ON A HILL
Just before the great Vimy Ridge offensive
a crowd of us stood on a small hillock
beside our camp, which is in a wood six or seven
miles behind our lines, to watch the "earthquake"
that was to open on Thelus at 3 p.m.,
and of which we had been told by brigade.
The "earthquake" was to take the form of a
bombardment of Thelus,--a small town one
mile behind the German lines, opposite our
front, and which, from the lines, we could see
very distinctly with the naked eye,--by every
gun of ours that could throw a shell into it. As
guns here are much more numerous to the
square mile than they were even at the Somme,
and as others are going forward day and night,
some so large that it takes eight or ten horses
to pull them, and as ammunition goes forward
at the rate of three or four hundred motor
lorries full daily for each mile of front, this means
indeed an earthquake.
We stood on the hillock at the "zero" hour,
and on the stroke of three, shells began to burst
on the skyline. Some, high explosives probably,
caused those immense black upheavals of
earth which, except for their color, remind one
of nothing so much as the spouting of a whale
at sea. Others bursting higher in the air,
shrapnel very likely, left large, white, fleecy
clouds just above the skyline, and a third type
burst with a flash of flame, and left brown
clouds of smoke in their wake.
Higher in the air, all along the front, some
near, some far, some ours, and others the
enemy's, hung nine immense observation
balloons; and soaring in and out among them were
twenty-one aeroplanes by actual count at one
moment. Some of them were being shelled,
for fluffy clouds of smoke were about them
showing the bursting shells from anti-aircraft
guns, and while we watched two machines
engaged in one of those ever-interesting air duels,
out of which one of them came nosing down
into the earth. Whether it was our machine
or an enemy we could not tell at the distance.
Even the sights on the earth were of interest.
The tall Gothic towers on the hill at
Mt. St. Eloy were silhouetted against the blue of
the sky, on our right. On the extreme left
was an emaciated forest, standing out against
the horizon; and between these two land-marks
were countless acres of cultivated ground, just
about to give forth the first sprouts of the
hoped-for harvest. Here and there the white
walls of the limestone farm houses, with their
red-tiled roofs, broke the monotony; and about
the center of the picture a group of them with
the shell-shattered spire of a church in their
midst formed the village of Villers aux Bois.
To the left of this latter place lay a peaceful
cemetery with some two thousand graves of
British, French, and Canadian soldiers who
had given up their lives on the blood-stained
soil of France in the cause of liberty.
Distinctly we could see through glasses a padre
saying prayers for the dead over the bodies of
some of the allied soldiers which were being
laid in the newly-dug graves.
Beyond the cemetery a road twisted here
and there, and along it hurried from time to
time motor ambulances, with the large, red
cross on their sides; motor lorries, full of food
and munitions; limbers, painted in vari-colored
patterns, and looking like a calithumpian
procession, to make them inconspicuous against
the earth to the German aviators; large guns
drawn by strings of horses; pack mules with
their burdens of shells; and motor cyclists
hurrying forward or rearward with messages.
And all this in the cause of the great god, Mars!