph in Plate 112
was taken — was blown up, and we failed to cross the river until
two days later, after which came the great and complex battle which
ended with the Germans back to the Aisne. But they still succeeded
in holding, and were still to hold for four more years, all the hilly
country between Rheims and Verdun, as well as Laon, St. Quentin,
Peronne, and Cambrai, and also, for much of that time, the whole
Somme region.

And so the war went on, until in May of 1918 Ludendorff played
his last shot and swept down across the Aisne and the Vesle and
the Tardenois country to the Marne once more,* and finally, in the
Friedensiurm (for the opening of which the Emperor came down
specially on the 15th of July), crossed the river between Chateau

• See p. 66.

8o YPRES TO VERDUN

Thierry (which is badly damaged), Dormans (Plate 113), and Mont-
voisin, and for a few days held a precarious and unhappy* footing
on the south bank, his pontoon bridges being exposed to continual
enfilade firing, and his communications only kept up very imperfectly
in consequence. The ruin of the villages along the river here shows
how hard the shelling had been at this time.

At length came the day when Foch could let his armies off the
leash. No one can forget the thrill of that i8th of July, when the
news came through in the early afternoon in the clubs and the news-
papers that the advance for which we had hoped so long — and
which we somehow knew with a singular certainty that Foch would
make in his own time — had actually commenced. Some of us,
whether more sanguine or more wise than others I cannot say,
seemed to understand at once that the end had really begun, and
the horrible black clouds of four years were broken up as suddenly
and finally as when the sun bursts out after a thunderstorm, and
the storm which was overhead a moment before is suddenly seen
to be rolling away to the horizon. And when the late news at
night and the early news the next morning allowed us to see some-
thing of Foch's intention, and how well things were progressing,
we might well have ordered " joy bells " if it had not been for our
painful recollection of too early rejoicing over the Cambrai battle
of 1917. But the joybells were within everyone, all the same. No
doubt there is justification for the special celebration every year of
Armistice Day. But to many of us the real day of relief, the day
when the sun once more broke out on France and Britain and all
the Allied lands, was the day on which Mangin astonished the
Germans by suddenly walking through the western boundary of the
salient which they had captured with so much effort and so much
boastfulness.

The scheme of the Friedensturm was to encircle Rheims by
simultaneous advances east and west of the impassable Montagne

* An intercepted pigeon message from a German officer is said to have described
the situation south of the river as " worse than hell."

THE MARNE TO MONS 8i

de Reims, the advances to meet at Epernay (Plate 114), and there-
after the valley of the Marne to provide the long-deferred route to
Paris. On the east the advance was held up on the Vesle from the
very start by General Gouraud's skilful " false front " tactics.
Prunay was taken and retaken, and attempts made to secure a
bridge-head at Sillery (Plate 115), six miles from the city, and due
south of the Nogent de I'Abesse fort, while slight gains were made
farther east ; but practically no progress at all was effected.

South of Rheims and away to the south and east from Epernay
towards Bar-le-Duc, the war-struck ground ceases. Pleasant avenues
and undamaged i-illages are delightful to the eye after days of
wandering in the desert of the north-west. In places we even
passed through avenues of fruit-trees in full blossom.

Having failed in the east, Ludendorff redoubled his pressure on
the west of the Montague, but British troops and Italian Alpini
joined the French in holding up the critical points; and although
the salient round Rheims itself was narrowed, the Marne was not
reached and Epernaj' could only be shelled from a distance of seven
or eight miles. Near Chateau Thierry, at the western end of the
great salient, American troops aided the French in preventing
advance. Already on the i8th of July, the first day of the advance,
the French reached positions commanding the road and railway at
Soissons, on the 21st Chateau Thierry was recaptured, and the next
day saw the Germans back, for the last time, north of the river
which had been the turning-point in 1914. The 26th of July saw
an engagement which earned very special appreciation from Haig,*
the taking of the Buzancy Chateau (Plate 116) and the little plateau
on which it stands, about 300 feet above the River Crise, some four
miles south of Soissons. Buzancy had been the object of an attack
by the French and another by the Americans within a week from
the commencement of the advance, but had been pertinaciously held
by the Germans. It is in effect a narrow promontory between two
deep valleys, and an almost unassailable position. On the 28th of

* Haig's Despatches, vol. ii., p. 256.

82 YPRES TO VERDUN

July the 15th Scottish Division were told off for the attack, and the
Highlanders succeeded after a fight so notable that, although the
position was not permanently held until a day or two later, the
17th French Division erected a memorial (Plate 117) in commemora-
tion of it on the spot where the body of the foremost Highlander
was found. The monument, simple and dignified, bears the in-
scription: " Ici fleurira toujours le glorieux Chardon d'ficosse parmi
les Roses de France." Five days later the French entered Soissons
once more, and on the 5th of August the Aisne was again crossed,
and Fismes (Plate 95), on the Vesle, was taken by the Americans
on the same day. But Foch's plan led him to leave this district for
a time while equally important advances were made elsewhere.

On the loth of October the troops were back again on the old
Le Cateau battlefield, and Le Cateau was retaken, and on the next
day the whole length of the Chemin des Dames plateau was again
in the Allies' possession.

On the 4th of November we were again at Landrecies,* and
right through the Mormal Forest, while on the next day the ancient
fortifications of Le Quesnoy (Plate 118) were taken by assault and
the garrison surrendered.

Meantime French and Americans were advancing farther to the
east, outside the lines of the 1914 retreat, through extremely difficult
country, and meeting with strenuous opposition. Near Varennes
one saw still in 1920 the American notice, " Road under control;
split your convoy " (see p. 75).

The Germans, retreating, naturally cut down all the trees on
the roadsides in order to lay them across the roads to hinder our
advance ; there now remain only stumps a few feet above the ground.
It must be long before the old avenues can reappear, but cultivation
seemed to be going on normally ever^'where. The destruction of
fruit-trees in the German retreat of 1917 was a different matter,
the justification of which on military grounds seems somewhat
strained. Plate 119 is copied from a photograph in a captured

* See p. yy, ante.

THE MARNE TO MONS 83

German Report from the Hirson district. It was intended specially
to show the blowing up of a railway-bridge at Mennessis, but serves
also to show exactly the thorough and deliberate way in which the
orchards were destroyed.

At cross-roads mine craters formed a serious delay to traffic,
and the sappers (after careful investigation for, and destruction
of, the numerous booby-traps) had to bridge or to circumvent
them, or both. Bridges, of course, were all blown up. Hirson,
entered on the 8th of November (Plate 120), is an example of
many others, where there has not been time to erect a girder
bridge. Plate 121 shows one of the pile bridges over the Conde
Canal — bridges which were often erected in an incredibly short
time. The Americans reached the Meuse at Sedan (Plate 122)
on the 5th of November, and took the western half of the town on
the 7th, and the British under Byng retook the ancient fortress
of Maubeuge (Plate 123 shows the girder bridge over the Meuse
here put across after the German retreat) , which had been compelled
to surrender, after a fortnight's siege, on the 9th of November in
1914. Finally British troops (Canadians) reached Mons (Plate 124),
and entered the city at dawn on the nth of November, a few
hours before the Armistice came into effect. So ended the cam-
paign where it had been commenced more than four years earlier.
A story told by Mr. Buchan* is well worth repeating: The 8th
Division in Home's First Army had spent the winter of 1917-18
in the Ypres Salient; it had done gloriously in March in the
retreat from St. Quentin; it had fought in May in the third battle
of the Aisne, and from the beginning of August had been hotly
engaged in the British advance:

" Yet now it had the vigour of the first month of war. On the
loth of November one of its battalions, the 2nd Middlesex, travelled
for seven hours in 'buses, and then marched twenty-seven miles
pushing the enemy before them. They wanted to reach the spot

* " History of the War," xxiv., p. y^.

84 THE MARNE TO MONS

near Mons where some of them (then in the 4th Middlesex) fired
almost the first British shots in the war, and it is pleasant to record
that they succeeded."

With the recollection of this exploit and the story of Cambrai
and Bourlon (and many others) before them, will anyone in future
be daring enough to try to convince us of the physical and moral
decadence of the Cockney — a doctrine which some offensively
superior people tried to preach not so many years ago ?

PLATE CVII.

THE MONS-CONDl'i
CANAL.

General Smith - Donieit's
men it'ere in position along
the canal when they first
received the German attach
on Sunday, the 2 yd of
August, 1914.

PLATE CVIIL

SLAG HEAPS AT
MONS.

1 he colliery slag heaps close
to Mons, among which fight-
ing took place on the first
day of the retreat from Mons
in 1.(14.

To face page 84.

PLATE CIX.

THE MORMAL
FOREST.

The western end of the road
across the Mormal Forest to
Jolimelz. The wood has
been much thinned by the
Germans during their four
vears of possession.

PLATE ex.

LANDRECIES.

Here the Guards first came
into action in August, 19 14,
and here in igi8 the German
Guards failed to stand in
their retreat against our
infantry.

PLATE CXI.

LE CATEAU.

The town is very little, if at all, damai:td.
It stands close to the " Roman Road " at Ike
eastern end of the road to Camhrai, across
and to the south of which we fought heavy
rear -guard actions in 1914, and across
which, in the opposite direction, the Germans
retreated four years later.

PLATE CXI I.

THE MARNE.

This viezv gives some idea of
the size of the river. It was
taken near La Ferte-sous-
Jouarre, which was in the
British lines in the first
battle of the Marue in
September, 1914.

PLATE CXIII.

DORMANS.

0)1 the Marne, a few miles
east of Chateau Thierry.
It is one of the places covered
in Ludendorff's Frieden-
sturm advance, and there-
fore one of those first to he
recovered by Foch in 191 8.

i -.

PLATE CXIV.

EPERNAY.

Ludendorff's great attempt at encircling
Rheims involved that two advances, one east
and one west of the Montague de Reims,
should meet at Epernay, and thence advance
on Paris by the Marne Valley. But
Epernay K'as never readied from cither side,
although it was shelled from a distance of
seven or eight miles.

PLATE CXV.

THE VESLE AT
SILLERY.

About six miles from Rheiiiis,
K'hcrc General Gouraud lu-ld
up the eastern arm of Ludcn-
dorffs "pincers."

PLATE CXVL
lirZANCY

ciiAteac.

At the top of a little ridge
above the Crise, south of
Soissons. It 7!'as stormed
by the Highlanders in very
notable fashion in July, 1918.
The plateau beyond it gave
General Mangin command
of the German communica-
tions farther east.

^'lt| iH' '5!!"l!! Illft^?!

PLATE CXVII.

MONUMENT AT BUZANCY.

This memorial was erected by the ijth
French Division, who took over from the
CameroHS, i^'ith the inscription ''■ Ici fleurira
toiijoiirs le glorieux Chardon d'Ecosse parmi
les Roses dc France."

PLATE CXVIIL

LE gUESNOY.

An old toii'n tcith Vaiiban
furiijications, of n-hich the
pliotograph sliou'S the moat,
u'hich ttas taken by storm
in November, 1918.

PLATE CXIX.

DESTRUCTION OF
ORCHARDS (191 7).

.•I copy from a captured
German photograph of a
hloiiu - up railway bridge,
incidentally showing the
deliberate destruction of the
fruit-trees in the German
retreat of 191 7.

PLATE CXX.

HIRSON.

Everywhere in their retreat
of 19 1 8 the Germans natur-
ally blew up bridges in order
to hinder our progress behind
them. At Hirson the old
bridge was still only replaced
by a timber structure.

PLATE CXXI.

A PILE BRIDGE.

One of the very rapidly con-
structed pile bridges {in this
case over the Condi- Canal),
ivhich the Engineers threw
lip in place of those destroyed
in the German retreat.

PLATE CXXIL

SEDAN.

The River Mease at Sedan,
— Kihcrc the entrance of
Americans and French in
igi8 avenged the catastrophe
of half a century earlier.

PLATE CXXIII.

MAUBEUGE.

The fortifications oj Maii-
beuge, although of an old
type, held a considerable
force of Germans back in
the advance of 1914. The
bridge was, of course, de-
stroyed by the retreating
Germans in 19 18, and the
girder bridge has temporarily
replaced it.

PLATE CXXIV.

MONS.

For IIS the war began here on the 2yd of
August, 1914, and ended on the nth of
November, 191 8.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITATN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER

Vt.

THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Santa Barbara

THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW.

TAC , JUl:-.E-a

Series 94»2

3 1205 00082 6105

yC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

D 000 815 445

^J^,

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Full text of "Ypres to Verdun; a collection of photographs of the war areas in France & Flanders"

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