With Our Soldiers in France | Page 2

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 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