With Our Soldiers in France | Page 2

pressed on over the solidly paved roads of France, which are
now pulsing arteries of traffic, crowded with trains of motor transports
pouring in their steady stream of supplies for the men and munitions for
the guns. Now we turn out for the rumbling tank-like caterpillars,

which slowly creep forward, drawing the big guns up to the front; then
we pass a light field-battery. Next comes a battalion of Tommies
swinging down the road, loaded like Christmas trees with their
cumbrous kits, sweating, singing, whistling, as they march by with
dogged cheer toward the trenches.
We have crossed the Somme with its memories of blood, on across
northern France, and now we have passed the Belgian frontier and are
in the historic fields of Flanders, where the creaking windmills are still
grinding the peasants' corn, and the little church spires stand guard over
the sleeping villages. A turn of the road brings us close within sound of
the guns, which by night are heard far across France and along the
coasts of England. Soon we enter villages, which lie within range of the
enemy's "heavies," with their shattered window glass, torn roofs, ruined
houses, tottering churches, and deep shell holes in the streets. Now we
are in the danger zone and have to put on our shrapnel-proof steel
helmets, and box respirators, to be ready for a possible attack of poison
gas.
Another turn in the road, and the great battle field rises in grim reality
before us. Far to the left stands the terrible Ypres salient, so long swept
by the tide of war, and away to the right are the blasted woods of "Plug
Street." Right before us rises the historic ridge of Messines, won at
such cost during the summer. We are standing now at the foot of the
low ridge where the British trenches were so long held under the
merciless fire of the enemy. From here to the top of the ridge the
ground has been fought over, inch by inch and foot by foot. It is blasted
and blackened, deep seamed by shot and shell. The trees stand on the
bare ridge, stiff and stark, charred and leafless, like lonely sentinels of
the dead. The ground, without a blade of grass left, is torn and tossed as
by earthquake and volcano. Trenches have been blown into shapeless
heaps of debris. Deep shell holes and mine craters mark the advance of
death. Small villages are left without one stone or brick upon another,
mere formless heaps, ground almost to dust. Deserted in wild confusion,
half buried in the churned mud, on every hand are heaps of unused
ammunition, bombs, gas shells, and infernal machines wrecked or
hurriedly left in the enemy's flight.

Here on June 7th, at three o'clock in the morning, following the heavy
bombardment which had been going on for days, the great attack began.
In one division alone the heavy guns had fired 46,000 shells and the
field artillery 180,000 more. The sound of the firing was heard across
France, throughout Belgium and Holland, and over the Surrey downs of
England, 130 miles away.
The Messines ridge is a long, low hill, only about 300 feet in height,
but it commands the countryside for miles around, and had become the
heavily fortified barrier to bar the Allied advance between Ypres and
Armentiers. Since December, 1914, the Germans had seamed the
western slopes with trenches, a network of tunnels and of concrete
redoubts. Behind the ridge lay the German batteries. For months this
ridge had been mined and countermined by both sides, until the English
had placed 500 tons of high explosive, that is approximately 1,000,000
pounds of amminol, beneath nineteen strategic points which were to be
taken. At the foot of the ridge, along a front of nine miles, the British
had concentrated their batteries, heavy guns, and vast supplies of
ammunition. Day and night for a week before the battle began, the
German positions had been shelled. At times the hurricane of fire died
down, but it never ceased. By day and by night the German trenches
were raided and explored. A large fleet of tanks was ready for the
advance. Hundreds of aviators cleared the air and dropped bombs upon
the enemy, assailing his ammunition dumps, aerodromes, and bases of
supplies. The battle had to be fought simultaneously by all the forces
on the land, in the air, and in the mines underground. All the horrors of
the cyclone and the earthquake were harnessed for the conflict.
In the early morning, a short, deathly silence followed the week's
terrific bombardment. At 2:50 a. m. the ground opened from beneath,
as nineteen great mines were exploded one by one, and fountains of fire
and earth like huge volcanoes leaped into the air. Hill