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Vaast, poor shattered villages of the dead where months of incessant bombardment have driven away the last inhabitants and left roofless houses and rent roadways.... "Two days before, a quiet room, where Nelson's Prayer stands on the mantel-shelf, saw the ripening of the plans that sent these sturdy sons of Britain's four kingdoms marching all through the night.
Our artillery fire had died down and the night was quiet when we marched into our assembly trenches at Neuville St. Vaast. The Stokes gun that I was with and one other were detailed to go over with the last wave of the 27th Battalion. That meant that we would have to go the farthest.
The Abbot of Saint Vaast was immediately despatched on a special mission to Spain, and the troops, by midsummer, had already begun to pour, into the Netherlands. In the meantime, Farnese, while awaiting these reinforcements, had not been idle, but had been quietly picking up several important cities.
The next day the march to Henin Lietard was most interesting, though the rain fell in torrents. Our route was by Neuville St. Vaast, Vimy Ridge, Willerval, through the area we had been in for some months; now the ridge was miles behind the line. The roads leading up to the old enemy line were execrable.
Almost every house had been hit, every building was scarred and slashed, but for the most part the city still stood, so that I went through many long streets and passed long lines of houses, all deserted, all dreadful in their silence and desolation and ruin. Then I came to the cathedral of St.-Vaast.
Any one who looks at a staff map of North-West France will see that there are two Richebourgs; there is Richebourg St. Vaast, but there is also Richebourg l'Avoué, and although those two communes are separated by a bare three or four kilometres there was in point of climate a considerable difference between the two.
From the wonderful window at the back of the inn, high perched as Cassel is above a wide plain, one looked back upon the roads to St. Omer and the south, and thought of the days last April, when squadron after squadron of French cavalry came riding hot and fast along them to the relief of our hard-pressed troops, after the break of the Portuguese sector of the line at Richebourg St. Vaast.
Eloi Colonel Jones was slightly wounded in the left hand by a six-inch shell, which burst alongside the car. He was sent to Hospital, but returned to us ten days later. On the 29th we moved into Neuville St. Vaast, living in tunnels and dug-outs, and provided large working parties in the mines. Tactically we were at the disposal of the 25th Division, to whom we lent one or two Lewis Gun teams.
We have this morning been visiting two objects, which exhibit this country in very different points of view as the seat of wealth, and the abode of poverty. The first is the abbey of St. Vaast, a most superb pile, now inhabited by monks of various orders, but who are preparing to quit it, in obedience to the late decrees.
I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke. Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded soldier under fire, Major Ronald B , D.S.O., of the Royal Army Medical Corps, aged 42. Greater love hath no man than this. We had business with the maire of the commune of Richebourg St. Vaast.
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