On Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, occurred on the western front the great push which has been named by the press the Battle of Arras. For some days previously our bombardment of the enemy lines had been almost continuous, the so-called "drum fire" which sounded like rolls of thunder. At times during the night the rumble would become a roar, and one of my tent mates would half awaken, and say:
"Well, they\'re giving poor Heiny hell tonight," and the tone would almost imply pity. A grunt from the rest of us, and then we\'d roll over on our steel-hard cots to try unsuccessfully to find a soft spot, and shortly the snores from one of the officers who was notorious for snoring would drown even the roll of the guns.
Since the Somme advance in 1916 no great pushback of the Germans had occurred. After all the many and great preparations had been completed, an attack was now to be made on a ten-mile front north and south of the ruined city of Arras by British and Canadian troops. To the Canadians fell the lot of taking the famous Vimy Ridge which they, with the absolutely necessary assistance of almost unlimited artillery, successfully took, consolidated, and held, on Easter Monday, April 9.
The argument which sometimes occurs as to whether the artillery or infantry did the greater work in the taking of the Ridge is beside the question; one was as necessary as the other. The artillery could have hammered the Ridge until it became absolutely uninhabitable by the enemy, but the artillery could not consolidate and hold the Ridge, which could be done only by foot-soldiers. Without the proper aid being given by artillery, no foot soldiers in the world, be they ever so valorous, could have taken this strongly fortified hill.
The taking of this Ridge was considered a most difficult achievement for the reason that the French in 1915 nearly captured it, but with losses estimated unofficially at from 150,000 to 200,000 men. Anyone who has been in this neighborhood and has seen the areas dotted with equipment and bones of killed French soldiers, and the trenches marked at almost every turn by little white wooden crosses, "Erected to an unknown French soldier," by their British allies, could hardly doubt these figures. Then the Allies, after holding the conquered part of the Ridge for some months, were pushed off it by the Germans, who successfully held it till the Battle of Arras.
Before this battle it was said that French and British were betting odds that the Canadians would not succeed in this project of taking the Ridge. These facts are not given in any spirit of rivalry or criticism, but only as points of interest and to give honor where honor is due. The Canadians certainly can never complain that they were denied their proper meed of praise by the British press and public for their work at Vimy, but neither can it be gainsaid that they deserved the praise accorded.
The advance was to have taken place much sooner, but preparations were not complete. Easter Sunday, then Easter Monday became the day decided upon, and 5.30 a.m. of that day was to be the zero hour, or hour of attack.
Promptly at that hour the wonderfully heavy artillery barrage multiplied one hundredfold. Three minutes later the soldiers began going over the top and following the barrage. So complete were the arrangements, and so successful every move, that objectives were taken almost to the minute as planned, and returns coming in to Brigade H.Q. on the immediate front on which our battalion attacked were as optimistic as could be hoped for by the most critical.
A little over one hour after the first wave of Canadians started across No Man\'s Land, our O.C., Lieutenant Colonel J——, with an orderly room staff, signalers and scouts, started for the German lines to open a battalion H.Q. at Ulmer House dugout, about 600 yards behind the trenches which two hours before this had been the enemy front line. I accompanied the party, for I was to establish a Regimental Aid Post somewhere near the H.Q.
When we stepped out of the tunnel which led from Zivy cave to the center of No Man\'s Land, we had the misfortune to arrive in a sap—a trench leading toward the Hun lines—which sap at the moment of our arrival was being very heavily shelled by German artillery. As the sides of the sap were no more than two or three feet in height, and as the shells were dropping so close that we were continually in showers of mud from them, our party became broken up, leaving the Colonel and five of us together.
Some two hundred yards on our way we stopped to rest. The Colonel and I were sitting behind a small parapet, our bodies touching, when a shell dropped beside him, pieces of it wounding him in five or six places. He pluckily insisted on going on toward our goal, but soon fell from exhaustion. The problem then was to get him back in safety, for there had been no cessation in the shelling. Fortunately this was accomplished with no other casualties, with great pluck on the Colonel\'s part, and some slight assistance on the part of his companions.
Major P——, M.C., then took charge, and with most of the original party set out for Ulmer House. Our route this time was slightly altered by dodging the unlucky sap and going directly overland. Stepping around shellholes and keeping well away from a tank stuck in a mud hole to our right, in order to avoid the numerous shells that the Germans were pouring about it, we proceeded on our trip through the German barrage, which was somewhat scattered now.
In passing it may be said that on this immediate front, because of the depth of the mud, the only assistance given by the five or six tanks to the troops was that of drawing and localizing the enemy fire to a certain extent, and so marking out areas of danger that it were well to avoid. None of them got even as far as our first objective, but remained stuck in the thick mud till they were dug out by hand. On hard ground they are no doubt dangerous weapons of war, but in this deep mud their only danger was to their occupants and to those about them.
Our trip across this time was not particularly eventful. Veering this way and that to avoid the most heavily shelled bits of ground, stepping over corpses of Germans, or, what was more trying, of our own Canadian boys, saying a word of comfort to some poor wounded chaps in shellholes, we gradually and successfully made our way across the shell-devastated and conquered territory to Ulmer House. We suffered only two slight casualties, a wounded hand to the assistant adjutant, Lieutenant C——, and a bruised chest to the signaling officer, Captain G——.
A couple of hours later the shelling had ceased so completely that it was comparatively safe for anyone to wander about the field which had so recently been the scene of one of the greatest battles in history. Here and there, in shellholes marked by a bit of rag tied to a stick, we found many of our own boys and the boys of other Canadian battalions who needed attention. Stretcher parties were made up, generally of German prisoners, and the wounded were cleared with all possible speed.
One poor young chap we discovered late in the afternoon in an advanced shellhole, with his leg badly wounded and broken, he having lain there from 6.15 in the morning. Yet he smiled good-humoredly and thanked us gratefully for what we did, asking only for a cigarette after we fixed him up. Field ambulance stretcher bearers and German prisoners under Captain K——, M.C., of No. — Canad............