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Updated: May 23, 2025
The impression of success exceeded the reality, and a historian writing some months afterwards declared that by the 29th "the Vimy Heights had been won": it required a considerable Canadian victory a year and a half later to give much substance to this claim, and most of the ground secured in September 1915, including the Givenchy Wood, La Folie, and Thelus, was found to be in German hands when the line from Lens to Arras was taken over by British troops.
The noise was the worst part as the effects were generally local; but one night a hut containing 2nd L.F.A. personnel was hit and twelve killed and sixteen wounded. A few shells landed on our parade ground but did no damage. In the course of our wanderings in this part of the line Battalion Headquarters had a spell in the Thelus chalk caves. They are said to have once connected with Mont St.
"In the morning we see boys with their heads blown off" that morning beyond the Point du Jour and Thelus we had passed a group of headless boys, and another coming up stared at them with a silly smile and said, "They've copped it all right!" and went on to the same risk; and we had crouched below mounds of earth when shells had scattered dirt over us and scared us horribly, so that we felt a little sick in the stomach "and in the afternoon we walk through this garden where the birds are singing... There is no sense in it.
They had no reason to fear a French offensive in the immediate future. For one thing the condition of the ground was still too unfavorable. The French at this stage occupied practically the entire semicircle from Hill 70 to the town of Thelus, excepting a portion between Givenchy and Petit Vimy. Hill 140, the predominant feature in the district, was almost all in French hands.
The road was a vital spot, and more shells were dropped on it than upon any other place of the same area on the Western front. On the top, about two hundred yards away, lay the ruined village of Thelus; once in it we should be comparatively safe. I was in the last section of my platoon, and at the top I paused to look about me at the scene that presented itself.
Souchez, most of the Givenchy Wood, La Folie farm, and Thelus were captured, and on the 28th they made some progress up the Vimy slopes.
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