A bird's-eye view of shattered Vermelles, January, 1915
face p. 28
Major Desmond Fitzgerald of the Lancers and a gas-pipe trench-mortar
But sapping and mining, and entrenching and consolidating, so valuable in themselves, responsible for the finely fortified position of the Germans in Vermelles, and the splendid mole-advance against them by the French, was not the chief factor that was to play the decisive part in the war-game that culminated in the capture of the town on December 7th.
Gun-fire was the decisive element. To the beloved "soixante-quinze" was to go the chief honour. Only a careful personal inspection of the town could tell one the real story of Vermelles as I saw it on January 15th. The camera might assist, and, in spite of the dull weather, I obtained a few pictures with that end in view, but the camera could give one the story only haltingly and in part.
Not one building in all the town was unwrecked. The French "75's," with some aid from the British howitzers, reduced Vermelles to ruins in the most literal and complete sense. Every edifice, from the piles of brick around the few tottering walls that was once a proud château to the humblest barn or outbuilding, was in itself a study. The evidence left by such shell-fire of its power for evil is of fascinating interest owing to its infinite variety. One wall had withstood half-a-dozen punctures of varying diameter, holes four or five feet in width, some of them, while its fellow beside it had crumbled into a formless mass of débris. Side by side were two houses, one with front practically intact, its roof gone and its interior and back portion blown to bits, the other minus front wall, but still standing, its roof at a crazy angle, resting insecurely on the remainder of the building, which, save for a scar here and there, escaped comparatively untouched.