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So let me only remind you that General Horne led the artillery at Mons; that he has commanded the First Army since September, 1916; that, in conjunction with Sir Julian Byng, he carried the Vimy Ridge in 1917, and held the left at Arras in 1918; and, finally, that he was the northernmost of the three Army Commanders who stormed the Hindenburg line last September.
My dwelling-place at that time, with other war correspondents, was in an old white chateau between St.-Pol and Hesdin, from which we motored out to the line, Arras way or Vimy way, for those walks in Queer Street. The contrast of our retreat with that Armageddon beyond was profound and bewildering.
If Arras and Vimy had not held, things would have been grave indeed. Had they been captured, says the official report of the Third Army, "our main lateral communications Amiens Doullens St. Pol St. Omer would have been seriously threatened if not cut." The Germans were determined to have them, and they fought for them with a desperate courage.
He had just been promoted to his captaincy and had received one week's "permission" for a rest in Paris. We had both come down from near Messines Ridge. "Of course," said the English captain, "the French are the greatest soldiers in the world." "Why do you say that?" I answered. "What could be more wonderful than the heroism, the endurance of the British at Vimy Ridge?
I asked, in astonishment. I was almost disappointed. We had heard so much, in Britain and in Scotland, of Vimy Ridge. The name of that famous hill had been written imperishably in history. But to look at it first, to see it as I saw it, it was no hill at all! My eyes were used to the mountains of my ain Scotland, and this great ridge was but a tiny thing beside them.
The fault was partly due to the fact that D'Urbal's simultaneous offensive south of Lens had fallen short of the Vimy Ridge and left our right flank almost in the air in front of Grenay where the two lines joined.
The continuation of the British offensive northeast of Arras, following the bloody battle of Vimy Ridge, which was firmly held by the Canadians against desperate counter-attacks, placed the British astride the Hindenburg line, and the Germans retired to positions a mile or two west of the Drocourt-Queant line. These they held as the third year closed at the end of July.
The enemy losses were appalling, and after one day's fighting, in spite of the more northerly attacks on our line still to come, the German hopes of victory were in the dust, and as we now know for ever. That is what Vimy means what Arras means in the fighting of last year. We ponder it as we drive through the wrecked beauty of Arras and out on to the Douai road on our way to Valenciennes.
Sir Douglas Haig was not misled into the error of following up the German retreat, across that devastated country, with masses of men. He sent forward outposts to keep in touch with the German rear-guards and prepared to deliver big blows at the Vimy Ridge and the lines round Arras. This new battle by British troops was dictated by French strategy rather than by ours.
By the afternoon the entire living German population, more than seven thousand in the tunnels of Vimy, were down below in the valley on our side of the lines, and on the ridge were many of their dead as I saw them afterward horribly mangled by shell-fire in the upheaved earth.
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