The most desperate fighting has been along the short ten-mile front from Arras to Aix-Noulette, which began March 9 with the taking of a few hundred yards of trenches on the watershed of Notre Dame de Lorette, where there are the ruins of an old Merovingian military road. Every day since then some section of the German trenches has been taken, lost, or retaken.
Each side has been employing formidable artillery both of small and heavy calibre, the French guns being somewhat more numerous and served with unlimited quantities of high explosive shells.
A correspondent of The Associated Press today went through five or six miles of the trenches formerly held by the Germans and reconstructed by the French, who now have abandoned them to move forward. Upward of 100,000 Germans have fallen or been captured in these trenches, according to the French official count, since the second week of March. The French losses, the correspondent was confidentially informed, while serious, have been much smaller than those of the Germans. There are thickets of little crosses made of twigs tied together, marking the graves between the trenches. Some of these graves have been torn up by the shell fire.
Almost every square yard of this region is marked by miniature craters caused by exploding shells. Spots where shells penetrated the earth without exploding are indicated by signs bearing the words "Live Shell."
One line of the German works was just below the summit of a steep slope which, from the nature of the ground, could not be shelled without danger to the French position a little higher up. The Germans were sheltered in dugouts under the hillside, and their French assailants, sliding or jumping down into the trenches, were shot or bayoneted from caves. The line was finally taken by tossing grenades by the basketful into the trenches until most of the defenders in the concaved shelters were killed or wounded. Every curve or angle in the miles of labyrinthine cuttings has its story of tragedy and heroism.
In the party which went over this ground and into the firing trenches within calling distance of the German lines with The Associated Press correspondent were Owen Johnson, Arnold Bennett, Walter Hale and George H. Mair, the last representing the British Foreign Office. As they approached the lines one shell from a four-inch gun burst within twenty-five yards of them, while others exploded only thirty or forty yards away. This incident seemed greatly to amuse the soldiers in the trenches, who laughed heartily at the embarrassment of the civilians.
The visitors were invited by the soldiers into their shelters, which are dry caves with narrow entrances and with clay floors covered with matting or sacking and faintly illuminated by the light which filters in from the entrance or by bits of candle on the inside. Men who had been on duty throughout the night were sleeping in these caves.
The men on the firing line express the utmost confidence that what was done yesterday and this morning they can keep on doing until the war has been won. They never hear the vague, unverified reports circulated in Paris, sometimes of tremendous and impossible victories, sometimes sinister hints of disaster. They know what they have done since March 9, when they were ordered to act on this part of the Aisne. They talk as a matter of course of another winter campaign, because, they say, it will take another year to break the German power.
ARRAS’ GRASS-GROWN STREETS
An Associated Press dispatch of July 9 from Arras via Paris reads: