The bloodiest battle of 1917 was fought on the slopes of Vimy Ridge.
That ridge is seven and a half miles long and is shaped like a dog's
hind leg. Lifted up to an elevation of several hundred feet, the hill
not only commands an outlook upon the German lines eastward, but
protects the great plains that slope westward towards the English
Channel.
To hold that ridge the Germans constructed a vast system of trenches,
barbed wire barriers, Portland cement pill-boxes and underneath the
ridge, at a depth of sixty feet, they made their prisoners dig a gallery
seven and a half miles long, with rooms for the officers opening out on
either side of the long passageways.
One morning the Canadian troops started up the long sloping hillside,
under skies that rained cartridges, shells and gas bombs. So terrific
was the machine-gun fire that some cartridges cut trees in two as if
they had been cut with a saw, while others did not so much strike the
Canadian boys as cut their bodies into two parts.
Lying upon their faces they crawled up the hillside, cutting the wires
as they crept forward. Not until the second afternoon did the shattered
remnants reach the German trench that crowned the hillcrest. Then they
plunged down into the trench, while the Germans rushed down the long
stairs into the underground chamber and fled through the lower openings
of their long gallery northward towards safety.
Not until the Canadian officers led us into one of those German chambers
did we understand the black tragedy. The room was shell-proof. The soft
yellow clay was shored up by rough boards. All around the walls were
bunks. In that chamber the German officers had kept the captive French
and Belgian girls. There were two cupboards standing against the wall.
One was made of rough boards; the other was a large, exquisitely carved
walnut bureau for girls' garments. When the German officers fled from
the trench above they had just time to escape to the lower shell-proof
rooms, grab some of the treasure and flee. Unwilling to give these
captive girls their freedom, since they could not have the girls they
determined that their French and Belgian fathers and sweethearts should
not recover them.
There was just time during the excitement of the flight to unlock the
door, rush in and send a bullet through each young woman. A few minutes
later the Canadian boys swarmed through the long connecting chambers and
side rooms.
In one of those rooms they found these young women now dead or dying.
Gas bombs had already been flung down and the rooms were foul with
poisoned air. Protected by their masks the Canadian boys had time to
pick up these girls and carry them up the steps into the open air, where
they laid them down on the grass in the open sunshine. But help came too
late. Beginning with an attempt to murder the souls of the girls the
German officers had ended by slaying their bodies.
An officer saw to it that the official photographer kept the record of
the faces of these dead girls. Once they must have been divinely
beautiful, for all were lovely beyond the average. One could understand
the pride and joy of a father or lover when he looked upon the young
girl's face. The slender body made one think of the tall lily stem,
crowned with that flower named the face and glorious head. Strangely
enough they seemed to sleep as if peace had come, after long pain.
Plainly death had been longed for.
Weeks passed by. The photographs of the dead girls were shown in the
hope that if possible word might reach their parents, but no friend had
been found to recognize them. One day a Canadian officer, making slow
recovery in a hospital near the coast, was asked by his nurse for the
photograph.
It seemed there was a Belgian woman working in the hospital. Her village
had been entirely destroyed. Her home was gone and all whom she loved
had disappeared. By some accident the Red Cross nurse remembered this
photograph and decided to show it to the Belgian woman who had passed so
swiftly from abundance and happiness to the utmost of poverty and
heart-break. Almost unwillingly at first the woman looked at the print.
A moment later she held the picture out at arm's length, rose to her
feet, then drew it to her lips and hugged it to her breast.
With streaming eyes she almost shouted, "Thank God! Julia is dead!
Thank God! Julia is dead! Now I know there is a God in Israel, for Julia
is dead, is dead--is dead! Thank God! Thank God!"
Though for a long time the doves had been in the clutches of the German
hawks; though for a long time the lambs had been in the jaws of the
German wolves; when all else failed death came and released the lovely
girls from the clutch of German assassins.