Against the front portion of this line we thrust ourselves early in March, 1917, and our massed guns poured in the most terrible fire the world had ever known. Lens was practically encircled--the Vimy ridge was taken by assault, and dozens of villages captured, resulting in the capture of eighteen thousand prisoners and over two hundred guns. Hindenburg threw in his divisions with reckless extravagance; he knew that if this section gave way all hope of holding on to Northern France was gone. Time and again he sent forward his "cannon fodder" in massed formation--targets which our guns could not possibly miss--and they were mown down in countless numbers; his losses were appalling. In certain places his attacking forces succeeded for a time in retaking small sections of ground we had gained, only to be driven out by a strong counter-attack. His losses were terribly disproportionate to his temporary advantage. I moved down to the extreme right of the British line; St. Quentin was the goal upon which I had set my mind. In my opinion the taking of that place by a combined Franco-British offensive with the triumphant entry of the troops would make a film second to none. In the first place the preliminary operations pictorially would differ from all previous issues of war films, and in the second place it would be the first film actually showing the point of "liaison" with the French and their subsequent advance--making it, from an historical, public, and sentimental point of view, a film _par excellence_. Therefore in this section of the British line I made my stand. I left my H.Q. early in April, 1917. I intended to live at the line in one of the cellars of a small village situated near the Bois de Holnon, which had been totally destroyed. I proceeded by the main St. Quentin road, through Pouilly into Caulaincourt. The same desolation and wanton destruction was everywhere in evidence; but the most diabolical piece of vandalism was typified by the once beautiful Château of Caulaincourt, which was an awful heap of ruins. The Château had been blown into the Somme, with the object of damming the river, and so flooding the country-side; partially it succeeded, but our engineers were quickly upon the scene and, soon, the river was again running its normal course. The flooded park made an excellent watering-place for horses. The wonderful paintings and tapestries in the library on the Château had been destroyed. As I wandered among the ruins, filming various scenes of our engineers at work sorting out the débris, I noticed many things which must have been of inestimable value. Every statue and ornamentation about the grounds was wilfully smashed to atoms; the flower-pots which lined the edges of the once beautiful floral walks had been deliberately crushed--in fact a more complete specimen of purposeless, wanton destruction it would be impossible to find.