With Our Soldiers in France | Page 3

60, which had
dealt such deadly damage to the British, was rent asunder and collapsed.
It was probably the greatest explosion man ever heard on earth up to
that time. Then the guns began anew to prepare for the attack and a
carefully planned barrage dropped just in front of the English battalions
as they advanced. As the men came forward, the barrage was lifted step

by step and dropped just ahead of them, to pulverize the enemy and
protect the British troops. By five o'clock Messines itself was captured
by the fearless Australians. There was a most desperate struggle just
here where we were standing at Wytschaete. All morning the battle
raged along this line, but by midday it was in the hands of the dashing
Irish division. Seven thousand prisoners were taken, while the British
casualties, owing to the effective protection of their terrific barrage,
were far less than the German and only one-fifth of what they had
calculated as necessary to take this strategic position.
We make our way up to the crest of the Messines ridge where we can
look back on the conquered territory and forward to the new lines. The
great guns are in action all about us. They are again wearing down the
enemy in preparation for the next advance. For the moment we feel
only the grand and awful throb of vast titanic forces in terrible conflict.
Day and night, in the air, on the earth, and beneath it, the war is slowly
or swiftly being waged. The fire of battle smolders or leaps into flames
or vast explosions, but never goes out.
Above us the very air is full of conflict. Hanging several hundred feet
high are half a dozen huge fixed kite-balloons, with their occupants
busily observing, sketching, mapping, or reporting the enemy's
movements. Each of these is a target for the attacking aeroplanes and
the occupants must be ready, at a moment's notice, to leap into a
parachute when they are shot down. High above these balloons a score
of British planes are darting about or dashing over the enemy's lines,
acting as the eyes of the huge guns hidden away behind us. We are
looking at one far up seemingly soaring in peace like a graceful bird
poised in the air, when suddenly we see it surrounded by a dozen little
white patches of smoke which show that it has come within range of
the enemy's anti-aircraft guns and the clouds of shrapnel are bursting
about it. Most of them break wide of the mark and it sails on unscathed
over the enemy's lines. Just above us is hanging a German taube,
obviously watching us and the automobile which we had left below in
the road, while the British huge anti-aircraft guns near by are feeling
for it, shot after shot.

We duck into our little Y M C A dugout, just under the crest of the
ridge. It is an old, deserted German pit for deadly gas shells, which
even now are lying about uncomfortably near, in heaps still unexploded.
Here the men going to and from the trenches, come in for hot tea or
coffee and refreshments night and day. A significant sign forbids more
than thirty men to congregate at once in this exposed spot, as
sometimes these Y M C A dugouts are blown to atoms by a shell. The
one down below in "Plug Street" has been blown to bits, and the man in
the one just up the line has been under such fire for several days that he
will have to abandon his dugout.
Just in front of us over the ridge is the first line of the present British
front. There is no time to build trenches now or to dig themselves in.
They just hold the broken line of unconnected shell holes, or swarm in
the great craters which are held by rapid fire machine guns. The men go
out by night to relieve those who have been holding the ground during
the previous day. It is harder for the enemy's artillery to locate and
destroy men scattered in these irregular holes and craters than if they
were in a clear line of trenches. The British front faces down the slope
toward the bristling German lines, dotted with hidden snipers and
studded with sputtering machine guns. As the evening falls the batteries
behind and all about us open fire. Flash after flash of spurting flame
leaps out from the great guns. Boom upon boom, deep voiced and
varied, follows from the many calibred guns in the darkness, till the
night is lurid and the ground beneath us quivers with the earthquake of
bombardment.
High above we hear the piercing shriek of the shells speeding to their
fatal mark, and below the