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As we made our way through these ruined houses we
had to walk very quietly and to speak in whispers. In the last house
of all, which was a combination of fort and dugout, absolute silence
was necessary, for there were German soldiers only ten yards away,
with trench-mortars and bombs and rifles always ready to snipe across
the walls. Through a chink no wider than my finger I could see the
red-brick ruins of the houses inhabited by the enemy and the road to
Douai . . . The road to Douai as seen through this chink was a tangle
of broken bricks.
The enemy was so close to Arras when the French held it that there
were many places where one had to step quietly and duck one's head, or
get behind the shelter of a broken wall, to avoid a sniper's bullet or
the rattle of bullets from a machine-gun.
As I left Arras in that November evening, darkness closed in its
ruined streets and shells were crashing over the city from French
guns, answered now and then by enemy batteries. But in a moment of
rare silence I heard the chime of a church clock.


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