On April 11th they gained Monchy, while we during the
night before the 12th evacuated the Vimy heights. April 23d and 28th,
and also May 3d, were again days of heavy, pitched battle. In between
there was some bitter local fighting. The struggle continued, we
delivered minor successful counter-attacks, and on the other hand lost
ground slightly at various points."
I remember many pictures of that fighting round Arras in the days that
followed the first day. I remember the sinister beauty of the city
itself, when there was a surging traffic of men and guns through its
ruined streets in spite of long-range shells which came crashing into
the houses. Our soldiers, in their steel hats and goatskin coats,
looked like medieval men-at-arms. The Highlanders who crowded Arras
had their pipe-bands there and they played in the Petite Place, and
the skirl of the pipes shattered against the gables of old houses.
There were tunnels beneath Arras through which our men advanced to the
German lines, and I went along them when one line of men was going
into battle and another was coming back, wounded, some of them blind,
bloody, vomiting with the fumes of gas in their lungs--their steel
hats clinking as they groped past one another.
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