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The Germans in the dugouts could not be coaxed out. Explosives thrown into their hiding places must have produced appalling consequences. The sturdy Canadians did not relish this kind of work, but there was no alternative. For an hour they searched the mine shafts and galleries around Givenchy and destroyed them.
Early on the morning of October 29 we started, riding first along the canal by Béthune. As for Festubert, Givenchy, Violaines, Rue de Marais, Quinque Rue, and La Bassée, we never want to see them again. The censor was kind. Dorsets, I think. I do not say this paragraph is true. It is what I thought on 15th October 1914. The weather was depressing. Optimist!
The battles which have raged since the end of September on the front between Givenchy la Gobelle and Armentières, have confirmed the deadly seriousness of the English. And if they have not obtained great successes, still, in this gigantic grapple, they have displayed desperate courage which compels the admiration of their opponents.
The sweep through Serbia had released several hundred thousand men for service elsewhere. For a month the Germans had been hammering and probing at Loos, Givenchy, Armentières, and other points with the evident object of finding a weak spot. Along the Neuville-Givenchy road especially the Germans made no fewer than twenty-five determined attacks between the 1st and 17th of February, 1916.
He eyed the tall young officer affectionately. "He has been fighting since the beginning," he said, "handling a machine gun in all sorts of terrible places. And nothing ever touches him." A discussion followed as to where I was to be taken. There was a culm heap near the Givenchy brickyards which was rather favoured as a lookout spot.
Towards midnight we had a long check at Merville, a placid little town with tree-planted boulevards along the banks of the Lys, while Canadian guns and transport passed us going north from their second great fight at Festubert and Givenchy.
Their attacks in the Artois fell chiefly between Hulluch and Hill 70, and southeast of Givenchy, against the heights of Petit Vimy. The Germans succeeded in retaking small sections of first-line trenches, but lost some of their new trenches in return. Whereas the Allies held practically all they had gained, the Germans were considerably the losers by the transaction.
In places the attack has shaken loose from the trenches and was being delivered along the lines of the old Napoleonic strategy. The British captures of Vimy and later of Givenchy were looked on as victories of the utmost importance, equal to the storming by the Canadians of the Vimy Ridge.
There had been gardens around the houses of Givenchy once, before the place had been made into a desert of rubble and brickdust. And, somehow, life had survived in those bruised and battered gardens, and the delicious mess of gooseberries that we had for dessert stood as proof thereof. The meal was seasoned by good talk. I love to hear the young British officers talk. It is a liberal education.
We were always living on the verge of the Big Push, and many times in 1915 had thought that it had started at Neuve Chapelle, Givenchy, Loos only to give up hope when these battles stagnated after a day or two. Now there were preparations going forward again, this time apparently on a much larger scale than we had ever seen before, so we felt justified once more in hoping for the great event.
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