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We get all our ranges and the records of all our hits, from Normabell." I looked a question, I suppose. "You called on him, I think up on the Pimple. Major Normabell, D.S.O." That was how I learned the name of the imperturbable major with whom I had smoked a pipe on the crest of Vimy Ridge. I shall always remember his name and him.
The battle did not succeed in converting the war from one of positions into one of movement; but if the Vimy position could be so completely demolished in two or three days, there seemed little prospect of permanence for any German stronghold in France, and a few repetitions of the battle of Arras bade fair to make an end of the Hindenburg lines and of the German occupation of French territory.
You would see him, if the sculptor followed my thought, sitting in front of his shell-hole on Vimy Ridge, calm, dispassionate, devoted to his duty and the day's work, quietly giving the directions that guided the British guns in their work of blasting the Hun out of the refuge he had chosen when the Canadians had driven him from the spot where the major sat.
Vaast had once been a town of some size; now one looked in vain for even one standing wall. There was more of Vimy left and under collapsed houses were deep dug-outs of German origin. At this time the army of Prince Ruprecht was somewhere opposite and an attack was expected. In fact some details were given.
In Germany they were known as the Siegfried lines, a name which properly only applied to the sector between Cambrai and La Fère which was also protected by the St. Quentin canal. That was the front of the new German position; its flanks rested on the Vimy Ridge to the north, and on the St. Gobain forest and the Chemin des Dames to the south.
Nor throughout the war was there a finer achievement than the Canadian capture of the Vimy Ridge or the British five-mile advance in a few hours to Fampoux. The German losses in men and guns also exceeded any that the British had yet inflicted in a similar period; in the first three days of the battle some 12,000 prisoners and 150 guns were taken.
Best of all, a message from the Army Commander, Sir Henry Horne, with whom we had made friends in 1917, just before the capture of the Vimy Ridge, in which the First Army played so brilliant a part. We hastily change our travel gear, a car comes for us, and soon we find ourselves at the General's table in the midst of an easy flow of pleasant talk.
In the advance from Vimy we had so far been only among the first friendly troops to enter the villages deserted by the Hun; now we were the first, and we shall not readily forget the enthusiasm with which we were greeted. We were bombarded with flowers, coffee, and cigars.
The casual sort of shelling I had had to fear at Vimy Ridge was nothing to this. This was the real thing. And then I thought that what I was experiencing for a few minutes was the daily portion of these laddies who were all aboot me not for a few minutes, but for days and weeks and months at a time.
The steady pressure maintained by the Allied troops on German positions culminated on April 9, 1917, when the British launched a terrific offensive on a twelve-mile front north and south of Arras. German positions were penetrated to a depth of from two to three miles, and many fortified points, including the famous Vimy Ridge, were captured.
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