World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The enemy has lost already nearly 10,000 prisoners and more than half a
hundred guns, and in dead and wounded his losses are great. He is in
retreat south of the Vimy Ridge to defensive lines farther back, and as
he goes our guns are smashing him along the roads. During the night the
Canadians gained the last point, called Hill 145, on the Vimy Ridge,
where the Germans held out in a pocket with machine-guns, and this
morning the whole of that high ridge, which dominates the plains to
Douai, is in our hands, so that there is removed from our path the high
barrier for which the French and ourselves have fought through bloody
years. Yesterday before daylight and afterwards I saw this ridge of Vimy
all on fire with the light of great gun-fire. The enemy was there in
strength, and his guns were answering ours with a heavy barrage of high
explosives. This morning the scene was changed as by a miracle. Snow was
falling, blown gustily across the battlefields, and powdering the capes
and helmets of our men as they rode or marched forward to the front. But
presently sunlight broke through the storm-clouds and flooded all the
countryside by Neuville-St.-Vaast and Thélus and La Folie Farm, up to
the crest of the ridge, where the Canadians and Highlanders of the 51st
Division had just fought their way with such high valour. Our batteries
were firing from many hiding-places, revealed by short, sharp flashes of
light, but few answering shells came back, and the ridge itself, patched
with snowdrift, was quiet as any hill of peace. It was astounding to
think that not a single German stayed up there out of all these who had
held it yesterday, unless some poor wounded devils still cower in the
deep tunnels which pierce the hill-side. It was almost unbelievable to
me, who have known the evil of this high ridge month after month and
year after year, and the deadly menace which lurked about its lower
slopes. Yet I saw proof below, where all Germans who had been there at
dawn yesterday, thousands of them, were down in our lines, drawn up in
battalions, marshalling themselves, grinning at the fate which had come
to them and spared their lives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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