Scenes of Infernal Splendor on the First Day of the New British Offensive By Philip Gibbs [Published by arrangement with The London Chronicle] At dawn on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, the British armies began a tremendous offensive on a wide front between Lens and St. Quentin, including Vimy Ridge, that great, grim hill which dominates the plain of Douai and the coal fields of Lens and the German positions around Arras. Philip Gibbs has depicted the terrors of that first day's fighting in the following memorable description: T ODAY began another titanic conIflict which the world will hold its breath to watch because of all that hangs upon it. I have seen the fury of this beginning and all the sky on fire with it, the most tragic and frightful sight that men have ever seen, with infernal splendor beyond words. The bombardment which went before the infantry assault lasted several days, and reached a great height yesterday. When coming from the south I saw it for the first time. Those of us who knew what would happen today-the beginning of another series of battles, greater perhaps than the struggle of the Somme-found ourselves yesterday filled with tense, restless emotion. Some of us smiled with a kind of tragic irony because it was Easter Sunday. In the little village behind the battle lines the bells of the French churches were ringing gladly because the Lord had risen, and on the altar steps priests were reciting splendid words of faith"Resurrexi et adhuc et cum sum, Alleluia." The earth was glad yesterday. For the first time this year the sun had a touch of warmth in it-although patches of snow still stayed white under the shelter of banks-and the sky was blue and the light glinted on wet tree trunks and in, furrows of new plowed earth. As I went up the road to the battle lines, I passed a battalion of British troops, who are fighting today, standing in a hollow square with bowed heads while the chaplain conducted the Easter service. It was Easter Sunday, but no truce of God. I went to a field outside Arras and looked into the ruins of the cathedral city. The cathedral itself stood clear in the sunlight, with a deep black shadow where its roof and aisles had been. Beyond was a ragged pinnacle of stone, once the glorious Town Hall, and the French barracks and all the broken streets going out to the Cambrai road. It was hell in Arras, though Easter Sunday. The enemy was flinging high explosives into the city, and clouds of shrapnel burst above black and green. All around the country, too, his shells were exploding in a scattered, aimless way. From the British side there was a great bombardment all along Vimy Ridge, above Neuville St. Vaast and sweeping around St. Nicholas and Blangy, two suburbs of Arras, and then southwest of the city on the ridge above the road to Cambrai. It was one continuous roar of death, and all the batteries were firing steadily. I watched the shells burst, and some of them were monsters, rising in great, lingering clouds above the German lines. There was one figure in this landscape of war who made some officers about me laugh. He was a French plowman who upholds the traditions of war. Zola saw him in 1870. I have seen him on the edge of another battlefield, and here he was again, driving a pair of sturdy horses and his plow across the sloping field, not a furlong away from a village where German shells were raising a rosy cloud of brick dust. So he gave praise to the Lord on Easter morning and prepared for the harvests which shall be gathered after the war. Scenes Behind the Front All behind the front of battle there was great traffic. All that modern warfare means in organization and in preparation for the enormous operation was here in movement. I had just come from the British outpost lines down south, from the silence of that great desert which the enemy has left in the wake of his retreat east of Bapaume and Péronne, and from that open warfare with village fighting, where small bodies of British infantry and cavalry have been clearing the countryside of rearguard posts. Here round about Arras was concentration for the old form of battle, the attack upon intrenched positions, fortified hills, and great natural fortresses defended by masses as before the battles of the Somme. For miles on the way in front were great camps, great stores, and restless activity. Everywhere supply columns of food for men and guns moved forward in an endless tide. Transport mules passed in long trails, field batteries went up to add to the mass of metal ready to pour fire upon the German lines. It was a vast circus of the world's great war, and everything that belongs to the machinery of killing streamed on and on; columns of ambulances for the rescue, for that other side of the business, came in procession, followed by an army of stretcher bearers-more than I have ever seen before-marching cheerily as though in a pageant. In some of the ambulances were army nurses, and the men marching on the roads waved their hands to them, and they laughed and waved back. There were greetings which made one's heart go soft awhile. In the fields by the roadside men were resting, lying on the wet earth between two spells of long marching, or encamped in rest-the same kind of men whom I saw on July 1 of last year, some of them the same men, clean shaven, gray eyed, so young and so splendid to see. Some of them sat between their stacked rifles writing letters home, and the tide of traffic passed them and flowed on to the edge of the battlefields where today they are fighting. I went up in the darkness, long before light broke today, to see the opening of the battle. The roads were quiet until I drew near to Arras, and then onward there was the traffic of marching men going up to the fighting lines. In the darkness there were hundreds of little red lights, the glow of cigarette ends. Outside one camp a battalion was marching away, and on the bank above them the band was playing them out with fifes and drums. On each side of me as I passed by the men were densely massed, and they were whistling and singing and calling out jests and gibes-wonderful lads that they are. Away before them were the fires of death, to which they were going very steadily, with a tune on their lips, carrying rifles and shovels and iron rations, while the rain played a tatoo on their steel hats. I went to a place a little outside of Arras on the west side. It was not quite dark because there was a kind of suffused light from the hidden moon SO I could see the black mass of the cathedral city, the storm centre of this battle, and away behind me, to the left, the tall broken towers of Mount St. Eloi, white and ghostly, looking across to Vimy Ridge. The bombardment was now in full blast. All the British batteries, too many to count, were firing, a thousand gun flashes winking and blinking from hollows and hiding places. All their shells were rushing through the sky as though flocks of great birds were in flight, and all were bursting over the German positions with long flames which rent the darkness and waved sword blades of quivering light along the ridges. The earth opened and great pools of red fire gushed out. Star shells burst magnificently, pouring down golden rain. a Mines were exploded east and west of Arras and in the wide sweep from Vimy Ridge to Blangy southward, and voluminous clouds, all bright with the glory of infernal fire, rolled up to the sky. The wind blew strongly across, beating back the noise of the guns, but the air was all filled with the deep roar and slamming knocks of single heavies and the drumfire of the field guns. The first attack was at 5:30. A few minutes before 5:30 the guns almost ceased fire, so that there was a strange, solemn hush. We waited and our pulses beat faster than the second hands. "They're away!" said a voice by my side. The bombardment broke out again with new and enormous effects of fire and sound. The enemy was shelling Arras heavily, and black shrapnel and high explosives came over from his lines, but the British gunfire was twenty times as great. Around the whole sweep of his lines green lights rose. They were signals of distress and his men were calling for help. It was dawn now, but clouded and stormswept. A few airmen came out with the wind tearing at their wings, but they could see nothing in the mist and driven rain. I went down to the outer ramparts of Arras. The eastern suburb of Blangy seemed already in British hands. On the higher ground beyond the British were fighting forward. I saw two waves of infantry advancing against the enemy's trenches. Protected by the barrage of field guns, they went in a slow, leisurely way, not hurried, although the enemy's shrapnel was searching for them. "Grand fellows," said an officer lying next to me on the wet slope. "Oh, topping!" Fifteen minutes afterward some men came back. They were British wounded and German prisoners. I met the first of these walking wounded. Afterward they were met on the roadside by medical officers who patched them up there and then before they were taken to the field hospitals in the ambulances. From these men wounded by shrapnel and machine gun bullets I heard the first news of the progress. They were bloody and exhausted, but they claimed miles east of Arras. The enemy was afraid of an attack, and in the night had withdrawn all but rearguard posts to trenches further back, where he resisted fiercely. The enemy's trench system south of Arras was enormously strong, but the British bombardment had pounded it, and the infantry went through without much loss to the reserve support trench, and then on to a chain of posts in front of Harvest trench, which was strongly held, and, after heavy fighting with bombs and bayonets, to Observatory Ridge, from which for two years and a half the enemy looked down, directing the fire of his batteries against the French and British positions. South of Tilloy there were two formidable positions, called the Harp and Telegraph Hill, the former being a fortress of trenches shaped like an Irish harp, the latter rising to a high mound. These were taken with the help of tanks, which advanced upon them in their leisurely way, climbed up the banks and over the parapets, sitting for a while to rest, and then waddling forward again, shaking machine gun bullets from their steel flanks and pouring a deadly fire into the enemy's position, and so mastering the ground. North of the Scarpe-that is, northeast of Arras-the whole system of trenches was taken as far as the Maison Blanche Wood, and north again along Vimy Ridge the Canadians achieved a heroic success by gaining this high, dominating ground, which was the scene of some of the fiercest French battles in the first part of the war and which is a great wall defending Douai. It was reckoned up to noon today that over 3,000 prisoners had been taken. They were streaming down to the prisoners' camps and to the British who pass them on the roads they are the best proof of a victorious day. After the retreat from Bapaume and Péronne, this news should be a thunderbolt in Germany, tearing the scales from the blind and raising anew a cry for peace. T Seven Days' Fighting at Arras HE well-kept secret of where the British proposed to make a new thrust in the Spring was suddenly disclosed on the morning of Easter Monday, April 9. It was an offensive along a front of forty-five miles, having for its immediate objective Lens at one end and St. Quentin at the other. This is the struggle which has become known as the battle of Arras, although at the end of seven days' fighting the scene has shifted considerably to the east of the city which has given its name to the battle. The Hindenburg line, on which the Germans were relying when they fell back from the Somme, was pierced within a week, leaving them in the awkward position of having to form a new defensive line without adequate preparation. The bombardment of the German positions during the four days preceding the opening of the offensive on April 9 was as intense and as sustained as the artillery fire before and during the other great battles on the western front. Eyewitnesses even declare that it has been more concentrated and destructive than at the Somme and Verdun. The British guns were very numerous, of great calibre, and supplied with such vast quantities of ammunition that their "curtains of fire" were terrible realties. Fierce Aerial Fighting The battle of Arras has eclipsed all previous battles in aerial operations. During the four days before the battle began British airplanes literally swarmed in the sky, and the fighting in the air was on far the largest scale up to date. The German aviators were outnumbered many times over. Throughout the battle the British airplanes were constantly active despite the most unfavorable weather conditions, with snow, sleet, bitterly cold wind, and rain. The whole week's fighting was carried out, not in pleasant April sunshine, but in wintry weather which added its own gloom to the horrors of war. The principal object of the aviators was to photograph the enemy's new positions, and, incidentally, to bombard strategic points behind the German front. Other squadrons, protecting those whose business was reconnoitring and observation, also went up for fighting purposes only. Duels, skirmishes, and engagements of all kinds took place between the British and German airplanes for the mastery of the air. In the numerous fights that ensued, the British, according to their own reports, had twenty-eight machines missing, most of them shot down behind the enemy's lines. According to the German reports, the number of British airplanes destroyed was fortyfour. On the other hand, the Germans lost fifteen airplanes and ten balloons, while the British drove to the ground thirty-one additional machines, which, according to Sir Douglas Haig's report on April 7, "must have been totally destroyed." That the British Flying Corps achieved its purpose was indicated by the statement that large tracts of the enemy's country for many miles in the rear had been photographed, over 1,700 photographs having been taken behind the lines. The bombarding squadrons also were successful. Seventeen raids were carried out, and over eight tons of bombs were dropped on enemy aerodromes, ammunition depots, and railroads. The air fighting was wholly over enemy territory, and in one instance the British airmen penetrated fifty miles behind the German lines. The British established beyond question their supremacy in the air by reason of the much larger number of machines at their disposal and the greater dash and resourcefulness of their aviators. Beginning of British Offensive The British opened the battle on April 9 with a terrific offensive on a twelvemile front north and south of Arras, penetrating the German positions to a depth of from two to three miles and capturing many capturing many important fortified points, including the famous Vimy Ridge, where the Canadians led the attack. In this first onset nearly 6,000 prisoners, mostly Bavarians, Württembergers, and Hamburgers, were taken, as well as large quantities of artillery and war material. The line of advance extended from Givenchy-en-Gohelle, southwest of Lens, to Henin-sur-Cojeul, (the village of Henin on the Cojeul River,) southeast of Arras. All the fighting was against dominating positions on high ground, some of which had been held by the Germans for two years and were protected by wide belts of barbed wire. The capture of Vimy Ridge was particularly important, because it protects the French coal fields lying to the eastward. Along the greater part of the front the advance of the British infantry was strenuously opposed. Near Arras the Germans made a determined stand. The famous redoubt known as the Harp was captured with virtually the whole German battalion defending it. Several "tanks " figured in this operation. Along the railroad running through the valley of the Scarpe the British made good progress, while on the Lens branch of the line they captured Maison Blanche Wood. The first day of the battle ended with the British having accomplished their most successful day's work on the western front since the beginning of the war. The attack had hit the hinge of the recent German retreat from Arras to the Aisne and upset the plans of the German General Staff, who had expected the offensive to be renewed in the valley of the Somme. The capture of Vimy shifted the pivot of the whole German retreat and placed the enemy in a position of danger. The second day of the battle, April 10, saw the British, despite heavy snowstorms and bitterly cold weather, continuing their advance along the greater part of the twelve-mile front from Givenchy to Henin, capturing many more prisoners and guns, with quantities of all kinds of war material. The infantry pushed forward as far as the outskirts of Monchy-le-Preux, five miles east of Arras, capturing a height protecting Monchy and threatening the entire German line south of the Arras-Cambrai road. Monchy was for a while the central point of interest in the whole world war. Further north the British captured defenses on both sides of the Scarpe River. They also took the remaining positions on the northern end of Vimy Ridge, thus clearing it entirely of the enemy, and progressed in the direction of Cambrai and St. Quentin. The northern pivot of the Hindenburg line was now turned. The artillery support for the British infantry attacks was so thorough that casualties were proportionately light. The British artillery also made a record for long-range firing. Aided by information from the aviators, the gunners were able to concentrate their fire on German reinforcements ten miles away and so prevent them from helping to counterattack. The prisoners, who numbered 11,000 at the end of the second day, were penned up behind barbed wire fences till they could be sent rearward. British troops waiting their turn to go up to the front congregated outside the fences and chatted amicably with those Germans who could speak English, and gave them chocolate and cigarettes. One observer says that all animosity between the soldiers disappeared the moment they were no longer trying to kill one another. Unusually cold weather for the time of year, with a heavy fall of snow, greatly impeded operations on the third day, April 11. Nevertheless, the British kept on pushing forward and captured the village and heights of Monchy-le-Preux and the neighboring hamlet of La Bergère. Cavalry and a "tank" contributed to the capture of Monchy, one of the key positions between the Scarpe and Sensée Rivers, which the Germans had strongly organized. Fierce fighting took place in the village streets. The Germans fired from the windows and rooftops of houses, and made every effort to hold this vital position. The British made satisfactory progress at other points. They repelled two vigorous counterattacks and pressed forward down the eastern slopes of Vimy Ridge. The chief result at the end of the third day was that the British had been able to consolidate their gains and move forward their artillery. Germans Beaten Off On the fourth day of the battle, April 12, the British made substantial progress east of Arras, capturing the villages of |