The wood is still a wood of death, actual or potential. Our own
batteries are all about us; so too are the remains of French batteries,
from the days when the French still held this portion of the line. We
watch the gunners among the trees and presently pass an encampment of
their huts. Beyond, a high and grassy plateau--fringes of wood on either
hand. But we must not go to the edge on our right so as to look down
into the valley below. Through the thin leafless trees, however, we see
plainly the ridges that stretch eastward, one behind the other,
"suffused in sunny air." There are the towers of Mont St. Eloy--ours;
the Bertonval Wood--ours; and the famous Vimy Ridge, blue in the middle
distance, of which half is ours and half German. We are very near the
line. Notre Dame de Lorette is not very far away, though too far for us
to reach the actual spot, the famous bluff, round which the battle raged
in 1915. And now the guns begin!--the first we have heard since we
arrived. From our left--as it seemed--some distance away, came the short
sharp reports of the trench mortars, but presently, as we walked on,
guns just behind us and below us, began to boom over our heads, and we
heard again the long-drawn scream or swish of the shells, rushing on
their deadly path to search out the back of the enemy's lines in the
haze yonder, and flinging confusion on his lines of communication, his
supplies and reserves.
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