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We kept the road to the top, for Notre Dame de Lorette is as steep as Vimy. There we looked upon the panorama of the Lens battle-field once more, and started down the eastern slope, an apparently smooth expanse covered now with prairie grasses, in reality a labyrinth of deep ditches, dugouts, and pits; gruesome remnants of the battle lay half-concealed under the grass.
Against the front portion of this line we thrust ourselves early in March, 1917, and our massed guns poured in the most terrible fire the world had ever known. Lens was practically encircled the Vimy ridge was taken by assault, and dozens of villages captured, resulting in the capture of eighteen thousand prisoners and over two hundred guns.
Nieuport or Dunkirk might have taken the place of Bruges as a submarine base without greatly enhancing the success of that campaign; and Haig chose rightly when, having to weaken his northern front, he risked a sector north instead of south of La Bassée and the Vimy Ridge.
When we were returned to the lines we were told that it was over the top again for us; the Canadians were going to make an attack on Fresnoy. The town of Fresnoy was only a short distance from Arleaux, which we now held, and about one mile from Vimy Ridge.
It was easier going down Vimy Ridge than it had been coming up, but it was hard going still. We had to skirt great, gaping holes torn by monstrous shells shells that had torn the very guts out of the little hill. "We're going to visit another battery," said Captain Godfrey. "I'll tell you I think it's the best hidden battery on the whole British front!
And so I came to understand a little better the value of a height even so low and insignificant as Vimy Ridge in that flat country. While the Germans held it they could overlook all our positions, and all the advantage of natural placing had been to them. Now, thanks to the Canadians, it was our turn, and we were looking down. Weel, I was under fire. There was no doubt about it.
Waast and its museum were in flames! As the gray car bumped on to Bethune, Vimy Ridge floated blue in the far distance, to the right of the road, and Father Beckett and Brian took off their hats to it. Still farther away, and out of sight lay Lens, in German possession, but practically encircled by the British.
It was a cold and rather miserable night, for, owing to a sudden move of our Q.M. Stores to Noeux les Mines, we had no blankets. Meanwhile, all schools and classes were closed, and those students who had not been taken to stop the German advance on Amiens returned to us. The situation was serious, and another blow was expected at any moment in the neighbourhood of Vimy.
"Well, I have no doubt I shall be able to make use of you. However, you'd better turn in now. I suppose we'll be at it bright and early in the morning." General Adamson proved a good prophet. Hal and Chester met several men whom they had known when they were with the Canadian troops at the capture of Vimy Ridge, and these expressed delight at seeing the lads again.
To the north the Canadians under Sir Julian Byng carried the crest of the Vimy Ridge, and by nine o'clock had mastered it all except at a couple of points. Farther south troops that were mainly Scottish captured Le Folie farm, Blangy, and Tilloy-lez-Mofflaines, while a fortress known as the Harp, and more formidable than any on the Somme, was seized by a number of Tanks.
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