PRESTO VERDUN SIR ALEXANDER BM KENNEDY ^ Ill • L CLIVEDEN LIBRARY Shelf Cif.-A>*^£LU^ Number -r- ,. ©ate (^x%. 'S^^ldorf ASTOR ^^^O^ YPRE5 TO VERDUN COUNTRY LIF£ First published in 1921. Ypres to Verdun A. (collection ol Jrnotograpns ol THE WAR AREAS IN FRANCE & FLANDERS Opecially taken by SIR ALEXANDER B. W. KENNEDY LL.D., F.R.S. Past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers Associate Member of the Ordnance Committee, etc. LONDON : Publislied at tke Oflices of "Country Life, Ltd., Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, >V .C. 2, and Dy George Newnes, Ltd., iSoutkampton Street, Strand, W^.C. 2. New York : Ckarlej Scribner s Son* " Quand pensez-vous que la guerre sera finie?" dit le Docteur. " Quand nous serons vainqueurs," coupa le G6n6ral. "Les Silences du Col. Bramble." — Maurois. PREFACE N official visit to tlie Front during the great days of October, 1918, when our chief difficulty and our great object was to keep up with the retreating Germans, gave me some first-hand knowledge of the devastation of the country which had been the result of four years of war. Familiar — too familiar — as this was to our soldiers, we at home — if I may take myself as a fair example of the average man — could really form no idea, even from the most vivid of the correspondents' descriptions, of what the ruined country was actually like. Roads, fields, orchards, were a featureless waste of shell-holes, often already covered with rank herbage altogether disguising their original nature. Villages were only recognisable by painted notices, " This is Givenchy," or sometimes " This was Givenchy "; not a house, not a wall, not a gate-post to show where they had been. Large towns like Ypres or Lens or Albert were little more than piles of brick, stone, and timber rubbish, through which roads were being cleared between immense piles of debris. In Rheims nearly as many houses were destroyed as the 13,000 said to have been burnt in the Great Fire of London, and smaller places like Soissons or Cambrai or Arras had suffered terribly. It was forbidden in our Army Areas at that time, no doubt for excellent reasons, to use a camera, but I made up my mind that when per- mission could be obtained I would do my best to secure some permanent record of what had happened. It was only in September of 1919 that I was able, with my friend, Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Gill, D.S.O., R.A., to make a first V 6 vi PREFACE photographic visit to the War Areas, and to get over a hundred views from Ypres to Verdun. At this time Major-General P. G. Grant was in charge of affairs at Headquarters at Wimereux. It was not without pardonable professional pride that I remembered that it was General Grant, a Royal Engineer Officer, who had on the 25th-26th of March, 1918, been chosen to organise the wonderfully constituted Company which General Haig's despatch euphemistically called, in enumerating the elements of which it consisted, a " mixed force." The days were critical, the French reserves had far to come and had not reached us, and the " mixed force," brought together in a few hours, proved sufficient addition to enable us to hold on, until the enemy, exhausted, could get no farther. General Grant was kind enough to give a brother Engineer every help, especially through his Area Com- manders, Colonel Falcon, Colonel Carey, and Colonel Russell Brown, to all of whom we were much indebted. The result of this visit, and a second a few months later, has been that I have been able to take nearly 250 negatives of the places which were so much in our news and in our minds during the terrible four years of the war. I have thought that it might be interesting, both to the soldiers who fought for us all over France and Flanders and to their friends at home who heard from day to day of the places where they were fighting, to have something which would show what these places were really like, to turn the too familiar names into recognisable pictures, and this is my reason for publishing these photographs. In 1919 very little had as yet been done by way of reconstruction. In the spring of 1920, happily, a great deal had been done. But the photographs which foUow indicate really — as well as the imperfec- tions of a photograph allow — the condition of the places and of the country previous to reconstruction, and I am glad to be able to show my countrymen something of the condition to which our neighbour's country was brought by the war. Some realisation of this may enable us to understand better how keenly and over- PREFACE vii poweringly the French desire that the terms of Peace with our common enemies should be such as will definitely prevent for ever the recurrence of these horrors. In addition to my own photographs I have to acknowledge, with many thanks, permission from Sir Martin Conway to use Plates 43, 64, 68, and 73, which were taken officially at a time when outsiders were not allowed to photograph. I have also to thank Mr. Basil Mott for the use of his two picturesque views (Plates 49 and 69) of Lens and Albert under snow, Colonel Douglas Gill for the view on Kemmel Hill (Plate 32), and Mr. R. Godai for the photograph (Plate 18) of a destroyed pillbox. ALEXANDER B. W. KENNEDY. Albany, August, 1 92 1. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTORY II. THE YPRES SALIENT - III. ZEEBRUGGE - - - - IV. THE LYS SALIENT - - . V. BETHUNE, LA BASSEE, AND LOOS VI. ARRAS, VIMY, AND LENS VII. THE SOMME - - - - VIII. ALBERT AND THE ANCRE IX. THE OISE AND THE AVRE X. CAMBRAI TO ST. QUENTIN XI. RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS XII. VERDUN, THE MEUSE, THE ARGONNE XIII. THE MARNE TO MONS I 1-4 5 5-18 i8 19-23 20 24-34 25 35-42 31 43-50 38 51-66 49 67-73 52 74-78 55 79-87 61 88-^7 68 98-106 76 107-124 LI5T OF PLATE5 I. Introductory V. Bethune, La Bassee, and Innsbruck : the Declaration Loos of War - I Bethune 35 6cole Militaire, Montreuil - 2 Givenchy - - - 36 Hotel de Ville, DouUens - 3 La Bassee - 37 In the Compiegne Forest - 4 The Canal at La Bassee - 38 II. The Ypres Salient A Pithead - The Double Grassier 39 40 The Menin Gate, Ypres 5 A Communication Trench Dugouts in the Ypres Walls 6 near Loos 41 42 Ypres from the Lille Gate - 7 " No Man's Land " The Belfry Tower, Ypres - 8 The "Tank Cemetery, " Hooge 9 VI. Arras, Vimy, and Lens At Gheluvelt 10 Arras ... 43 44 " Stirhng Castle " - II Arras Cathedral " Clapham Junction " The Becelaere Road 12 13 On the Vimy Ridge A Mine Crater on the 45 "Hill 60"- - 14 At St. Julien The Passchendaele Ridge - . 15 16 17 Ridge - German Gun Emplace- ment at Thelus - 46 47 48 A "Pillbox" 18 The Road to Lens - III. Zeebrugge Lens under Snow - 49 The Bruges Canal - 19 Lens 50 Lock Gate at Zeebrugge - 20 VII. The Somme The Guns on the Mole 21 The Mole at Zeebrugge "C3" - 22 23 The Somme Road - Foucaucourt Mametz ... 51 52 53 IV. The Lys Salient Trones Wood 54 Neuve Chapelle 24 Delville Wood 55 On the Aubers Ridge Combles 56 (Schultze Turm) 25 The Bapaume Road (Butte A Double O.P. - 26 de Warlencourt)- 57 Merville - . - 27 Mont St. Quentin - 58 Estaires - - - 28 Pdronne - - - 59 Bailleul 29 Warfusee (Lamotte) 60 Armentieres 30 Villcrs Bretonneu.x 61 Kemmel Hill 31 The Chipilly Spur - 62 Kemmel Hill 32 Cappy 63 " Plug Street " Wood 33 Villers Carbonnel - 64 A Cemetery in " Plug The Somme at Clery 65 Street " Wood - 34 Brie Chateau 66 XI xu LIST OF PLATES VIII. On the Amiens-Albert Road 67 Albert on Evacuation 68 Albert in Winter - 69 Albert Cathedral - 70 In the Ancre Valley 71 Aveluy 72 Beaumont-Hamel - 73 IX. The Oise and the Avre The "Big Bertha" Em- placement 74 The St. Gobain Forest 75 Noyon - - - 76 Montdidier - 77 The Avre Valley - 78 X. Cambrai to St. Quentin Cambrai (Place d'Armes) 79 Cambrai Cathedral 80 Bourlon Wood 8r BeUicourt - 82 The St. Quentin Canal 83 The Riqueval Bridge 84 Bellenglise 85 St. Quentin Cathedral 86 Ribecourt - 87 XI. Rheims, the Aisne, Soissons Rheims 88 Rheims Cathedral (West End) 89 Rheims Cathedral (East End) 90 The Chemin des Dames - 91 Cemy 92 Caves above Soissons 93 The Oise and Aisne Canal - 94 Fismes 95 Soissons — St. Jean des Vignes - - - 96 Soissons Cathedral 97 XII. Verdun, the Meuse, the Argonne St. Mihiel - 98 Verdun 99 Vaux Fort — North Fosse - 100 Vaux Village lOI Douaumont Fort - 102 The Mort Homme - 103 The Mort Homme — French Front Lines 104 The Argonne Forest 105 Varennes - 106 XIII. The Marne to Mons The Mons-Conde Canal 107 Slag Heaps at Mons 108 The Mormal Forest 109 Landrecies - no Le Cateau - - - III The Marne (near La Ferte) 112 Dormans - 113 Epernay 114 The Vesle at Sillery 115 Buzancy Chateau - 116 Monument at Buzancy - 117 Le Quesnoy 118 In the German Retreat, 1917 119 Hirson 120 A Pile Bridge 121 Sedan 122 Maubeuge - 123 Mons - - - 124 YPRES TO VERDUN I.-INTRODUCTORY (PLATES 1 TO 4.) N the 26th of July, 1914, on my return from a pleasant motor excursion through the Dolomites, I arrived at Innsbruck, and found the picturesquely situated old city in a state of unsuppressed excitement owing to the proclamation of war made on that day between Austria and Serbia. The crowds in the Maria Theresien Strasse were reading and discussing the proclamation (Plate i), and were obviously in excellent spirits, with no premoni- tion of what would be the unhappy fate of their country when at length the fire which they had kindled should be fmally extinguished. Among the mountains we had seen no newspapers for weeks, so that the news of the outbreak of war came as a complete surprise, but still as something not at all affecting ourselves. It was not until some days later (on the 30th of July) that we found ourselves in the thick of German mobilisation at the Kehl bridge, and were told that we must find our way home either by Belgium or by Switzerland, for all roads into France were closed. After some exciting days, and many interviews with high German authorities, civil, military and police, we happily succeeded in getting safely into Switzerland, and so eventually back to England by way of Genoa, Gibraltar, and the Bay of Biscay. The Ecole Militaire at Montreuil (Plate 2), a sufficiently un- interesting building in appearance, is notable for us as constituting, after the removal from St. Omer in March, 1916, the offices of our YPRES TO VERDUN G.H.Q. in France. Here the schemes were prepared, and from here the orders were issued, which — after so long a time of suspense and anxiety — resulted finally in the Allied victory of 1918. It is interesting, and perhaps not uninstructive, to compare the account of the manner of life at Montreuil, as described by the author of "G.H.Q. (Montreuil)," with that which prevailed at the German headquarters in Charleville, of which Mr. Domelier (an eyewitness throughout the occupation) gives very interesting, if sometimes scandalous, particulars.* Life at Montreuil is described as " serious enough . . . monkish in its denial of some pleasures, rigid in discipline, exacting in work. . . . Like a college where everyone was a ' swotter.' " The precautions for safety taken at Charleville differed as much from ours as its manner of life. We hear of cellars reinforced with con- crete in walls and roof, of bombproof casemates with several exits and underground passages, of netted elastic buffer mattresses over- head to intercept bombs, of felted door joints to keep out gas. And yet the two places were about the same distance from the enemy's lines and were equally exposed to the enemy's air raids. The differences seem to be due to the same difference in mentality as that which showed itself in so many other matters. And farther north the King — and the Queen— of the Belgians " occupied a little villa within range of the German guns, and in a district incessantly attacked by the enemy's bombing aeroplanes."f It was at 3.30 a.m. on the 21st of March, 1918, that the great German attack westwards over the old Somme battlefields com- menced. The events of the four following days — the days of the greatest anxiety to most of us since the commencement of the war — are remembered only too well and too painfully. Our armies, unavoidably thinned and for days out of reach of reserves, were, * Domelier, " Behind the Scenes at German Headquarters." t Maurice, " The Last Four Months," p. 158. INTRODUCTORY with the French beside them, continuously driven back, until the Germans were close to Villers Bretonneux (ten miles from Amiens), had crossed the Avre to the south, and had taken Albert and crossed the Ancre on the north, wiping out in a few days all our gains of 1917. At least one benefit, the greatest of all possible benefits, resulted from the extreme urgency of the situation. On the 26th of March a special conference was held at Doullens, which in 1914 had been General Foch's H.Q. The Hotel de Ville of that town (Plate 3) , otherwise a commonplace and uninteresting building — in which the conference met — became at once a building notable for ever in history. Lord Milner and General Sir Henry Wilson, who were fortunately in France, attended, with President Poincare, M. Clemenceau, and M. Loucheur, as well as Sir Douglas Haig, with our four Army Commanders, and General Petain and General Foch. As an immediate result, arrived at unanimously by the conference,* General Foch was made de facto — and a few days later de jure — Generalissimo of the Allied Armies in France. It was immediately after this decision (on the 28th of March) that General Pershing nobly offered to General Foch, for serving under his authority in any way which he thought most useful, every man whom he had available of the Americans who had arrived. From the moment when, under such conditions, unity of command was at length achieved, and in spite of the further set-backs in Flanders in April — Ludendorff' s last despairing efforts — the ultimate issue of the war was no longer in doubt. Just within the forest of Compiegne, about four miles from the town, is a certain little knot of railway tracks (Plate 4), close to the main Compiegne-Soissons road, on which took place, on the 8th of November, 1918, surely the most memorable conference since 1870. There were present General Foch and his Chief of Staff, General Weygand, Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, and Admiral Sims in * See Lord Milner's account in the New Statesman of the 23rd of April, 1921. INTRODUCTORY their saloon on the rails to the left, the German representatives being brought up on the farther track and crossing over to General Foch's carriage. An account of the interview which has been published states that Herr Erzberger said in the first instance that he had come to receive proposals for an armistice, and that General Foch refused altogether to discuss matters on any such basis, and until Erzberger had admitted that he had come " to beg for an armistice."* The now well-known terms by which an armistice would be granted, on conditions equivalent to absolute surrender, were then given to the Germans under the obligation of their acceptance within three days. With their final acceptance hostilities ended at ii o'clock on the forenoon of the nth of November. * Buchan, " History of the War," vol. xxiv., p. 78. PLATE I. THE DECLARATION OF WAR. The principal street in Inns- bruck, the capital of Southern Austria, on the ^oth of July, 1914, when crowds were reading the Declaration oj War between Austria and Serbia. PLATE IL C.II.Q. The Ecole Miiitairc at Montreuil, which ims used as the ounces of our G.H.Q. during the greater part oj the war. ft I n • I I ^^t •II :■ To face page 4. PLATE III. DOULLENS. The Hotel de Ville at Doullens, ivhere, on the 26th of March, igi8, General Fock was appointed as de facto Generalissimo of the A llicd A rmies in F ranee. PLATE IV. THE ARMISTICE. The sidings in the Forest oj Coinpilgne 'where General Foch and Sir Rosslyn W'eniyss, on behalf of the Allies, met Herr Erzberger and his colleagues on the nth of November, 19 18, and dictated to them the terms on which an armistice would be £;yantcd. YPRES TO VERDUN II. -THE YPRES SALIENT (PLATES 5 TO 18.) HE Ypres Salient was fought over during practically the whole of the war. The first battle of Ypres, during the " race to the sea," was in October- November, 1914, when the Kaiser stayed at Thielt (twenty-five miles north-east of Ypres) for five days ^ at the beginning of November to be ready to enter the city, only to suffer one of his many disappointments when the " old Contemptibles " kept him out. The Germans, however, got as far as Hooge, only two and a half miles away from the city, and were there for more than two years. An extremely interesting account, which is very pleasant reading, of the close co-operation of the British and French Armies in this first Ypres battle is given by General Dubois in a book just published.* It was presumably when French and Foch met on the 31st of October, the most critical day, that the reported conversation occurred (if it ever occurred), in which French's view that there was nothing left but to die was met by Foch with the characteristic rejoinder that they had better stand fast first — they could die afterwards. The second battle of Ypres lasted from April to June, 1915, and during this battle the first use of poison gas was made, at St. Julien. Except in the St. Julien region the lines remained practi- cally where they were after the three months' fighting. In spite of this a captured order issued to the German Army in August, 1915, said that " peace in October is certain "! Mr. Buchan tells a story characteristic of our Tommies, that * Dubois, " Deux Ans de Commandement." YPRES TO VERDUN during a retirement ordered in May one man " solemnly cleaned and swept out his dugout before going."* But this was equalled by the tidiness of the old body in Ypres (mentioned in Sister Marguerite's Journal), who came out and swept away the debris of the last shell which had burst in front of her house, quite regard- less of the continuous bombardment. The third battle of Ypres began with our capture of the Messines Ridge on the 7th of June, 1917, and lasted till November of the same year, by which time Ypres was so far " cleared " that our lines were close to Gheluvelt (five miles from the city), and extended from Passchendaele and Houthulst on the north to Messines and HoUebeke on the south. Then in April, 1918, came the great German break-through, when the Allies lost Armentieres and Bailleul, Kemmel and Messines, and the enemy was in Merville and Estaires, and was inside Zillebeke and Hooge, and less than a couple of miles from Ypres along the Menin Road. But the city itself still and always held out. Finally our turn came. The Merville area was retaken in August, 1918 (the 8th of August was Ludendorff's " black day "), while on the memorable day on which we crossed the Hindenburg Line on the St. Quentin Canal (28th to 29th of September) the Germans were driven for the first time back past Gheluvelt by the Belgians, the French, and ourselves, and two days afterwards they were in full retreat. The official despatches and many war books have told about the salient, about the terrible hardships and the brave doings of our soldiers there, and those of our Allies who were with us. But they do not, because they cannot, tell us what was going on within the walls of the city itself, during those first months of the siege, while the unfortunate inhabitants were still trying to live there, hoping — one supposes — from each day to the next that the bom- bardment would finally come to an end. Something, however, we ♦ Buchan, vol. vii., p. ^y. THE YPRES SALIENT know of this from the account of men who were there, either as soldiers or in the Red Cross service, on equally dangerous duty. But among the civilians who were neither one nor the other the names especially of two out of many will always live in the war history of Ypres, remembered for their devotion and heroism — Sister Marguerite and Father Charles Delaere. Father Delaere was the Cure of Ypres in 1914, later on he became Doyen, and not long ago a letter from him told me that he had been made a Canon. Sister Marguerite is a native of Ypres, and was, as a nun, attached to the Convent of St. Marie, engaged largely in teaching at the outbreak of the war. Her simple duties were suddenly changed; she became not only nurse and even doctor, but carpenter, fireman, baker, barber, shoemaker — all trades ! Above all, she was the universal friend and helper of the poor creatures who were incapable of helping themselves, for whom she found shelter while herself without any, and whose children she mothered when their parents lay buried under the ruins of their homes, or dying in whatever buildings served at the time for a hospital. The Journal* kept by Sister Marguerite, and published in 1918 by her permission for Red Cross benefit, gives a picture of life — or existence — in Ypres during the first eight months of its siege. It is so vivid, and at the same time so simply told, that (as I fear that copies of the Journal may no longer be obtainable) I make no apology for quoting from it. It is the poignant story of war as it appeared to a woman suddenly called out of a life of peaceful work to face its realities in their grimmest form, to do so without the excitement of fighting and without the comradeship of the regiment, or even the use of the soldierly mask of humour, to cover up the unrecordable reality. The Germans actually entered Ypres on the 7th of October, the first day on which any shells fell on the town, and one civilian was killed in his own room. But the children on that day * " Journal d'une Soeur d'Ypres, October, 1914, to May, 1915." 8 YPRES TO VERDUN amused themselves afterwards by picking up the shrapnel bullets ! After the Germans were turned out a week later, one of their companies was found to have left behind a characteristic notice: " Les Allemands craignent Dieu et hors Lui nulle chose au monde." They had succeeded in doing a fair amount of pillaging, as well as making heavy requisitions, during their few days of occupation. It is pleasant to find that Sister Marguerite has nowhere anything but praise for the behaviour of the British soldiers who occupied the city for so long. She tells of British wounded coming into Ypres, and with them a German wounded prisoner. A woman ran up to offer milk to the men, but, with the recollection that her husband had been killed by a German shell, would not give any to the German. A soldier, however, who had been wounded by this particular German, drank only half his milk, and passed the rest on to his prisoner. She adds: " Ce n'est pas la premiere fois que nous pouvons admirer pareils actes de generosite." On the 6th of November an operation was being carried on involving the amputation of a man's hand ; the Sister who had tried to act as nurse had fainted, and Sister Marguerite (herself not long out of the surgeon's hands) took her place: "Nous commengames done: la main de M. Notevaert etait demise; quand, vers 2 h. 5, un obus tomba sur notre convent et detruisit deux classes a 10 metres de I'Ecole menagere ou nous etions. Les eclats de verre et les pierres arriverent jusqu'a nous et un grand trou fut fait dans le mur. Le docteur venait de faire la derniere entaille; nous etions la tons les deux, pales de frayeur, comme dans un nuage de fumee et blancs de poussiere, lui tenant encore dans sa main le bistouri et moi la miin demise dans la mienne. Quelques instants nous restames indecis. Les blesses criaient, et en un moment tout fut sens dessus-dessous. ' Ta, ta, ta,' dit M. le docteur, ' ce n'est rien. Continuous notre besogne, car nous n'avons pas de temps a perdre.' ..." Among the wounded at this time were three Germans, of whom one (a Prussian) refused either to eat or drink, alleging that he would THE YPRES SALIENT be poisoned ! — presumably an idea encouraged by his officers to prevent surrender. Eventually he took what the sisters gave him. A few days later came a real baptism of fire : " Vers II heures, M. le Cure me dit d'aller chercher rue du Canon deux vieilles femmes. . . . Comme on bombardait justement ce quartier, je le priai de me laisser attendre le moment d'une accalmie. ' AUez-y tout de suite,' me repondit-il, ' on pourrait oublier ces pauvres gens plus tard et leur vie en depend peut-etre.' ' Au nom de Dieu,' me dis-je, et je partis. Mais a peine avais-je fait quelques pas dans la rue que . . . ' sss . . . sss . . . pon !' La tete d'un shrapnel roula dans la rue, tout pres de moi. Je retournai en courant. Mais M. le Cure avait entendu le son de ma voix et de la cuisine il me cria : ' Eh bien ! n'etes vous pas encore parti ?' A trois reprises je retournai pour revenir presque aussi vite. Enfins je m'enhardis et je revins cette fois avec les petites vieilles, que je conduisis au convent. Pas moins de cinq shrapnels passerent au-dessus de nos tetes, et vous pouvez penser si le coeur me battait. . . . Cependant c'est a partir de ce jour que je devins plus coura- geuse pour affronter les bombardements." The " Menin Gate " of Ypres (Plate 5) is nothing now but a broad gap in the old fortifications, where the long, straight road from Menin through Gheluvelt bends round to enter the city. During the whole of the siege of Ypres — that is, in fact, during the whole of the war — this spot was continuously exposed to German shell-fire, one of the " hottest " points over the whole war area. On the left of the " Gate " Canada has purchased a certain amount of ground for a Canadian memorial. The old walls, however, have remained, and the " casemates " (Plate 6) on their inner sides were for many weeks or even months the sole refuge of the poorer inhabi- tants who possessed no cellars of their own. The story of how these poor folk had to be removed, perforce, both for safety and foi sanitary reasons, is best told in Sister Marguerite's words : 5 Deer. — " Chaque famille y choisit son petit coin, y installe deux ou trois matelas, deux ou trois chaises, une petite lampe, parfois une petite table et un rechaud a petrole. La lourde porta 10 YPRES TO VERDUN d'entree* etait entr'ouverte. II n'est pas etonnant des lors qu'apres peu de temps, des maladies contagieuses s'y declarerent. Des habitants resterent six semaines dans ce reduit sans voir la lumiere du jour. J'y trouvai un jour un enfant de deux mois qui y etait ne et n'avait pas encore respire I'air pur du dehors." 7 Jan. — " Ma mission principale est de servir de guide et d'inter- prete et aussi de decider les malades a se laisser conduire a I'hopital, ce qui n'etait pas toujours facile ! Quand les malades y consentent, I'opposition de la famille souleve de nouveaux obstacles et les pro- testations injurieuses sou vent ne manquent pas, ces pauvres gens ne comprenant pas qu'on ne veut que leur faire du bien. Une fois meme, une vieille femme empoigna la pelle a charbon et le tisonnier pour me frapper. Heureusement les messieurs anglais, ignorant la langue flamande, ne comprennent pas les termes delicats par lesquels on paye leur devouement." The city was left entirely in ruins (Plate 7 is a view from the wall at the South Gate), not a single building standing with walls and roof, or in any condition that could be called habitable. The ruined tower (Plate 8), of which the foundation dates from 1201, is all that remains of the once beautiful Cloth Hall, and the Cathedral of St. Martin behind it is just as completely destroyed. It is to be hoped that after the celebrations of July, 1920, the miserable restaurants with their flaunting advertisements, which seemed to smother the tragic ruins with their commonplace banalities in 1919, may be done away with. It cannot be impossible to find means by which the natural interest of visitors, for too many of whom the salient is the grave of friends and relatives, can be gratified without vulgarising ground which for generations to come will be sacred in memory to the Allies whose soldiers fought there, and whose sons it was who formed the " thin red line " which was for so long the chief barrier to hold back the German hordes from the north of France, and, in effect, from our own country. * Probably tliick wet blankets intended to be dropped when there was danger of gas. THE YPRES SALIENT ii It must be remembered, in looking at such views as Plates 7 and 8, that the clear spaces in the foreground are only clear because all the buildings upon them have been destroyed, wiped out. Before the war these spaces were closely built upon, covered all over with houses. In Plate 7 are seen two or three " reconstructions " started after the ground had been cleared of the mass of brick and stone rubbish with which it was thickly covered until the end of the fighting. It is hardly necessary to say that the general tidiness of the ground in the Grande Place (Plate 8) belongs to a time months after the Germans had been driven finally out of range. During the war there was neither time nor opportunity to clear away the debris, which covered road and building sites alike. The Ypres Salient, as we came to know it, is essentially the ground north and south of the twelve miles of road running from Ypres to Menin. Ypres itself is about 65 feet above sea-level, and Menin (on the Lys) about 35 feet. But the ground between them rises to over 200 feet at " Clapham Junction " (three miles from Ypres) and remains approximately at the same level for the two miles fartlier to Gheluvelt. This higher ground circles round to the south-west (through Hill 60) until it joins Wytschaete (eight miles south of Ypres) and the Messines Ridge. To the north it continues from Gheluvelt by Broodseinde, between Becelaere and Zonnebeke, to the Passchendaele Ridge (180 feet), some seven miles north-east of Ypres. The unfortunate city was therefore not only at the centre of a very narrow salient, but one in which it was encircled by higher ground on three sides within easy observation and shelling range. For a long time, until our advance in 1917, the German lines were only distant two and a half miles north, east, and south from the city, and everywhere were on levels sufficiently above that of the city to keep it always under observation. It would have been cold comfort to our poor fellows who had to face the horrors of the Flanders mud to know that three centuries 12 YPRES TO VERDUN ago a traveller wrote: " Near Ypres they found the road often indistinguishable from the fields, and the mud came up to their horses' girths."* But in fact the physical difficulties due to the nature of the soil, churned up by shells on every square yard, were so horrible that Lord Haig (who is certainly not given to exaggeration in his de- spatches) says of the 1917 advance rf " Our men advanced every time with absolute confidence in their power to overcome the enemy, even though they had some- times to struggle through mud up to their waists to reach him. So long as they could reach him they did overcome him, but physical exhaustion placed narrow limits on the depth to which each advance could be pushed, and compelled long pauses between the advances. . . . Time after time the practically beaten enemy was enabled to reorganise and relieve his men and to bring up reinforcements behind the sea of mud which constituted his main protection." The statement made that " nine-tenths of the time our men were fighting Nature, and the remainder fighting Germans," cannot be much exaggerated. * It is, of course, impossible in photographs taken long after fighting has ceased, and, indeed, in any photographs except those taken from aeroplanes, I to give an adequate idea of what the surface of the salient was during the war. Plate 9 gives some idea of the ground beside the road, near Hooge, after a dry summer,^ and Plate 10 gives a similar view, after rain, near Gheluvelt. The bit of " Tank Cemetery " at " Stirling Castle " (Plate 11) on the high ground close to " Clapham Junction," and the illustrations of Hill 60, serve also to give some rough idea, but only a very imperfect one, of the conditions. Even now one has to walk in serpentine fashion along the ridges between the shell-holes in order to make * Bates, " Touring in 1600," p. 287. t Haig's Despatches, vol. i., p. 133. } See the photograph on p. 30 of the " Michelin Guide to Ypres." § Figures in the distance are German prisoners, of whom there were a great many at the time, occupied in " clearing " operations. THE YPRES SALIENT 13 an}' progress. But in the war winters each shell-hole was filled with liquid, sticky mud, and over such ground our men had to advance time and again, oftener by night than by day, slithering down the slimy banks into slimier mud, scrambling up the other side somehow or other, carrying full kit all the time, and continuously exposed to murderous shell-fire from commanding positions. There can have been no condition in the whole campaign which brought out better the indomitable pluck and spirit of our infantry. Plate 12 is taken at the cross-roads (" Clapham Junction ") between " Dumbarton Wood " and " Stirling Castle " on one side and " Glen Corse Wood " on the other. It is at the highest point of the slope which falls down through Hooge to Ypres. Of the woods which our men named so picturesquely nothing whatever remains — in fact, the skeleton avenue on the Becelaere Road (Plate 13) contained more trees than were to be seen anywhere else in the neighbourhood, and even these I found to have been cut down later on. Their only use would be as firewood. On my last visit to the salient, a year ago, reconstruction in the shape of what may be called hutments, or something a little more substantial, had commenced at the eastern end and extended as far as Gheluwe, while even up to Gheluvelt there were beginnings of attempts at cultivation. If one had not seen elsewhere what has actually been done, it would seem physically impossible that soil so utterly destroyed could be brought again into cultivation for a generation. But the Belgian and French peasants are capable of wonders. " Hill 60 " (Plates 14 and 15) is to all appearance little more than a heap of spoil from the cutting for tlie railwaj' running south- eastwards from Ypres to Lille. But it forms an observation ridge some 150 feet above the level of Ypres and only two and a half miles distant from the city. It was captured by the Germans early in the war, and in April, 1915, retaken by the British after very heavy fighting, in which 3,000 bodies were said to have been left on its slopes. A month later, however, it was lost again under 14 YPRES TO VERDUN heavy- gas attacks, and remained in German possession substantially until the great attack on the Messines Ridge in June, 1917 (the third battle of Ypres), when we once more regained it, after ten months of underground fighting and tunnelling. It was lost again during the German attack in April, 1918, and only finally recovered in the final advance in September. Long before the end this historical hummock had been riddled below ground by mines, and above ground torn up by their explosions and by incessant shell-fire, so that it is now merely a mass of craters and shell-holes, with the remains of dugouts in the soft clay. The two illustrations give some idea of the state of the ground and a suggestion of the wide horizon commanded by this insignificant elevation. It was on the 22nd of April, 1915, that the Germans startled and horrified the world by the use of " poison gas " at St. Julien (about three miles north-east of Ypres), making a " scrap of paper " of Hague agreements, as of everything else. Before the end of the war they must have bitterly regretted their action, but on the first appearance of the yellow death-bearing cloud it answered its purpose only too well — the Turcos were not to be blamed for flying incon- tinently before this devilish terror. The Allies, naturally, had no means of defence — even the wet handkerchief was not thought of, but somehow or other a couple of Canadian brigades held on magni- ficently — fighting poison gas unprotected must have required even more pluck than facing machine-guns — and for a time appear to have been all that stood between Ypres and the enemy. Under the date of the 22nd of April Sister Marguerite writes in her Journal: " . . . Au retour de nos visites aux malades, vers 5 heures, des soldats fran^ais [Turcos] fuyant les tranchees, nous rencontrerent, criant et hurlant que les Boches les avaient empoisonnes ! Beaucoup moururent sur la route; d'autres en prie a I'asphyxie demandaient a grands cris un peu de lait. Je revins a la maison tandis que le docteur, oblige de continuer, retourna porter ses soins a une femme. Mais celle-ci, effrayee par le bombardement, s'etait enfuie dans les THE YPRES SALIENT 15 champs oil le docteur Fox la retrouva apres une heure de recherches. Au couvent je trouvai d'autre soldats encore, victimes des gaz empoisonnes ; on leur servait du lait chaud condense." " 37 nouveaux empoisonnes dans la matinee du 23. Impossible de les mener plus loin que I'hopital civil ou ils sont loges dans les caves. . . . Nous aussi, nous resumes notre part: un sur le couvent, et deux, trois, aux alentours. Voila qui est terrible ! L'eau me coula des yeux, mes levres bleuirent, j'etais prete a suffoquer." But the brave lady never suggests for a moment that she should leave the place, and did in fact remain in the city until the military insisted on everyone leaving on the 9th of May, when there seems to have been imminent fear of the Germans reaching the city, and when, at any rate, the Kaiser was again waiting at Thielt in expecta- tion of entering it. St. Julien was taken at the time, and the German line advanced to the canal some miles in front of it; but the ruined village was afterwards recaptured and gas drenched by us — a strange Nemesis — in July, 1917, and remained in our hands until the German advance in 1918. Plate 16 certainly does not suggest the tragedy which we must always connect with the name of St. Julien; it is a screen at the entrance to a Chinese camp which stood there in 1919. It illustrates, oddly enough, an ancient Chinese superstition that " spirits " — and of course spirits are always malevolent — can only go straight forward, so that if any kind of screen is placed in front of the house entrance the spirit will be unable to get in, not, apparently, having the sense to go round the barrier. The gentle- man standing in front of the screen (which is in effect a huge triptych) gave us to understand that he was the artist, but our knowledge of Chinese and his of English were too limited to be very certain. The screen was certainly quite a satisfactory piece of decoration. In 1 917 we were preparing for the long-drawn attack which eventually gave us the Passchendaele Ridge (Plate 17), fighting for months over such ground as the foreground of the photograph i6 YPRES TO VERDUN shows. Defence by such means as the construction of a " Hinden- burg Line " was quite impossible in the mud and slime of the salient, and Von Armin devised the scheme of what we came to call " pill- boxes." Each pillbox was a structure (Plate i8) of reinforced concrete, often large enough to hold thirty or forty men with machine-guns, and strong enough to give protection from every- thing short of a direct hit by a large shell. They were only raised above ground-level sufticiently to allow the guns to be worked, their entrances being, of course, at the back. They were echeloned along behind the front line, and connected and protected by barbed- wire entanglements. They proved a serious difficulty when we first had to deal with them in July-August, 1917. General Haig says: " Many were reduced as our troops advanced, but others held out during the day, and delayed the arrival of our supports."* But a few months later General Plumer had devised tactics which countered the pillboxes very successfully, and eventually the German machine-gunners found that it was better to come out and fight in the open, and even to surrender, rather than be cooped up and grenaded when our men got round to the entrance. Already in October captured documents showed that the German High Command were inclined to prefer their old methods to the new ones. I The fight to reach the Passchendaele Ridge (the distant rising ground shown in Plate 17) lasted in effect from July to November of 1917. The Germans fought hard and well, but our chief enemy, as always in the salient, was the weather, and its effect in covering the whole ground with muddy slime. The much-coveted Passchendaele Ridge is only about 120 feet higher than the level of Ypres; it is the continuation northwards of the rising ground which crosses the Menin Road at Gheluvelt and passes through Becelaere and Broodseinde. But, once attained, it * Despatches, p. 118. t Buchan, vol. x.. p. 106. PLATE V. THE MEN IN GATE OF YPRES. This gap in the old 'dialls of Ypres is the entrance of the road from Menin, which runs for some eleven miles straight across the middle of the Salient by Hooge, Ghelii- vclt and Gheluwe, known throughout the war as the " Menin Road." PLATE VI. DUGOITS IX THE WALLS OF YPRES. The Casemates and Dugouts on the inner side of the old fortifications of Ypres H'ere the refuge of hundreds of the inhabitants of Ypres — especi- ally tliose who had no cellars of their oicn — /;; 1914-15. Tu face page 16. PLATE VII. YPRES FROM THE LILLE GATE. This viet!' is taken from the City Wall above the South or Lille Gate of the City. The church of iMch some nliite ruins are seen is St. Pierre. The u^hole of the hare ground in the fore- ground ii,ooo-yard tunnel on the St. Qucntin Canal, seen from the nestern bank of the canal cutting. 'The village of Bellicourt lies over the tunnel mouth, ami the hi-^hei ground beyond is thnt covered by the A merieans in the advance of ihe 2cjth oj September, i y 1 8. To face page 60. PLATE LXXXIII. THE ST. OUENTIN CAN~VL. The canal cutting looking down from above the tunnel mouth — an ^^ absolutely im- pregnable" portion of the Hindenhurg Line defences. PLATE LXXXIV. THE RIOUEVAL BRIDGE. The only bridge over the St. Queniin Canal iMch was not destroyed by the Germans before our attack on their " impregnable " position in September, 1918. A small party of the Mid- land Territorials, under Captain Charlton, reached it in the fog just in time to deal with the sentries, throw the charges into the tcater, and so save the bridge. PLATE LXXXV. BELLENGLISE. One Of the entrances to the immense underground icork- ings constructed by the Ger- mans as a part of the Hindenhurg defences at the St. Ouentin Canal. The ilahorate workings were tinally only a trap for the thousand Germans who were secured there as prisoners. PLATE L.V.V.VI7. ST. QIJEXTIN CATHEDRAL. The Germans cut ninety recesses in the columns and walls of the Cathedral (two are seen in the photograph) for the purpose of placing mine charges in them and destroying the whole building when they evacuated the totvn. The unexpected arri- val of the French frustrated this diabolical plan, but the holes and the blocks cut from them remain as witnesses. PLATE LXXXVII. RIBECOURT. Tills ti'as one of the villn^'i-s which t.'cre tahcn in the Camhiai batik, and retained in the possession of the A Hies. They are all equally destroyed, hut some are already half rebuilt. PLATE LXXXVIH. RHEIMS. This hit of Rheims — tidied up — is a fair example of the condition to which perhaps 10,000 out of its 14,000 houses have been reduced. YPRES TO VERDUN 6i XI.-RHEIMS, THE AI5NE, 50IS50NS (PLATES 88 TO 97.) HEIMS shares with Ypres and Verdun the glory of having successfully withstood a continuous four j^ears' siege, and with Ypres the additional distinction of having been for a long time the central point in an extraordinarily narrow salient, surrounded by the enemy practically on three sides. It is truly an ancient storm centre, unsuccessfully besieged by the English in the fourteenth century, taken by them in the fifteenth (perhaps more by intrigue than by fighting), and held until Joan of Arc turned us out after nine years' occupation. It was entered by the Germans on the 4th of September, 1870, and again on the forty-fourth anniversary of that day in 1914. But while after 1870 they held the city for two years, in 1914 they had to evacuate it after nine days only. They commenced immediately to shell it, and, according to the universal opinion in France, to shell particularly the cathedral, in spite of official assurances that it was not used for observation purposes, which anyone but a Prussian would have believed. The north tower, unfortunately, was under repair in 1914, and covered with timber scaffolding. An incendiary shell set fire to this a week after the Germans had left the city, and the whole of the roof of the cathedral was burnt. Later on the vaulting over the transept and the choir was badly but not irreparably damaged (the state- ment is made that a number of Germans — the church being used as a hospital — were killed by a shell which penetrated the vaulting), and the chevet at the east end is very badly knocked about. The west end, happily, has not suffered so much, the direction of firing being generally from Brimont and Nogent lAbesse, respectively 62 YPRES TO VERDUN north and east of the city. One is glad to know that it was found possible to save a certain amount of the fine stained glass. In thinking of the fate of Rheims from the point of view of the French, it is to be remembered that to them the cathedral stands in much the same relation as does Westminster Abbey to us. It is not perhaps the finest, nor the most beautiful, nor the largest of the glorious churches of France, but it is the one which, more than any other, represents in itself and its associations the faith and the history and the life of the country over many centuries and through endless changes and vicissitudes. Considering the mentality of the Germans — as judged by the sentiments of their newspapers at the time — it may probably have been the very consciousness of the special affection of the French for the cathedral that induced them to make it their special target. The figures which are given as to the number of shells fired, and specially the number fired at the cathedral in 1914, and on certain days in 1917, are almost unbelievable.* The city has, or had before the war, about 115,000 inhabitants and some 14,000 houses. Of the latter an English visitor in 191 8 informed me that about 2,000 had escaped with little damage and were more or less habitable, 2,000 more might be said to be still standing, while the remaining 10,000 were entirely destroyed. (As a comparison it may be remembered that in the Great Fire of London about 13,000 houses are said to have been burnt, or destroyed to limit the flames.) Plate 88 is simply an example of the state of the greater part of the city, after, of course, the wreckage had been cleared off the roadways and things in general " tidied up." Plates 89 and 90 show respectively the west end of the cathedral, with its towers, and the chevet at the east end seen across a mass of ruined houses. I am afraid that the glass of the great rose windows was destroyed very early, before it could be removed, and at the east end much * Buchan's " History of the War," vol. iii., p. 71, and the " Michelin Guide to Rheims," p. 20, etc. RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SO IS SONS 63 of the tracery of the windows has been smashed. It is in no way to the credit of the Germans, either in their intentions or in their shooting, that the damage has not been immensely greater. One may be permitted to hope that in the reconstruction of the city, which is proceeding apace, advantage will be taken of the clearance which has become unavoidable to leave such space round the building as will allow its magnificence to be more fully seen than has hitherto been possible. After having to evacuate the city in 1914, the Germans made a very determined stand to the north at the Fort of Brimont, six miles away, as well as on the east at about the same distance, and even the desperate fighting of April, 1917, failed to move them. For the greater part of the war the French and Germans were facing each other on a north and south line a little to the east of the road from Rheims to Laon. But on their side the enemy succeeded in getting closer to the city, and the shelling must often have been at very close range, a condition of affairs more like that at Ypres than at Verdun. At one time in 1917 the Germans actually got for a day into the northern cemetery, just outside the city and only a couple of miles from the cathedral. The remains of the French front line to the east of the Laon road were still not cleared away on my visit, the barbed-wire en- tanglements hardly visible above the thick growth of rank herbage. The road itself, running on a slight embankment, in places covers numerous dugouts, their entrances facing westward. The end of September, 1918, saw the cit}' freed at last, the Germans hastily evacuating the forts in their great retreat. In the great retreat of the Germans in 1914 the Aisne was reached on the I2th of September, after Soissons had been in enemy occupa- tion for ten days, during which heavy requisitions were made, although no pillage is said to have occurred. The first battle of the Aisne, the end of the German retreat in 1914, continued well 64 YPRES TO VERDUN into September, British artillery aiding the French north of Soissons, and Haig's troops, being farther east, attempting to reach the Chemin des Dames plateau above Troyon. But the Germans had had time to entrench themselves in the enormously strong positions afforded by the upper ground, and all the efforts of the Allies failed to dislodge them. They remained substantiall}'' unmoved until 1917, by which time they also held a sharp salient between Missy and Chavonne which had carried them across to the southern bank of the Aisne. By the beginning of 1915 the French held the valleys of Cuffies and Crouy, with the ridge between them and the western end of the high ground to the east. On the I2th-i3th of January they were attacked by greatly superior numbers by Von Kluck, and, by the misfortune that floods on the Aisne had carried away their bridges higher up the stream, were cut off from their supplies, and had to retire south of the river, losing the bridge-head on the north bank. Soissons itself, however, was not captured, although the Germans remained within very easy shelling distance of it. The Aisne winds along a flat valley bottom in great bends, always bounded on the north by high ground, which rises some 400 to 450 feet above the river, and is traversed by steep and narrow wooded ravines very much like Surrey combes, which were occupied and fully utilised by the enemy. Along the top of the plateau runs from west to east the road which became so familiar to us as the " Chemin des Dames," although this picturesque name did not appear on the maps. The main road from Soissons to Laon crosses the western end of the plateau close to the Malmaison Fort; its eastern end passes through Craonne, and the ground falls quickly down to the level of the Rheims-Laon road at Corbeny. Every foot of the " Ladies' Road " has been fought over; the whole plateau is shell-pocked almost as badly as ground beside the Amiens-Peronne road on the Somme, and the road itself is in many places no longer distinguishable, the whole area being thickly overgrown with rank herbage. Plate gi gives some idea of what the once well-marked road now looks like where it crosses the Troyon road, the route by RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS 65 which Haig's troops tried in vain to reach and hold the high ground. The village of Cerny, close to the crossing, is wiped out, some hint only of its former position being indicated by the remains of what has probably been a sugar factory (Plate 92). In many places on the slopes above the Aisne there are quarries and natural caves, greatly enlarged and very fully utilised in the German defence. Plate 93 shows one of these caves at Crouy, a now ruined village a couple of miles above Soissons on the side of the valley in which runs the little stream that descends from Laffaux on the north to the Aisne at Soissons. Beside and across this stream our artillery had hard fighting in 1914, in the vain attempt to dislodge the enemy from the high ground above and to the west, at a time when the Germans could fire twenty shells to one of ours. The Aisne valley remained in general fairly quiescent from 1914 until April, 1917, when General Nivelle, after his great success at Verdun, planned the gigantic blow at the German front from Soissons to the Argonne, which, in spite of its ultimate success in carrying nearly the whole of the Chemin des Dames, failed to relieve Rheims,* and by falling so far short of the hoped-for and too optimistically predicted success helped to cause considerable, although happily only temporary, discontent in parts of the French Army, which was only cleared away by the magnificent way in which Petain showed his men a few months later, both on the Aisne and at Verdun, that they still remained more than a match for their opponents. The last battle of the Aisne formed the third of the series of great advances which Ludendorff had made in March and April, 1918. In each of the first two the Allies had been driven back so far and so definitely as to enable the Germans to claim overwhelming victory. But each of them, all the same, had finally found the victorious troops face to face with undefeated and immovable * Captain Tuohy in " The Secret Corps " says that the trial of a spy known as " Suzette " showed that her machinations played no small part in preventing NiveUe's success. She is alleged especially to have given the enemy full details as to the new French tanks, and also full information where and how it was intended to use them. 9 66 YPRES TO VERDUN armies, and found them also too exhausted to press forward to gain those objectives which had constituted the real intention of each advance. The third Aisne battle was destined to have a similar conclusion. The German intentions had been well con- cealed, and their enormous concentration of troops had not been discovered, so that the attack which started suddenly on the 27th of May swept everybody off the ridge and down to the Aisne at once. The British 9th Corps (four divisions) were on the French right, brought there to rest after their hard fighting farther north ! They held on at Craonne for a while, but were hopelessly out- numbered, and had to fall back with the rest of the troops. The Aisne and the Vesle were lost, and in three days the Germans had reached the Marne, and held ten miles of the river between Chateau Thierry and Dormans. Soissons fell on the 28th and Chateau Thierry a few days later, but the right, on which was still our gth Corps, beside the French Fifth Army and some iine Italian troops, held back the invaders and succeeded in keeping them at a distance from Rheims and Epernay. Then followed counter-attacks, which were sometimes successful, and a month's quiescence, until on the 15th of July Ludendorff started the Friedensturm which was to have brought him peace — a German peace — but which ended in his utter ruin. The Oise and Aisne Canal reaches (and crosses) the Aisne close to the foot of the road up to Troyon. The canal was no doubt dry during the war, as it was when I saw it afterwards (Plate 94), the bridge on the main road, destroyed during the German retreat, having been replaced by another. North of the Aisne, from Soissons to Berrj'-au-Bac, all the villages except one appeared to be in ruins. The whole of the country south of the Aisne to the Vesle, and again south to the Marne, was fought over in 1914, and again in the German advance in May, 1918, as well as in their final retreat in July and August. The villages, so far as I saw them, were in ruins — such, for example, as Fismes (Plate 95) — but were stiU IJ¥« — PLATE LXXXIX. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL^ WEST END. The ivest front of the Westminster Abbey of France is happily not irreparably damaged, but the glass of the rose window has gone, and some of the statues and the carvings are injured. The roof of the building has gone entirely, and the vaulting is broken through in places. PLATE XC. RHEIMS CATHE- DRAL—EAST END. The east end of the Cathe- dral is very much more injured than the west, having been more exposed to the ^re from the forts which were shelling the city. To face page 66. PLATE XCI. THE CHEMIN DAMES. DES The road crossing the photo- graph from right to left is the Troyon road up from the Aisne valley. It is still practicable for motors. What is left of the Chemin des Dames itself, at this place (ttear Certty), starts from the right-hand corner of the view, crosses the Troyon road, and practically disappears in the ii'ilderness. PLATE XCIL THE CHE:\nX DES DAMES— CERNV. All that seemed to he left oj the village of Cerny — the remains, apparently, of a sugar factory — K'ith some water-logged shell-holes. RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS 67 recognisable as villages without the necessity, as on the Somme, of a notice-board on the roadside saying " This was ..." Soissons itself was never far enough from the German lines to be free from shell-iire until October, 1917; it has not been, however, nearly so completely destroyed as Rheims, a reasonable number of houses remaining habitable in the end of 1918. The Germans entered it again in May, 1918, and remained in possession for two months, and during this occupation they had apparently repented of their moderation four years before, for they pillaged and stole systematic- ally, and destroyed wantonly what they did not wish to steal. The beautiful towers and spires of the west front of St. Jean des Vignes (Plate 96), which were all that remained of the once noble church, are a good deal damaged. It is stated that this church was pulled down in 1805 on the demand of the Bishop of Soissons in order to provide material for the repair of the cathedral, but that the two towers and spires were spared on the entreaty of the inhabitants.* Certainly only the skeleton of the west end with the towers has been in existence for a very long time. Apparently there have been other Huns than the Germans ! The cathedral itself (Plate 97) has actually been cut in half and its one tower (the northern tower had never been built) knocked to pieces. The cathedral, although a small one, was a very beautiful structure, and was more or less unique in being arranged as two churches, one lying east and west, and the other across the transepts at right angles. The view in Plate 97 was taken in 1920 across what is now a fine open space, but which was, on my pre-war visits to the city, covered closely with houses and shops, and in 1919 was still a mass of broken walls and stone rubbish. It can be said, at any rate, that the view of the cathedral — or what is left of it — is certainly much more complete and effective than it ever had been before. West of Soissons the destruction of villages continues for seven or eight miles along the valley, as far as Pontarchet, but still farther west, and to the south in the Compiegne forest, there are very few signs of fighting. * "Michelin Guide to Soissons," p. 44. 68 YPRES TO VERDUN XII. -VERDUN, THE MEU5E, AND THE ARGONNE (PLATES 98 TO 106.) FTER the first battle of the Marne, in 1914, the Germans were driven back to positions encircling Verdun on three sides (north-west, north-east, and south-east) at a distance of ten to twelve mUes. They succeeded, however, in holding a httle salient at St. Mihiel, on the eastern bank of the Meuse, about twenty mUes south of Verdun, and with it the village of Chauvon- court, on the west side of the river. This village was entered by the French in November, 1914, but immediately blown up (it had been already mined) by the Germans, and regained by them in a counter-attack. It remained in their hands until 1918, but they were so tightly held all round by the French that they could make no use of it as a bridge-head. The possession of the St. Miliiel Salient, however, gave the Germans command of a stretch of the main road in the Meuse valley, and enabled them to cut the only full-gauge railway which still connected Verdun with the rest of France. This road and railway were therefore, until the successful American attack of September, 1918, entirely useless to the city, and its only railway was the narrow-gauge line leading southwards to the main line at Bar-le-Duc, and the one main road to the same place via Souilly. The latter came to be known as the " Sacred Way " {La Voie Sacree), and became the principal line of communication for men, munitions, and stores. It is stated that thirteen battalions of infantry were occupied in keeping it in such repair as was possible, and that 1,700 lorries passed over it daily. In 1919 the northern part of the Voie Sacree was still as bumpy for motoring as many of the worst roads in Flanders. PLATE XCIII. C A \' E S ABOVE SOISSONS. Beside the Laon road, going noiilui'ards from Soissons, arc a number of old limestone caves, partly natural and largely artificial, K'hich ivere made useful by the Germans in their long occupation of this region. PLATE XCIV. THE OISE AND AISNE CANAL. The dry bed of the Oise and Aisne Canal, Jt'ith the original bridge blo~u'n up in the German retreat, and the French girder bridge replac- ing it. To face page C8. PLATE XCV. FISMES. The iownlet of Fismes, on the Vesle, like many other places betiL'een the Aisne and the Marne, has been shelled in turn by French and Germans. It is practically destroyed, but ivithout being levelled to the ground and sniallowed up by ti'eeds like villages farther north. PLATE XCVL SOISSONS — ST. JEAN DES VIGNES. Only these tico toivers, mth their beautiful spires, have remained of this church for more than a century. One of the toK'ers has been so damaged as to present strange problems to an engineer in the strength of materials. VERDUN, THE MEUSE, AND THE ARGON NE 69 The great attack on Verdun was intended to capture the city in four days and to clear the way to Paris at one swoop, and the Emperor (whose presence never seemed to bring good fortune to his troops) was waiting at Ornes, some eight or ten mUes north, to make his triumphal entry. The attack began with enormous impetuosity on the 21st of February, 1916, but in four days — with enormous losses on both sides, but chiefly to the attackers — the Germans were still held some four or five miles away from their objective on the east side of the river, and double as far on the west. But nearer the Argonne their positions had allowed them alread}' to cut the full-gauge railway to St. Menehould by shell-fire. A book written by General von Zwehl* gives the number of guns used in this attack as being about 230 in each of three corps. He also speaks of the " dejection and pessimism " induced in his troops by the failure of the artillery to make the clear way to the city which had been predicted and promised. The Douaumont Fort was entered on the 25th, and the Emperor had sent to Berlin the news that the " key of the last defences of Verdun " was in German hands. But on the next day Petain began counter-attacks, and although during several months the Germans made progress from time to time, eventually gaining the Vaux Fort and most of the Mort Homme Ridge, the great attack had, in reality, miscarried from the start. The city itself, from which all civilians had been evacuated by the 25th of February, was heavily shelled, especially at the com- mencement of the attack, but as a city it has not suffered to anything like the same extent as Rheims, to say nothing of Albert, Lens, or Ypres. The fighting and the tremendous shelling were always in a zone lying roughly between four and eight miles from the city; within this zone the ground is as completely shell-marked, the villages and woods as completely destroyed, as even on the Somme. The greatest German advance was reached in June, 1916, Thiaumont Fort being taken on the 30th of June, when at one point * Reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement of the 7th of April, 1921. 70 YPRES TO VERDUN the Germans were only three miles from the city. Thiaumont was retaken when the French offensive started in the following October, and on the 2nd of November Vaux Fort was recovered and the Germans had been driven back nearly to the lines they had succeeded in occupying on the 24th of February. But the Mort Homme Ridge was entirely regained only in August, 1917, and it was still another year before it could be said that Verdun was entirely " cleared." The final success of the French in driving back the enemy is attributed by General von Zwehl to the overwhelming superiority of their artillery, the German heavy guns having been sent elsewhere. Plate 98, taken from the left bank of the Meuse, shows the broken bridge at St. Mihiel and the ridge above; the little town lies chiefly beyond the picture in a hollow on the right. It has been very little damaged; even the great clock in the church tower is uninjured. It is easily seen how entirely the ridge, some 300 feet above the river and filling up an acute bend, enabled the Germans to dominate the road and railway on the left bank for a long distance. In April, 1915, a French attack on the north side of the salient took Les Eparges after severe fighting, but made no further progress. The neighbouring country to the west of the Meuse is quite un- harmed until one comes within a few miles of the river. The St. Mihiel Salient was attacked from the south by the Americans and by the French from the north on the nth of September, 191S, just as the Germans had determined to evacuate it, and it was finally cleared within a week. The view from the Pont Ste. Croix at Verdun over the Meuse (Plate 99) shows a portion of the most destroyed area of the city, in which some sort of reconstruction had already started. On the opposite side of the river, however, tall buildings were standing quite uninjured, and entering the city from the south by the Porte St. Victor one traverses a long length of street without seeing any serious destruction. The cathedral (not a very interesting building after many reconstructions) has been badly damaged as to its vault- PLATE XCVII. SOISSONS CATHEDRAL. The Cathedral of Soissons, which is so badly damaged that its reconstruction appears almost hopeless, is one of the oldest, and architecturally one of the most interesting, of the French Gothic churches. PLATE XCVIIL ST. MIHIEL. The little salient of St. Mihiel, on the Meuse, twenty miles above Verdun, jfas secured by the Germans very early in the war, and gave them command of the prin- cipal road and railway from Verdun. It was held by them until the very end, when Americans and French together squeezed them out. To face page 70. PLATE XCIX. VERDUN. A part of the centre of Ver- dun, on the Meiise. Oddly enough, buildings Just oppo- site these, on the other side of the river, are almost un- touched. But the fighting at Verdun — ivith which only the fighting on the Soinme and in Flanders are compar- able — 7i'as concentrated on the hilly ground some miles north of the city. PLATE C. VAUX FORT- NORTH FOSSE. The holding of the fort at Vaux, one of those nearest Verdun, by Major Kaynal and his men, K>as one of the finest episodes of the war. The Germans were held at bay for three months, but eventually the defenders were driven doithich ti'ere reduced to fragments early in the siege — have absolutely disappeared. PL. ATE CIL DOUAUMONT FORT. The fort of Douaumont icas entered, but not held, very early in the Verdun battle, and the Kaiser telegraphed to Berlin the capture of the "hey to Verdun." But the lock would not open, Verdun jvas not taken, and the Kaiser left it to prophisy elsewhere with equal zi'ant of success. To face page 74. PLATE cm. THE MORT HOMME. T/if photograph gives only a faint idea of the sheU-marhed ridge t^'hose name became so familiar to us in the Verdun campaign. Eventually a considerable part of it li'as taken, but the gain was use- less — Verdun tvas as far of as ever. PLATE CIV. THE MORT HOMAIE. The French front lines on the southern slope of the Mart Homme Ridge. From these ridges the vieiv in all direc- tions seems to cover nothing but shell-pocked ii'astes, the grave of 400,000 Frenchmen and probably of very many more Germans. ;::sas2!« PLATE CV. THE ARGONNE FOREST. Tliis southern part of the forest, on the road from St. Mcnchould to Verdun, has not been fought over, so tlnil the trees arc still in their natural condiliou. In the central valley, seen over the trees, lies Lcs Islettcs in ruins. It icas the farthest point of one of the Croivn Prince's fruitless attempts to get south in UJ15. PL. ATE CVL VARENNES. Varennes, on the margin of the Argonne Forest, and now in ruins, urns the Crown Prince's headquarters during a considerable period, when there was every day fierce fighting with the French, of wliich at the time xiic heard very little in this country. VERDUN, THE MEUSE, AND THE ARGONNE 75 Varennes itself (the little town where Louis XVI. was arrested in 1791 on his attempted flight from France) is very nearly destroyed. The Americans took it on the first day of their advance, when it was defended by a division of Prussian Guards, and on the next day they captured Montfaucon, the headquarters of the Crown Prince for his Verdun attack. The ground here is high, and the Germans had built themselves an excellent O.P. from the materials of the church. Here also, according to General Maurice, the Crown Prince had directed operations from a " palatial dugout." Traces of the American occupation of this district were still visible months afterwards in the shape of road notices, " Do your bit ! Obey the traffic regulations !" and it was in the familiar accent of a young American officer that we received instructions as to getting our car through the narrow streets of Verdun. 76 YPRES TO VERDUN XIII. -THE MARNE TO MONS (PLATES 107 TO 124.) N a bright and quiet Sunday morning, the 23rd of August, 1914, General Smith-Dorrien's men were ahgned along the Mons-Conde Canal (Plate 107), west of the town, on the northern edge of a thickly popu- lated industrial district, with the great spoil heaps of the mines (Plate 108) like a range of miniature extinct volcanoes lying behind them. They had only just arrived from home, and with the failure of " Intelligence," of which they knew nothing, they were entirely ignorant of the strength and movements of their opponents. The Sabbatic quietude was broken with startling suddenness soon after noon, and very shortly the unexpected action became general along the whole front. The Germans outnumbered us by two to one both in guns and men ; they were fresh from their successful outrages in overrunning Belgium, and they were full of contempt for the British " mercenaries." Their advance was excellently well covered by the terrain until they were within fairly short range, and they advanced wave on wave in close forma- tion. They were decimated again and again by our rifle-fire, but again and again advanced in spite of it. Our men were sick of the slaughter, and their fire was so deadly that the German writers have afterwards attributed it to the enormous number of machine-guns which we were using, although we were in fact all too short, at that time, of this particular arm. The defence held out for six hours in face of the overwhelming odds, but at night we were compelled to retire, Mons itself having been entered by the enemy. So com- menced the Mons retreat, so far as our men were concerned. The French retreat, unfortunately, their men being equally outnumbered, had commenced twelve hours before. On the next two days the THE MARNE TO MONS 77 retreat continued, Smith-Dorrien's army on the west of the Mormal Forest towards Le Cateau, and Haig's on the east of the forest towards Landrecies. The great Mormal Forest itself (some ten miles long and from three to five miles wide) has been very much thinned during the war by the Germans for the sake of its timber (Plate 109). Even now, although traversed by many woodland roads, it would be an impossible undertaking to take through it a great army in retreat, and this made the separation of the two armies unavoidable. On the 25th of August Haig's men had reached the old fortified town of Landrecies, on the Sambre. Fifty years or so before this, R. L. Stevenson — boating down the river on his " Inland Voyage " — had passed through the old-world fortifications, and wrote of the town, singularly enough: " It was just the place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid troop of men marching, and the startling reverberation of the drum. It reminded you that even this place was a point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns."* Hardly a " strong town " in these days, but certainly it made itself a name both at the beginning and the end of the war. At 10 o'clock on the night of the 25th of August an alarm was given; the Germans had made their way through wood roads, and tried to rush us in the camouflage of French uniforms and French words of command. Happily the 4th Guards Brigade was on the spot, although only just arrived, and received the enemy in unexpected fashion, so that by midnight the attack had collapsed, and a little more much-needed breathing-time was gained. A Landrecien told us, in 1919, how he had seen the Germans coming down " in their thousands," and how the Guards had stood up to them at the railway and road corner at which my photograph (Plate no) was taken. In 1918 the tables were turned, and it was the German Guards who were trying to hold up our infantry, who captured the town on the * " Inland Voyage," p. 69. 78 YPRES TO VERDUN loth of October, after crossing the Sambre on rafts. It is of this attack that the story* is told of three tractor tanks, which made a bluff at a moment when the infantry were held up, and of which two got through and successfully made a way for the rifles. South-west of the forest lies Le Cateau (Plate iii), at one end of the straight fifteen-mile road to Cambrai, south of which lie the villages of Caudry, Esnes, Ligny, and many others whose names we heard first in August, 1914, and again four years later. It was here that General Smith-Dorrien made the great stand of the 26th of August, which has been the subject of so much discussion, but which cerainly gave the opportunity for most gallant fighting, both of infantry and artillery, while it held back — and, better still, greatly exhausted — the enemy. By the afternoon the position became untenable, and then followed the all-night march of the tired men towards St. Quentin. Le Cateau itself appears to be very little damaged. On the " Roman road," running south from Le Cateau to the Cambrai-St. Quentin road, the villages are now much damaged, probably rather in 1918 than in 1914, and notices were still standing — " Do not halt on this road " — at places towards the south. Another souvenir of 1918 was a notice near Maurois, " Pip Squeaks 6.30 to-night !" A less agreeable reminiscence was a sugar factory, thoroughly gutted by the Germans in characteristic fashion, beside the road near Estrees, a village itself in ruins. Along this road, as in many places on the Somme, the route, now destitute of trees, is marked by short wooden posts on each side placed at short dis- tances apart, their object being, of course, to keep lorries on the track in the dark, or at least to give them notice if they strayed from it. Here and there many of the posts on one side of the road seemed to be sloping in one direction, and those on the other side in the opposite direction. The obvious inference was that the slope of the posts was due to the frequency with which the lorries had run into them ! * Major Williams Ellis. "The Tank Corps," p. 268. THE MARNE TO MONS 79 The Le Cateau battlefield was so quickly crossed both in 1914 and 1918 that many of its villages, some of which I had the oppor- tunity of visiting while fighting was going on only a few miles farther north, are very little damaged, and the land surface generally is almost uninjured in comparison with its condition both farther north and farther south. The 1st of September was the anniversary of Sedan, and the Germans had apparently hoped to celebrate the day in Paris. But on or about that day, perhaps the day before. Von Kluck had made the great turn to the south-east, which (whatever its original motive) eventually allowed the French to get on his flank across the Ourcq, and paved the way for the great victory on the Marne. The Germans had progressed so far as to cross the Marne by the 4th of September, and had reached their farthest south position on the Petit Morin, which joins the Marne at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre. On the next day Joffre gave his orders for the commencement of the advance on the 6th, which at one blow turned the much-vaunted advance into a retreat, and postponed for ever the triumphal march of the Emperor through the Arc de Triomphe which was found to have been so elaborately arranged for. The bridge over the Marne at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre — close to which the photograph in Plate 112 was taken — was blown up, and we failed to cross the river until two days later, after which came the great and complex battle which ended with the Germans back to the Aisne. But they still succeeded in holding, and were still to hold for four more years, all the hilly country between Rheims and Verdun, as well as Laon, St. Quentin, Peronne, and Cambrai, and also, for much of that time, the whole Somme region. And so the war went on, until in May of 1918 Ludendorff played his last shot and swept down across the Aisne and the Vesle and the Tardenois country to the Marne once more,* and finally, in the Friedensiurm (for the opening of which the Emperor came down specially on the 15th of July), crossed the river between Chateau • See p. 66. 8o YPRES TO VERDUN Thierry (which is badly damaged), Dormans (Plate 113), and Mont- voisin, and for a few days held a precarious and unhappy* footing on the south bank, his pontoon bridges being exposed to continual enfilade firing, and his communications only kept up very imperfectly in consequence. The ruin of the villages along the river here shows how hard the shelling had been at this time. At length came the day when Foch could let his armies off the leash. No one can forget the thrill of that i8th of July, when the news came through in the early afternoon in the clubs and the news- papers that the advance for which we had hoped so long — and which we somehow knew with a singular certainty that Foch would make in his own time — had actually commenced. Some of us, whether more sanguine or more wise than others I cannot say, seemed to understand at once that the end had really begun, and the horrible black clouds of four years were broken up as suddenly and finally as when the sun bursts out after a thunderstorm, and the storm which was overhead a moment before is suddenly seen to be rolling away to the horizon. And when the late news at night and the early news the next morning allowed us to see some- thing of Foch's intention, and how well things were progressing, we might well have ordered " joy bells " if it had not been for our painful recollection of too early rejoicing over the Cambrai battle of 1917. But the joybells were within everyone, all the same. No doubt there is justification for the special celebration every year of Armistice Day. But to many of us the real day of relief, the day when the sun once more broke out on France and Britain and all the Allied lands, was the day on which Mangin astonished the Germans by suddenly walking through the western boundary of the salient which they had captured with so much effort and so much boastfulness. The scheme of the Friedensturm was to encircle Rheims by simultaneous advances east and west of the impassable Montagne * An intercepted pigeon message from a German officer is said to have described the situation south of the river as " worse than hell." THE MARNE TO MONS 8i de Reims, the advances to meet at Epernay (Plate 114), and there- after the valley of the Marne to provide the long-deferred route to Paris. On the east the advance was held up on the Vesle from the very start by General Gouraud's skilful " false front " tactics. Prunay was taken and retaken, and attempts made to secure a bridge-head at Sillery (Plate 115), six miles from the city, and due south of the Nogent de I'Abesse fort, while slight gains were made farther east ; but practically no progress at all was effected. South of Rheims and away to the south and east from Epernay towards Bar-le-Duc, the war-struck ground ceases. Pleasant avenues and undamaged i-illages are delightful to the eye after days of wandering in the desert of the north-west. In places we even passed through avenues of fruit-trees in full blossom. Having failed in the east, Ludendorff redoubled his pressure on the west of the Montague, but British troops and Italian Alpini joined the French in holding up the critical points; and although the salient round Rheims itself was narrowed, the Marne was not reached and Epernaj' could only be shelled from a distance of seven or eight miles. Near Chateau Thierry, at the western end of the great salient, American troops aided the French in preventing advance. Already on the i8th of July, the first day of the advance, the French reached positions commanding the road and railway at Soissons, on the 21st Chateau Thierry was recaptured, and the next day saw the Germans back, for the last time, north of the river which had been the turning-point in 1914. The 26th of July saw an engagement which earned very special appreciation from Haig,* the taking of the Buzancy Chateau (Plate 116) and the little plateau on which it stands, about 300 feet above the River Crise, some four miles south of Soissons. Buzancy had been the object of an attack by the French and another by the Americans within a week from the commencement of the advance, but had been pertinaciously held by the Germans. It is in effect a narrow promontory between two deep valleys, and an almost unassailable position. On the 28th of * Haig's Despatches, vol. ii., p. 256. II 82 YPRES TO VERDUN July the 15th Scottish Division were told off for the attack, and the Highlanders succeeded after a fight so notable that, although the position was not permanently held until a day or two later, the 17th French Division erected a memorial (Plate 117) in commemora- tion of it on the spot where the body of the foremost Highlander was found. The monument, simple and dignified, bears the in- scription: " Ici fleurira toujours le glorieux Chardon d'ficosse parmi les Roses de France." Five days later the French entered Soissons once more, and on the 5th of August the Aisne was again crossed, and Fismes (Plate 95), on the Vesle, was taken by the Americans on the same day. But Foch's plan led him to leave this district for a time while equally important advances were made elsewhere. On the loth of October the troops were back again on the old Le Cateau battlefield, and Le Cateau was retaken, and on the next day the whole length of the Chemin des Dames plateau was again in the Allies' possession. On the 4th of November we were again at Landrecies,* and right through the Mormal Forest, while on the next day the ancient fortifications of Le Quesnoy (Plate 118) were taken by assault and the garrison surrendered. Meantime French and Americans were advancing farther to the east, outside the lines of the 1914 retreat, through extremely difficult country, and meeting with strenuous opposition. Near Varennes one saw still in 1920 the American notice, " Road under control; split your convoy " (see p. 75). The Germans, retreating, naturally cut down all the trees on the roadsides in order to lay them across the roads to hinder our advance ; there now remain only stumps a few feet above the ground. It must be long before the old avenues can reappear, but cultivation seemed to be going on normally ever^'where. The destruction of fruit-trees in the German retreat of 1917 was a different matter, the justification of which on military grounds seems somewhat strained. Plate 119 is copied from a photograph in a captured * See p. yy, ante. THE MARNE TO MONS 83 German Report from the Hirson district. It was intended specially to show the blowing up of a railway-bridge at Mennessis, but serves also to show exactly the thorough and deliberate way in which the orchards were destroyed. At cross-roads mine craters formed a serious delay to traffic, and the sappers (after careful investigation for, and destruction of, the numerous booby-traps) had to bridge or to circumvent them, or both. Bridges, of course, were all blown up. Hirson, entered on the 8th of November (Plate 120), is an example of many others, where there has not been time to erect a girder bridge. Plate 121 shows one of the pile bridges over the Conde Canal — bridges which were often erected in an incredibly short time. The Americans reached the Meuse at Sedan (Plate 122) on the 5th of November, and took the western half of the town on the 7th, and the British under Byng retook the ancient fortress of Maubeuge (Plate 123 shows the girder bridge over the Meuse here put across after the German retreat) , which had been compelled to surrender, after a fortnight's siege, on the 9th of November in 1914. Finally British troops (Canadians) reached Mons (Plate 124), and entered the city at dawn on the nth of November, a few hours before the Armistice came into effect. So ended the cam- paign where it had been commenced more than four years earlier. A story told by Mr. Buchan* is well worth repeating: The 8th Division in Home's First Army had spent the winter of 1917-18 in the Ypres Salient; it had done gloriously in March in the retreat from St. Quentin; it had fought in May in the third battle of the Aisne, and from the beginning of August had been hotly engaged in the British advance: " Yet now it had the vigour of the first month of war. On the loth of November one of its battalions, the 2nd Middlesex, travelled for seven hours in 'buses, and then marched twenty-seven miles pushing the enemy before them. They wanted to reach the spot * " History of the War," xxiv., p. y^. 84 THE MARNE TO MONS near Mons where some of them (then in the 4th Middlesex) fired almost the first British shots in the war, and it is pleasant to record that they succeeded." With the recollection of this exploit and the story of Cambrai and Bourlon (and many others) before them, will anyone in future be daring enough to try to convince us of the physical and moral decadence of the Cockney — a doctrine which some offensively superior people tried to preach not so many years ago ? PLATE CVII. THE MONS-CONDl'i CANAL. General Smith - Donieit's men it'ere in position along the canal when they first received the German attach on Sunday, the 2 yd of August, 1914. PLATE CVIIL SLAG HEAPS AT MONS. 1 he colliery slag heaps close to Mons, among which fight- ing took place on the first day of the retreat from Mons in 1.(14. To face page 84. PLATE CIX. THE MORMAL FOREST. The western end of the road across the Mormal Forest to Jolimelz. The wood has been much thinned by the Germans during their four vears of possession. PLATE ex. LANDRECIES. Here the Guards first came into action in August, 19 14, and here in igi8 the German Guards failed to stand in their retreat against our infantry. PLATE CXI. LE CATEAU. The town is very little, if at all, damai:td. It stands close to the " Roman Road " at Ike eastern end of the road to Camhrai, across and to the south of which we fought heavy rear -guard actions in 1914, and across which, in the opposite direction, the Germans retreated four years later. PLATE CXI I. THE MARNE. This viezv gives some idea of the size of the river. It was taken near La Ferte-sous- Jouarre, which was in the British lines in the first battle of the Marue in September, 1914. PLATE CXIII. DORMANS. 0)1 the Marne, a few miles east of Chateau Thierry. It is one of the places covered in Ludendorff's Frieden- sturm advance, and there- fore one of those first to he recovered by Foch in 191 8. i -. PLATE CXIV. EPERNAY. Ludendorff's great attempt at encircling Rheims involved that two advances, one east and one west of the Montague de Reims, should meet at Epernay, and thence advance on Paris by the Marne Valley. But Epernay K'as never readied from cither side, although it was shelled from a distance of seven or eight miles. PLATE CXV. THE VESLE AT SILLERY. About six miles from Rheiiiis, K'hcrc General Gouraud lu-ld up the eastern arm of Ludcn- dorffs "pincers." PLATE CXVL lirZANCY ciiAteac. At the top of a little ridge above the Crise, south of Soissons. It 7!'as stormed by the Highlanders in very notable fashion in July, 1918. The plateau beyond it gave General Mangin command of the German communica- tions farther east. ^'lt| iH' '5!!"l!! Illft^?! PLATE CXVII. MONUMENT AT BUZANCY. This memorial was erected by the ijth French Division, who took over from the CameroHS, i^'ith the inscription ''■ Ici fleurira toiijoiirs le glorieux Chardon d'Ecosse parmi les Roses dc France." PLATE CXVIIL LE gUESNOY. An old toii'n tcith Vaiiban furiijications, of n-hich the pliotograph sliou'S the moat, u'hich ttas taken by storm in November, 1918. PLATE CXIX. DESTRUCTION OF ORCHARDS (191 7). .•I copy from a captured German photograph of a hloiiu - up railway bridge, incidentally showing the deliberate destruction of the fruit-trees in the German retreat of 191 7. PLATE CXX. HIRSON. Everywhere in their retreat of 19 1 8 the Germans natur- ally blew up bridges in order to hinder our progress behind them. At Hirson the old bridge was still only replaced by a timber structure. PLATE CXXI. A PILE BRIDGE. One of the very rapidly con- structed pile bridges {in this case over the Condi- Canal), ivhich the Engineers threw lip in place of those destroyed in the German retreat. PLATE CXXIL SEDAN. The River Mease at Sedan, — Kihcrc the entrance of Americans and French in igi8 avenged the catastrophe of half a century earlier. PLATE CXXIII. MAUBEUGE. The fortifications oj Maii- beuge, although of an old type, held a considerable force of Germans back in the advance of 1914. The bridge was, of course, de- stroyed by the retreating Germans in 19 18, and the girder bridge has temporarily replaced it. PLATE CXXIV. MONS. For IIS the war began here on the 2yd of August, 1914, and ended on the nth of November, 191 8. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITATN BY BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER Vt. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara ^' i THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. TAC , JUl:-.E-a Series 94»2 3 1205 00082 6105 yC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY D 000 815 445 ^J^,