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They looked like the tunnels to coal-pits. They were inhabited by a race of French unknown to the boulevards men, bearded, deeply tanned, and caked with clay. Their uniforms were like those of football players on a rainy day at the end of the first half. We were entering what had been the village of Ablain, and before us rose the famous heights of Mont de Lorette.
But we are safely through, and a little further we come to a wood a charming wood, to all seeming, of small trees, which in a week or two will be full of spring leaf and flower. But we are no sooner in it, jolting up its main track, than we understand the grimness of what it holds. Spring and flowers have not much to say to it! For this wood and its neighbourhood Ablain St.
A boy officer came up out of a hole and saluted the captain, who stepped back and said, in an emotional way: "Tiens! C'est toi, Edouard?" "Oui, mon Capitaine." The boy had a fine, delicate, Latin face, with dark eyes and long, black eyelashes. "You are a lieutenant, then? How does it go, Edouard?" "It does not go," answered the boy like that French sergeant in Ablain St.-Nazaire.
They arrived at Ablain without accident. There they inquired and learned that the prince had in reality quitted Bethune and stationed himself between Cambria and La Venthie. Therefore, leaving directions at every place for Grimaud, they took a crossroad which conducted the little troop by the bank of a small stream flowing into the Lys.
A cold rain was falling and had turned the streets of Ablain and all the roads to it into swamps. In these were islands of bricks and lakes of water of the solidity and color of melted chocolate. Whatever you touched clung to you. It was a land of mud, clay, liquid earth. A cold wind whipped the rain against your face and chilled you to the bone. All you saw depressed and chilled your spirit.
The blue line was like the mark of a tide on a chart; in certain places it had nearly surrounded a German position, and shortly the Germans would have to retire from that position or be cut off. Famous names abounded on that map such as Souchez, Ablain St. Nazaire, St. Eloi, Fonds de Buval.
The last named was so called because it was an elaborate system of trenches and redoubts in an angle between two roads. The White Road surrendered on May 21, 1915. Ablain was taken on May 29, 1915. The Souchez sugar factory fell on May 31, 1915. Neuville St. Vaast was captured on June 8, 1915. The Labyrinth, however, remained under German control.
In the Artois they seized the junction of the highroads between Bethune and Arras and between Ablain and Angres. North of Carleul they held the Germans in check against a heavy artillery, infantry, and bomb attack, but were driven out of some trenches they had previously won on Lingekopf.
But to east and west there is no doubt about it. One climbs up the side overlooking Ablain St.
The Germans captured there made a total of more than 5,000 prisoners taken by the French. Notre Dame de Lorette with its chapel and fort was also taken this same day, as was Ablain which was in flames when it was surrendered. Thus all of the highland to the west of Souchez was held by the French except a few fortins on eastern ridges.
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