That was the finest exploit of the British 'Cavalry, but elsewhere it did splendid work, and everywhere the men were gallant and cool, as when some of the dragoons came under a heavy shrapnel fire near Gentille, and many men had to shoot their wounded horses to put them out of their agony.
Dashing Canadians
Away from Arras and down on the south of the line a certain body of Canadians have been having some of the most astounding adventures in all this battle, and fighting with valor and heroic audacity. They are officers and men of a machine gun detachment organized in the early days of the war by a French Canadian officer.
For ten days these Canadians have fought running fights with the German artillery, have engaged German cavalry and smashed them, have checked enemy columns crossing bridges and pouring onward, have scattered large bodies of men surrounding British troops, and in ten days of crowded life have destroyed many German storm troops and helped to hold up the tide of their advance. Their own losses have not been light, for these Canadians have been filled with a grim passion of determination, and when the supreme test came they fought and died.
Sometimes they fought in long gray open cars, and sometimes they fought dismounted, with machine guns on the ground; but always they fought through the ten days and nights, with less than twenty hours' sleep all that time. These cars near Maricourt gathered together 150 men who had been cut off and held the enemy at bay, covering the withdrawal of some of the British heavy guns and tanks. At that time they fought dismounted, with Vickers guns, in front of the barbed wire. The Canadians had many casualties, and a Captain's arm was torn away by an explosive bullet, and at last only a Sergeant and two men of the battery were left unwounded. One of them mounted a motor cycle and brought back cars and took back the wounded. Two cars found the enemy massing up a road, and their machine guns enfiladed the field-gray men and killed them in large numbers.
Near La Motte they fought heavy bodies of German cavalry, killed a number, and put the rest to flight. They have not been seen since. At Cerisy a battalion of Germans, 600 strong, was encountered at a crossroads by one car, which brought them to a standstill and dispersed them with heavy losses. Everywhere they have been these Canadian armored cars have helped to steady the line and give confidence to the infantry.
British Airmen at Work
Thursday, April 4.—It has been raining hard these two nights past and this morning. For the German gunners trying to drag up field artillery or long-range guns there is now sticky bog and slime to come through. It is hard work for the German field companies, pressed furiously, to lay narrow-gauge lines over these deserts. All that spells delay in their plans and loss of life.
There is terror for the enemy over these fields in daylight and darkness, for the British flying men have gone out in squadrons to scatter death and destruction among them. This work has reached fantastic heights of horror for the German troops under the menace of it. There have been times when, I believe, the British have had as many as 300 airplanes up at one time. One squadron alone on one night dropped six tons of bombs over enemy concentrations, and each man went out six times. Another squadron went out four times in one night, and was bombing for eleven hours.
When the enemy was advancing in masses the British flying men flew as low as 100 feet, dropping bombs among them and firing into them with machine guns. They attacked German patrols of cavalry and scattered them and machine-gunned trenches full of men, batteries in action and transport crowding down narrow roads. They fought German scouts and crushed them, and there are several cases in which they fought German airplanes at night, so that it was like a fight between vampire bats up there where the clouds were touched by moonlight.