The Vimy Ridge (Plate 45) rises at Bailleul, five miles north-east of Arras, and continues in a north-westerly direction for about the same distance to Givenchy.[20] It is steep on its eastern side and gently sloping on the western, and the highest part of the ridge is about 200 feet above the lower land to the east. The height is not great, but is amply sufficient to give the forces occupying it complete observation over the surrounding country in all directions. I was on it first on a brilliant afternoon in 1918, when the Germans were still trying to make a stand a little east of Lens. Away somewhere in the direction of Douai a great explosion was followed by a column of white smoke, brilliant in the sunshine, and spreading out into a huge white flower 3,000 feet above the ground--clearly a huge German "dump" blown up to prevent it falling into our hands. Below us a battery of field-guns was pounding away at the German lines, still only two or three miles beyond them. A German 'plane came in sight, engaged in the singularly futile business of dropping "propaganda" literature from a height which kept it out of the reach of 13-pounders. From away over Lens, where under a dark cloud the Germans were still trying, in despair, to avoid their Nemesis, came the dull noise of the fighting. Behind the ridge lay the shell-marked slopes up which the Canadians rushed in April, 1917, and from which afterwards even the wild German push of a year later failed to move us. In the distance behind the ridge towards the west stood the tower of Mont St. Eloi, battered about in fighting from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth; and having now again seen the Prussians on the soil of its country, and surely rejoicing--even as inanimate masonry--when at last "der Tag" had arrived, and the land had become once more its own, with peace and victory not far away. [20] Not to be confused with the Bailleul near Armentières, or the Givenchy north of the La Bassée Canal, which were much more notable places in the war.