And in this fighting, for the first time in British history, and in the history of Europe, Americans stood side by side in battle with British and French. "In the battle of March and April," says Sir Douglas Haig, "American and British troops have fought shoulder to shoulder in the same trenches, and have shared together in the satisfaction of beating off German attacks. All ranks of the British Army look forward to the day when the rapidly growing strength of the American Army will allow American and British soldiers to co-operate in offensive action."
That day came without much delay. It carried the British Army to Mons, and the young American Army to Sedan.
Looking out from the Vimy Ridge six weeks ago, and driving thence through Arras across the Drocourt-Quéant line to Douai and Valenciennes, I was in the very heart of that triumphant stand of the Third and First Armies round Arras which really determined the fate of the German attack.
The Vimy Ridge from the west is a stiffish climb. On the east also it drops steeply above Petit Vimy and Vimy, while on the south and south-east it rises so imperceptibly from the Arras road that the legend which describes the Commander-in-Chief, approaching it from that side, as asking of the officers assembled to meet him after the victory—"And where is this ridge that you say you have taken?" seems almost a reasonable tale. But to east and west there is no doubt about it. One climbs up the side overlooking Ablain St. Nazaire through shell-holes and blurred trenches, over snags of wire, and round the edges of craters, till on the top one takes breath on the wide plateau where stands the Canadian monument to those who fell in the glorious fight of April 9th, 1917, and whence the eye sweeps that wide northern and eastern plain, towards Lille on the one side and Douai on the other, which to our war-beaten and weary soldiers, looking out upon it when the ridge at last was theirs, was almost as new and strange a world as the Pacific was to its first European beholders.
Westwards across the valley whence our troops stormed the hill, rises the Bouvigny Wood, and the long, blood-stained ridge of Notre Dame de Lorette, where I stood just before the battle, in 1917. To the north we are looking through the horizon shadows to La Bassée, Bailleul, and the Salient. Immediately below the hill, in the same direction, lie the ruin heaps of Lens, and of the mining towns surrounding it; while behind us the ground slopes south and south-east to Arras and the Scarpe.
It is a tremendous position. That even the merest outsider can see. In old days the hill must have been a pleasant rambling ground for the tired workers of the coal-mining districts. Then the war-blast at its fiercest passed over it. To-day in its renewed solitude, its sacred peace, it represents one of the master points of the war, bought and held by a sacrifice of life and youth, the thought of which holds one's heart in grip, as one stands there, trying to gather in the meaning of the scene. Not one short year ago it was in the very centre of the struggle. If Arras and Vimy had not held, things would have been grave indeed. Had they been captured, says the official report of the Third Army, "our main lateral communications—Amiens—Doullens—St. Pol—St. Omer—would have been seriously threatened if not cut." The Germans were determined to have them, and they fought for them with a desperate courage. Three assault divisions were to have carried the Vimy Ridge, while other divisions were to have captured Arras and the line of the Scarpe. The attack was carried out with the greatest fierceness, men marching shoulder to shoulder into the furnace of battle. But this time there was no fog to shield them, or to blind the British guns. The enemy losses were appalling, and after one day's fighting, in spite of the more northerly attacks on our line still to come, the German hopes of victory were in the dust, and—as we now know—for ever.
That is what Vimy means—what Arras means—in the fighting of last year. We ponder it as we drive through the wrecked beauty of Arras and out on to the Douai road on our way to Valenciennes. We passed slowly along the road to the east of Arras, honeycombed still with dug-outs, and gun emplacements, and past trenches and wire fields, till suddenly a mere sign-board, nothing more—"Gavrelle!"—shows us that we are approaching the famous Drocourt-Quéant switch of the Hindenburg line, which the Canadians and the 17th British Corps, under Sir Henry Horne, stormed and took in September of last year. Presently, on either side of the road as we drive slowly eastward, a wilderness of trenches runs north and south. With what confident hope the Germans dug and fortified and elaborated them years ago!—with what contempt of death and danger our men carried them not six months since! And now not a sign of life anywhere—nothing but groups of white crosses here and there, emerging from the falling dusk, and the débris of battle along the road.
A weary way to Douai, over the worst road we have struck yet, and a weary way beyond it to Denain and Valenciennes. Darkness falls and hides the monotonous scene of ruin, which indeed begins to change as we approach Valenciennes, the Headquarters of the First Army. And at last, a bright fire in an old room piled with books and papers, a kind welcoming from the officer reigning over it, and the pleasant careworn face of an elderly lady with whom we are billeted.
Best of all, a message from the Army Commander, Sir Henry Horne, with whom we had made friends in 1917, just before the capture of the Vimy Ridge, in which the First Army played so brilliant a part.