In several cases it was not men they hit, but women and children who, when the war seemed to have passed from this place a year ago, crept back to their homes and built little wooden booths in which they sold papers and picture postcards to the troops. Now suddenly the war has flamed over them again and they were caught, before they could escape, by thunderbolts out of the shining moonlight, terribly clear and revealing dead horses about the ruined streets.
TRYING TO TAKE ARRAS
Friday, March 29.—The enemy's pressure has for the time being relaxed a little across the Somme, east of Corbie, and whatever effort he has made during the last day and night has been repulsed with the most heavy losses.
Yesterday the most exciting situation and the fiercest struggle was on the left of the British battleline, from Gavrelle southward to below the Scarpe. It was a deliberate, resolute effort by the enemy to capture Arras. Three divisions of special storm troops, the 184th, 12th, and 27th Reserve, had been brought up for this purpose, though one of them had been engaged before and roughly handled. They were ordered to take Arras yesterday at all costs, and before their advance very heavy bombardment was flung over the British lines from about 5 o'clock in the morning for several hours.
Their main thrust was toward Roeux, that frightful little village, with its chemical works, which I used to write about so much in April and May last. Once again yesterday it became a shambles. The British had machine guns well placed with a wide field of fire, and as the Germans came down the slopes they were swept with streams of bullets, which cut swaths in their formations, but once again, as on March 21, the enemy was reckless of life, theirs as well as the British, and always his tide of men flowed forward, passing over dead and wounded, and creeping forward like flowing water. The British field guns raked them while the heavies pulled further back to avoid being blown up or captured.
FIGHT FOR ORANGE HILL
On and about Orange Hill and Telegraph Hill British battalions who know this ground of old fought tenaciously under murderous machine-gun fire, the enemy's screen of infantry covering machine-gun batteries which were rushed forward very quickly and took up positions in shell holes and behind bits of broken wall and any kind of cover, in ditches and sunken roads.
A footing gained by the enemy on part of Orange Hill and Infantry Hill rendered it necessary to fall back yesterday toward the old German support lines before that battle in April, 1917. The British fought like tigers, and would not retire until the pressure on them made it impossible to resist the continual thrust of new attacks by fresh troops. There were heroic actions by small groups of men struggling to hold up the front line, and some of them stayed so long after the enemy had broken beyond them that they were cut off.
Frightful fighting was happening not far from Neuville, Vitasse, and Mercatel and in this neighborhood the British held out with wonderful determination until exhausted by battle and until only a poor remnant of men had strength to stand against these massed attacks.
By the end of the day the enemy's assaults weakened, and then died out because his losses were enormous and the spirit of his attack was broken by such stubborn resistance.