A Surgeon in Arms

by R. J. Manion

I explained that the easiest way was overland to Neuville St. Vaast, and then down the road, but as we still heard the bullets passing a few feet above the parapet it might not be the safest. He smiled whimsically, and said he would personally rather take the risk than plow through this dreadful mud, but perhaps they'd better stick to the trenches. We chatted a few moments more, and they put their feet once again to the task of getting them through the trenches, the rather thin legs of the young officer pushing him determinedly along behind the others.

That evening the Colonel informed me that he had learned at Brigade that my questioner of the afternoon was the Prince of Wales, who is Honorary Chairman of a Commission in charge of British cemeteries in France. And this removes, for me at least, the idea which many of us had that, while the Prince is in France, he is kept well out of the danger zone. For on this day he was well up toward the front lines and under filthy trench conditions at that. A Prince with as much red blood in his veins as he displayed in making that journey should not have enough blue blood to prevent his being some day a strong and righteous monarch.

CHAPTER XVI
THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE

On Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, occurred on the western front the great push which has been named by the press the Battle of Arras. For some days previously our bombardment of the enemy lines had been almost continuous, the so-called "drum fire" which sounded like rolls of thunder. At times during the night the rumble would become a roar, and one of my tent mates would half awaken, and say:

"Well, they're giving poor Heiny hell tonight," and the tone would almost imply pity. A grunt from the rest of us, and then we'd roll over on our steel-hard cots to try unsuccessfully to find a soft spot, and shortly the snores from one of the officers who was notorious for snoring would drown even the roll of the guns.

Since the Somme advance in 1916 no great pushback of the Germans had occurred. After all the many and great preparations had been completed, an attack was now to be made on a ten-mile front north and south of the ruined city of Arras by British and Canadian troops. To the Canadians fell the lot of taking the famous Vimy Ridge which they, with the absolutely necessary assistance of almost unlimited artillery, successfully took, consolidated, and held, on Easter Monday, April 9.

The argument which sometimes occurs as to whether the artillery or infantry did the greater work in the taking of the Ridge is beside the question; one was as necessary as the other. The artillery could have hammered the Ridge until it became absolutely uninhabitable by the enemy, but the artillery could not consolidate and hold the Ridge, which could be done only by foot-soldiers. Without the proper aid being given by artillery, no foot soldiers in the world, be they ever so valorous, could have taken this strongly fortified hill.

The taking of this Ridge was considered a most difficult achievement for the reason that the French in 1915 nearly captured it, but with losses estimated unofficially at from 150,000 to 200,000 men. Anyone who has been in this neighborhood and has seen the areas dotted with equipment and bones of killed French soldiers, and the trenches marked at almost every turn by little white wooden crosses, "Erected to an unknown French soldier," by their British allies, could hardly doubt these figures. Then the Allies, after holding the conquered part of the Ridge for some months, were pushed off it by the Germans, who successfully held it till the Battle of Arras.

Before this battle it was said that French and British were betting odds that the Canadians would not succeed in this project of taking the Ridge. These facts are not given in any spirit of rivalry or criticism, but only as points of interest and to give honor where honor is due. The Canadians certainly can never complain that they were denied their proper meed of praise by the British press and public for their work at Vimy, but neither can it be gainsaid that they deserved the praise accorded.