Quiet days found many a British soldier hard at work over a French-English "conversation-book." Some of these were hurriedly prepared and of a character truly extraordinary. One such book, made up for the benefit of an industrious young man, contained a question that, translated, ran thus:—
"Q. Where is the cat of my mother's aunt?"
"A. No, but the kittens are drowned."
In Vermelles, on January 15th, I took a dozen photographs showing the devastation that can be worked by French high explosive shells.
Vermelles was an object lesson. Held by the Germans as strongly as any town was held in front of the French position south of the La Bassée canal, trenched and barricaded with wonderful skill, and well supported by a mass of guns, its capture was only effected after weeks of sapping and an artillery bombardment that had up to that time been without parallel. Its ruins held texts for innumerable sermons on the newer strategy of present-day warfare.
A French officer of standing had told me that he considered the taking of Vermelles from the Germans a most hopeful sign that the French could take any and all German positions in like manner, if they cared to pay the price in men and ammunition.
Geographically, Vermelles was in what was bound to prove a "warm corner." The German thrust westward from La Bassée, with Bethune as an objective, had cost the British Expeditionary Force some of the hardest fighting it had seen.
In that area our Second Corps, then the Indian Corps, and lastly our First Corps, with the French troops at times in action with us, had withstood a battering that no other point in the long line from the sea to the Vosges, save possibly the Ypres Salient, had been called upon to stand.
The German advance to the westward had reached Vermelles, and there been held. Their farthermost line was in front of the western edge of the town, and close to the main road that led through it. The enemy was in possession of Vermelles for a couple of months.
As no English troops had participated in the taking of Vermelles from the Huns, except for the assistance rendered by some of our heavier batteries, we knew little of what had happened in that theatre save that six weeks of sapping, a mad rush after an unprecedented bombardment, and terrific hand-to-hand bayonet fighting in the streets, had resulted in the French occupation of the town on December 7th.