World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The enemy's Headquarters Staff is clearly troubled by the successes
gained by our troops during these first days of the battle of Arras, and
all attempts to repair the damage to his defensive positions upon which
his future safety depends have been feeble and irresolute. It is certain
that he desired to make a heavy counter-attack upon the northern edge of
the Vimy Ridge. Prisoners taken yesterday all believed that this would
be done without delay. The 5th Grenadiers of the Prussian Guards Reserve
were hurriedly brought up to relieve or support the Bavarian troops, who
had suffered frightfully, and massed in a wood, called the Bois
d'Hirondelle, or Swallows' Wood, in order to steal through another
little wood called Bois-en-Hache to a hill known by us as the Pimple,
and so on to recapture Hill 145, taken by the Canadians on Monday night
after heavy and costly fighting. This scheme broke down utterly.
Swallows' Wood was heavily bombed by our aeroplanes, so that the massed
Prussians had an ugly time there, and yesterday morning Canadian troops
made a sudden assault upon the Pimple, which is a knoll slightly lower
than Hill 145, to its right, and gained it in spite of fierce
machine-gun fire from the garrison, who defended themselves stubbornly
until they were killed or captured. At the same time Bois-en-Hache,
which stands on rising ground across the little valley of the River
Souchez, was attacked with great courage by the 24th Division, and the
enemy driven out.
It was difficult work for our infantry and gunners. The ground was a bog
of shell-craters and mud, and there was a blizzard of snowflakes. The
attack was made with a kind of instinct, backed with luck. Our men
stumbled forward in a wake of snow-squalls and shells, fell into
shell-holes, climbed out again, and by some skill of their own kept
their bombs and rifles dry. Machine-gun bullets whipped the ground about
them. Some fell and were buried in snow-drifts; others went on and
reached their goal, and in a white blizzard routed out the enemy and his
machine-guns. It was an hour or two later that German officers,
directing operations at a distance and preparing a counter-attack on the
Vimy Ridge, heard that the Pimple and Bois-en-Hache had both gone--the
only places which gave observation on the south side of Vimy and made
effective any attack. Their curses must have been deep and full when
that message came over the telephone wires. They ordered their batteries
to fire continuously on those two places, but they remain ours, and our
troops have endured intense barrage-fire without losing ground. Now we
have full and absolute observation over Vimy Ridge to the enemy's side
of the country reversing all the past history of this position, and we
are making full and deadly use of it. The enemy still clings to Vimy
village on the other side of the slopes, and to the line of railway on
the eastern side of Farbus, but it is an insecure tenure, and our guns
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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