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Updated: June 19, 2025
On our right the French were fighting desperately at Souchez and Neuville St.-Vaast and up the lower slopes of Vimy, suffering horrible casualties and failing to gain the heights in spite of the reckless valor of their men, but alarming the German staffs, who for a time had lost touch with the situation their telephones had been destroyed by gun-fire and were filled with gloomy apprehensions.
I do wish, for many reasons, that you could have heard the recitation by Brochard of Jean Bastia's "L'Autre Cortege," in which the poet foresees the day "When Joffre shall return down the Champs Elysées" to the frenzied cries of the populace saluting its victorious army, and greeting with wild applause "Pétain, who kept Verdun inviolated," "De Castelnau, who three times in the fray saw a son fall at his side," "Gouraud, the Fearless," "Marchand, who rushed on the Boches brandishing his cane," "Mangin, who retook Douaumont," and "All those brave young officers, modest even in glory, whose deeds the world knows without knowing their names," and the soldier heroes who held the frontier "like a wall of steel from Flanders to Alsace," the heroes of Souchez, of Dixmude, of the Maison du Passeur, of Souain, of Notre Dame de Lorette, and of the great retreat.
Crossing the plateau from North to South was the main Béthune, Souchez, Arras road, on which stood the remains of an old inn, the Cabaret Rouge, where some excellent deep dug-outs provided accommodation for the French Poste de Colonel and an Advanced Dressing Station.
But there was little positive news beyond the short French statement: 'We have taken Souchez. Yet in the evening all the last preparations for attack were hastily carried through. A Berks and a Bucks dump were dug in the trenches, in which were collected all the engineering material required for an assault tools, sandbags, trench bridges and flags for marking out positions in the captured line.
The valley of the Lys is to the north of the Lorette ridge. To the east the land descends to the long, narrow valley in which is the highway between Arras and Bethune. La Targette and Souchez are along the way. Again the land rolls upward to the hills of Vimy with the Lens-Arras highway beyond them. The Teutons held a salient in this region at the beginning of May, 1915.
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.
I went there first to the hill of Notre Dame de Lorette looking northward to Lens, and facing the Vimy Ridge, which the enemy held as a strong barrier against us above the village of Souchez and Ablain St.-Nazaire and Neuville St.-Vaast, which the French had captured when they were still there; and I am glad of that, for I saw in their places the men who had lived there and fought there as one may read in the terrible and tragic narrative of war by Henri Barbusse in Le Feu.
The fighting was in and out of ruined buildings, collieries, pit derricks, and the usual structures of a mining settlement. It was continued on the following day, advance being made on a total front of about four miles to a depth of over a mile. The result of these attacks was to give the British a series of strongly organized defensive systems on both banks of the river Souchez covering Lens.
Topping a little rise, the moon came out bright, and away ahead the silver ribbon of the Souchez gleamed for an instant; the bare poles that once had been Bouvigny Wood were behind us, and to the right, to the left, a pulverized ruin where houses had stood.
On April 3, 1916, a French dirigible appeared above Audun-le-Roman, bombarding the railway station, while on the same day a German Aviatik was winged at Souchez, crashing to the earth and killing the occupants. On April 4, 1916, a sensational aerial battle took place between more than a score of Austrian and Italian machines above Ancona.
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