It was a hideous territory, this Black
Country between Lens and Hulluch. From the flat country below the
distant ridges of Notre Dame de Lorette and Vimy there rose a number
of high black cones made by the refuse of the coal-mines, which were
called Fosses. Around those black mounds there was great slaughter, as
at Fosse 8 and Fosse 10 and Puits 14bis, and the Double Crassier near
Loos, because they gave observation and were important to capture or
hold. Near them were the pit-heads, with winding-gear in elevated
towers of steel which were smashed and twisted by gun-fire; and in
Loos itself were two of those towers joined by steel girders and
gantries, called the "Tower Bridge" by men of London. Rows of red
cottages where the French miners had lived were called corons, and
where they were grouped into large units they were called cites, like
the Cite St.-Auguste, the Cite St.-Pierre, and the Cite St.-Laurent,
beyond Hill 70, on the outskirts of Lens. All those places were
abandoned now by black-grimed men who had fled down mine-shafts and
galleries with their women and children, and had come up on our side
of the lines at Noeux-les-Mines or Bruay or Bully-Grenay, where they
still lived close to the war.
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