About three weeks after the enemy had retired on our front opposite Beaurains a series of operations started which were afterward known as the battle of Arras. These were practically started with the splendid capture of the Vimy Ridge by the Canadians. All our fellows were highly delighted at this event, mainly by reason of the fact that we had served there for three months in the previous spring, and could appreciate the extraordinary difficulty of the task of the Canadians in capturing it, especially La Folie Farm. These positions were captured on April 9. Many other villages to the north and south of Arras were captured on following days. It was reported that the First and Third Armies took over 13,000 prisoners in the first few days of this offensive.

Unfortunately, on the 12th of April the inevitable bad weather ensued, and this considerably handicapped our efforts everywhere in this vicinity. The tanks were again much in evidence, being used in hundreds. They were brought up at night along the sunken roads and behind ridges, camouflaged very ingeniously, and then used at dawn the following mornings in attacking with the infantry.

Two types of tanks were used by the British, male and female, the female being the smaller variety. The male tank was equipped with six Lewis automatic rifles and two 6-pounders, the latter firing armor-piercing shells, while the smaller tanks were provided with Lewis guns only. I noticed one of the female tanks was equipped with 6-cylinder silent Knight engines and developed approximately 120 H.P. It had 12 inches of clearance above the ground and was about 8 feet high by about 12 feet wide in the centre, and 25 feet long. The male tanks were larger and heavier, some of these being, I think, more than 45 tons in weight. Afterward in conversation with one of the tank commanders he informed me that they had struck Boche barbed-wire entanglements that day over 10 feet in height and extremely thick. All the tanks have pet names given them by their crews.

The bombardment preceding these daily attacks was very intense, more so even than those of the Somme operations. It was a very interesting spectacle both by day and night. Close up one could hear the continuous roar from the guns and at night the flashes would light up the sky all around. Most of the batteries were set up on the sides of roads. In the retreat and the fast succeeding offensive there had been neither time nor opportunity for the gunners to construct their usual emplacements. It was appalling to consider the cost of some of these bombardments. As an example, the 9.2-inch howitzer shells, thousands of which were fired weekly by each battery, cost about $150 apiece.

In many of the daylight attacks the assaulting infantry would wear small tin plates on their backs. These would flash in the sunlight and enable the gunners to keep them in sight as they advanced over the ridges while they maintained an effective barrage ahead. Many difficulties were encountered in bringing up guns, ammunition, and supplies. On account of the state of the roads, which for a long time were almost impassable, the traffic had to be handled with much judgment and care. One-way traffic routes were established in many places, and military police, usually from cavalry units, were posted by the road control officers at all crossroads. Tie-ups frequently occurred, often resulting in a line of traffic a quarter to half a mile long being held up. The Boche airmen promptly took advantage of this situation by flying over and dropping bombs on us. While we were on road-work it was our business to keep the trucks and wagons steadily moving along. Whenever a truck was ditched we made every one climb down and get behind the wheels and move it off into a field out of the way, or get it out onto the road again.

Since the retreat had started we had been living half the time on our "iron rations," the latter consisting of bully-beef (corned beef), hard biscuits, small cubes of Oxo, with tea and sugar. The tea and sugar were usually carried up in a sand-bag, and when boiled formed a curious concoction which tasted strongly of sand-bag.

The open warfare which developed in this retreat was welcomed by all ranks, and their increased cheerfulness and rise of spirits were very marked. The enemy losses must have been extremely high. In every village, and alongside all roads, the bodies of German soldiers could be seen. I was in Neuville-Vitasse the day after it was captured and saw their dead lying in hundreds in the ditches, on the wire, and in the brick ruins. Ghastly sights they were too. The front line of the famous Hindenburg trenches ran through this village. As we walked into the village we noticed a broken German machine-gun left on a simple earth platform, in a shallow trench by the side of the road. It appeared that the man in charge of this gun had sold his life dearly, for fifty yards beyond some sixty of our poor fellows had been killed by its fire and were already buried there. The infantry were fighting hard at ChÉrisy, a short distance on our right, and many of their "walking cases" and "stretcher cases" (wounded) passed us going back to the nearest ambulance-station.

The fighting in the air was very active. Observation-balloons were up in large numbers. During this time I saw one of our planes bring down six enemy balloons in less than half an hour. The airman's usual plan was to suddenly drop out of a cloud away above them and let fall a bomb on the hydrogen bags. These would at once burst into flames, and the observers would seldom have time to get into their parachutes.

It was a common practice when the Huns were shelling our balloons, which, by the way, afford a nice large target for shrapnel, for our observers to signal the crew on the winch-truck below to pull them down and then send up an empty balloon again for the Huns to shoot at. No doubt the same ruse is adopted on each side of No Man's Land, but I can vouch for the fact that much German powder was wasted in this way.

The work of the Canadian railway-construction engineers was very fine here. They rebuilt the old standard-gauge French lines which the Germans had destroyed and carried the new roads up to within a mile of the then front lines in the Hindenburg trenches. They were forced to rebuild many trestle-bridges, and their pile-driver crews carried on the work with great rapidity, calmness, and efficiency. The steam from their upright boilers provided an excellent target for Fritz and they were shelled consistently, but nevertheless the Canucks accomplished the work successfully. Twelve-inch naval guns were run up on this standard-gauge railroad and often fired from one to two miles back of the trenches. Previous to the retreat of 1917 it had evidently been more or less the policy of the British to rely mainly on their mechanical transport rather than on light railroads and standard-gauge railroads for transportation of supplies to the most advanced zones.

Since that time the general tendency has been to construct the light railroads almost up to the support-line, or to points within a mile or less behind the front trenches. The standard-gauge railroads also are now carried up much closer. On most sectors on the British fronts the light railways are now laid right up to the front line and supplies sent up on them at night. Previous to this time it was the exception rather than the rule to take them up so far. In this change they have more or less followed the example of the Boche engineers, whose light and standard-gauge roads are run up very close to their forward trenches.

The main difficulty in the constant use of large trucks or motor-vehicles was that the roads could not stand the constant and heavy wear on them. Adequate maintenance for the roads for the last two or three miles was out of the question, on account of the lack of men and material necessary for their repairs, to say nothing of constant hostile shelling. During the previous winters, road control had been established, and the most direct routes to the firing-trenches were often closed for weeks at a time, while all heavy traffic was routed along third-class roads, which were often double the distance of the more direct roads.

During the first week or two of this offensive we were employed on repairing the destroyed roads or building new ones. In many places where they crossed the old trenches we were obliged to take out the timber from the German trenches and dugouts, and corduroy the roads with it. Their lumber proved very useful. In many other instances we used the only material available—brick from the ruins of the buildings near by. These brick roads were naturally not much good, but they served our purpose for a week or two. We found considerable quantities of German high explosives in various dugouts. These we used in demolishing many of their own concrete emplacements, being able later to utilize the concrete so obtained in our work of road-repairing. The large trees which they had felled in such numbers across our path gave us much trouble.

The drainage was of first importance. With the exception of the main metalled or pavÉ roads, which invariably have ditches running along each side, the majority had no culverts of any description. It was very necessary for us to construct narrow drainage ditches along the sides and run these off into deep sumps dug in the adjoining fields from ten to twenty feet on either side of the road. This is practically the same method that we adopted in draining most of the communication-trenches. In the advance and the half-open warfare then proceeding, the infantry and gunners would carve little "funk-holes" or shelters under or into the banks of the roads, or use their waterproof sheets to cover the little huts they built with low walls of sand-bags filled with dirt.

On account of the Germans having destroyed practically all of their dugouts and shelters, there was little protection for us from their constant and heavy bombardment. Our only resource was to jump into the trenches which lined almost every road. As a matter of fact, trenches are fairly good protection and we were always glad to use them.

In addition to our rebuilding the highways we were engaged in making a reconnaissance of all the captured district in this area, and perfecting plans for the thorough salvaging of all enemy material left behind. The amount and value of this was very great and included rails, timber, iron, ammunition, explosives, and many other useful things. A light railway was constructed for several miles in the old No Man's Land and millions of dollars' worth of material recovered, even including the iron knife-rests for supporting barbed wire.

We used very large quantities of the old German dugout timber in constructing new dugouts in our recently captured positions.

It was common practice by this time to start the construction of new deep-mined dugouts if the trenches were occupied a week only. In the past the British were always optimistic about capturing the other fellows' trenches before long and had contented themselves with very frail, easily built shelters. As a natural result the casualties had been enormous.

It was not surprising to us that the morale of the German troops should be so inferior to ours. The fact that they practically lived underground most of the time, and even when on duty in the trenches above usually occupied one of their heavily reinforced concrete or thick steel-plated "pill-boxes," readily explained their rooted objection to facing the music on top. When our sentries were on duty they had practically no protection except, perhaps, the very occasional use of a sort of steel breastplate and always a sharp pair of eyes.

The German emplacements or strong points, often referred to as "pill-boxes," were built in the most solid manner. The reinforcing of the concrete was usually accomplished with the use of round steel bars, rails, and I-beams placed at very close intervals in a rich mixture of concrete, while the foundations were deep and also well constructed.

Many of the steel-plate emplacements were used. These were usually constructed of steel plates two or more inches thick, bolted together and embedded in a concrete foundation. As in the case of the concrete strong points, they would nearly always withstand direct hits from shells of average caliber. We found many "pill-boxes," with three-inch shells sticking out of the steel reinforcing rods.

We were camped under canvas for several weeks at the village of Boyelles, about two miles back. Within a hundred yards of us was placed a large ammunition-dump, including many gas-shells. No cover for them could be obtained, so the shells were merely placed on the ground and covered with tarpaulins. Every night we were strafed hard at this camp, but, luckily, the dump was not hit. One night, we were quietly playing cards in our camp when a Taube dropped five bombs in quick succession within twenty yards of our tents, killing four horses and two men. This bomb-dropping was then, as now, a common occurrence behind the lines.

The work of the ambulance men and drivers during these days was splendid. On May 3 another man and I were watching with our glasses from an assembly-trench very near the shelling of an aid-post with Boche eight-inch shells. This post was in a dugout off the side of the road and the Huns were placing nearly every one of these heavy shells squarely on top of it or on the middle of the road. During the thick of this terrific bombardment we saw several Ford ambulance drivers bring their cars up, load their cases, and drive calmly away again.

The next day one of the infantry officers on our front who was scheduled to lead an attack "over the top" got started through some miscalculation five minutes before the appointed zero hour. The whole of his party ran into our own barrage and were nearly all blotted out. The same officer survived—but reached a dressing-station near us quite out of his mind.

Up the road a short distance from our camp was an infantry company officers' dugout, with another near them occupied by their orderlies. One night in May a Boche eight-inch shell burst on top of the orderlies' dugout and buried them completely. Unfortunately, the fact was not discovered until daylight, and when the entrance was cleaned out again the men had been dead for some time. So many were buried by shell explosions in this way that all dugouts are now constructed with two or more entrances.