https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/a-republican-society-for-great-britain-fh8bscnj2
Sir, Will you permit me to suggest that the time is now ripe to give some clear expression to the great volume of Republican feeling in the British community? Hitherto that has neither needed nor found very definite formulation. Our Monarchy is a peculiar one; the British system is in its essence a “crowned Republic” and it is doubtful whether even in Ireland there is any considerable section disposed to go beyond the implications of that phrase. But it will be an excess of civility to the less acceptable pretensions of Royalty and a grave negligence of our duty to liberal aspirations throughout the world of thinking men if we do not now take unambiguous steps to make clear to the Republicans of Europe, Asia, and the American Continent that these ancient trappings of throne and sceptre are at most a mere historical inheritance, and that our spirit is warmly and entirely against the dynastic system that has so long divided, embittered, and wasted the spirit of mankind.
The ending of this war involves many permanent changes in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. In particular there is the question of the future of the reunited Polish people. The time has come to say clearly that the prospect of some puppet monarch, some fresh intriguing little “cousin of everybody”, as a King in Poland is as disgusting to liberal thought in Great Britain as it is to liberal thought everywhere. We have had two object-lessons in Bulgaria and Greece of the endless mischief these dynastic graftings cause.
For the demonstration of such sentiments as these, for the advancement of the ends I have indicated, and for the encouragement of a Republican movement in Central Europe some immediate organization is required in Great Britain. To begin with, it might take the form of loosely affiliated “Republican Societies” centring in our chief towns, which could enrol members, organize meetings of sympathy with our fellow-Republicans abroad and form the basis of more definitely purposeful activities. Such activities need not conflict in any way with one’s loyalty to the occupant of the Throne of this “crowned Republic”. Very sincerely yours,
H G WELLS,
Easton Glebe, Dunmow, Essex.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-20/register/airmens-part-in-arras-battle-8x3n7d5zh
Unthinking people may say it is the same for both sides, but this is not true. Apart from the difficulty of rapid movement necessary to the attacking party, the thick mist robs us of all the advantage of our air supremacy and observation. We have the high ground now commanding the battlefield and a mastery in the air hardly less complete than in the Battle of the Somme. Each day enemy machines make, perhaps, a dozen crossings of our line, sometimes a few more, and every time a German machine comes over it scurries back again. Since the Battle of Arras began we have made daily over 400 crossings of his line — not hasty dashes, but deliberate reconnaissances, with careful observation, taking thousands of photographs and making long-distance raids and excursions over German territory.
Probably to the airmen, almost more than to anybody else, we owe the completeness of our victory, for it is the information brought by them that enables the guns to smash up the enemy’s batteries and pound his defences to pieces. Our guns smothered every enemy battery within range; the observation of our airmen and the practice of our guns being equally admirable. It is wonderful to see everywhere along the line in the captured German positions, not only heavy guns knocked out by direct hits, but small machine-gun emplacements, and always the firing is done as the result of aeroplane observation. Our flying men have paved the way for victory.
The nation will never be grateful enough to the Royal Flying Corps for what it did on the Somme and is doing here today, in spite alike of the enemy and the storms. In the thick mist which veils everything as I write, enemy aeroplanes stay at home, safe from attack, and his infantry and gunners know they are safe from the eyes that watch from above, and the immediate sequel to whose watching is the terrible work of our guns.
The bad weather is all in his favour, and all to our disadvantage.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-19/register/objectors-life-at-dartmoor-3pff9ws3d
Mr Wiscard, representing the Home Office, visited Princetown, Dartmoor, today and held an inquiry respecting the treatment of conscientious objectors and their work. As a result, discipline will be made more severe, and the warders, who are described as “instructors”, will be given more power. Men who persistently “slack” work will be sent back to prison. Judging by letters to the local Press, the feeling against the conscientious objectors who occupy the Dartmoor convict prison is growing.
Princetown frankly does not like the newcomers, and if it had the choice would probably prefer to have the convicts, who until recently were confined in the prison. The villagers feel that these men are allowed by the Government to live in comparative ease and luxury, while the prison warders and other men, who have been forced into the Army, are enduring far worse conditions. When they first came to Princetown a couple of months ago they had, or were to have, a scale of dietary about double that fixed by the Food Controller for the civil population. The incongruity of this was so apparent that the Home Office was made to see the necessity of changing it, and the food officially supplied is now more in accordance with national necessities.
There is, however, no limit put on the amount of food which the men may buy, and complaint is made by people in the neighbourhood that, on occasion, supplies at the village shops have been bought up to the detriment of ordinary customers. It is certainly a fact that the conscientious objectors have a very good time. Their living quarters are as comfortable as such a convict prison can be and the men have a good deal of liberty. Large numbers of objectors were allowed leave at Easter, though they had only arrived at Princetown a few weeks before, and were given free railway passes to their homes in distant parts of the country. Many objectors are actuated by political rather than religious motives, and there has been some attempt at propaganda. At the conclusion of service in Princetown Church, when “God Bless the Prince of Wales” and the National Anthem are sung, the objectors walk out. The work on which they are engaged is farming and quarrying. A good deal has been said about the slackness which prevailed, and whether the work is of any real value.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-18/register/blighty-on-the-way-home-p997dghf3
There was a noise like a train rushing over Holborn Viaduct, the night sky seemed to fill with spectroscopic flashes, and the next thing I knew was that I was being jolted over a rough road in an ambulance. A smell of iodine and disinfectant took me miles away to a sheep-dipping race under some big blue-gums. I saw the sheep go faster and faster through the race until I lost count and gave up. When I came to again there was a neat nurse who listened patiently to my sheep story and told me to go on counting them.
Later I realized I was wounded, and the thought pleased me, for there was every chance of getting home, or at least across the Channel, the next best home to a man who comes from the other side of the world. Doctors came and scribbled cryptic marks on a label which they hung on the top button of what had once been my tunic. I could make nothing of it, but the nurse smiled. “Blighty,” she said, and I blessed her.
There came a long white train with beds down both sides, and into one of these I was hoisted. I fell asleep again, to dream of a long dusty road and an old skewbald horse that I knew quite well was in New Zealand. It was a grand dream, and I was sorry when it finished, as it did when the orderlies lifted me up the gangway to the hospital ship.
Then someone removed my torn clothing, and much soil of Flanders. And then, oh I the luxury of it, I was put between clean white sheets. When the ship started I lay so that I could see out of the port, and the air, sharp and salt, rushed over my face. Hours I lay like this, and then there was a slackening of speed and a cheer from the deck. We cheered down below too, for we were nearing the quay. It was Blighty. We cot cases were taken into another train, which sped through lanes of brick houses all turning their backs on us, but on every second one was a “Welcome home” notice. One old man stood beside a huge calico sign that bore the legend, “Well done, lads, and good luck to you.” He got a cheer of thanks from every carriage.
As we stopped to let off some cot cases for a local hospital the sound of bells came softly over to us. It came to me suddenly. Fresh from fields of mud and barbed wire, from duckboards and dugouts, I realized how England could be symbolized. A country Sunday stands for England.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-17/register/a-reprisal-raid-lh6zp3vfx
Submarine attacks on hospital ships were proclaimed to the world as the deliberate policy of Germany at the beginning of February, but long before that there had been gross cases of such attacks. It was not, however, till February that Germany told a shocked world that she would thenceforth sink hospital ships in the English Channel at sight. She attempted to justify the threat by the statement that the Allies had “misused” hospital ships “for the transport of munitions and troops”. The British Government at once denied this palpably mendacious assertion, and added a warning that if hospital ships were sunk “reprisals will immediately be taken by the British authorities concerned”.
The Germans soon showed that they meant what they had said. The Asturias was sunk without warning “while steaming with all navigating lights and all the distinguishing Red Cross signs brilliantly illuminated”. The Germans went so far as to include her destruction among the published feats of their submarines. A day or so later the hospital ship Gloucester Castle met the same fate, and again the crime was made the occasion for a German boast.
The raid on Freiburg is the reply of the British and French Governments. It cost three British aeroplanes — not a large proportion of those engaged — but it had “good results”, for “many bombs were dropped”. The immediate result, however, is not what matters in such a case. The British and French Governments have judged that German towns must be made to suffer for German sea crimes against the Red Cross. They have considered other forms of reprisal, no doubt, and have determined that these raids are the best. There has been a good deal of evidence that they cause real dismay among the Germans. The German Government may have to listen to the panic clamour of their people. They have shown clearly enough that they have no ear for anything else.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-15/register/fighting-waist-deep-in-mud-22rg887qp
These are truly great days. On these forbidding miles of mud and hummock of French soil things are passing to thrill the readers of history to all time. For obvious reasons, in former dispatches, it has been inadvisable to call attention to the threat to Lens involved in our advance. There is now no longer need for reticence, because the Germans are already nearly out of Lens. We are pushing in, and for two hours today watched the enemy’s retirement. The actual corporeal German is not visible; but from where I watched I could trace his footsteps in the line of dropping shells, hustling him as he went.
Having broken and shattered the German front line both south and north of the Souchez River yesterday, our men then pushed through Lievin on the heels of the retreating enemy. Between Lievin and Lens there are two very formidable German lines. In places our men had to fight almost to their waists in mud; but nothing checked them. South of the river we breached the more formidable of the two lines by the hamlet of La Coulotte, where the lines of trenches wind across the Lens-Arras road a mile south-west of Avion. I hear heroic stories of the character of the fighting in some of the woods and of the way in which we rushed machine-gun posts and captured sometimes as many as 25 or 30 prisoners in a single dug-out.
It was a beautifully clear day, with sunshine and a high wind. The capture of the trenches and positions in this part of the front seems to have been unexpected by the enemy, and he had no time to construct his usual booby-traps.
What should be a pastoral scene of great beauty is now desolate beyond description. The woods are splintered and the fields are seamed with trenches and torn in every yard by shells, and they are made more desolate now by patches of snow. Snow is filling the old shell holes and has drifted against parapet or parados, and in the tangled belts of rusty wire. It is impossible not to wonder how far spring will be able to work its usual miracles in such a region, and it is extraordinary to put up pairs of mating partridges in what yesterday was No Man’s Land between the lines, and to see occasional lemon blossoms and coltsfoot thrusting up among the loose earth thrown up by the shells.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-14/register/fierce-vimy-fighting-few-prisoners-lxd03plcd
The attack was made in a snowstorm, the ground ploughed up with shells, seamed with trenches, and encumbered with wire and other litter. In the snow over such ground, under heavy fire from the enemy ensconced on the hill, to attack was a task to test any troops in the world. The enemy here fought stubbornly, waiting for our men until actual hand-to-hand and body-to-body, encounters took place. The troops opposed to us were Bavarians, with supports of 5th Guard Grenadiers of the 4th Guard Division. Prussian or Bavarian, Guard or not, Germans are never a match for our men when they come to grips. On both sides of the Souchez Valley, up the hill and through the wood, Canadian and home troops were equally successful.
On this occasion, contrary to the rule in this battle, the prisoners were few, only a little over 100 altogether, because this time the enemy fought instead of surrendering, and his casualties are in dead and wounded. Evidently the Germans were reluctant to give up all hope of retaining the Vimy Ridge. We hear frequent reports of a massing of enemy troops about Vimy village and the Bois des Hirondelles. More than one counter-attack has already been broken up by our artillery, and all indications point to hard fighting hereabouts yet to come.
All the troops praise the behaviour of our airmen, who stayed up for hours, in spite of a storm of snow, flying very low, using their machine-guns on the enemy, and giving invaluable assistance to our guns by marking the German batteries.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-13/register/sir-douglas-haigs-progress-btxqsgf6w
After the first great surge forward of the British assault in the Battle of Arras the inevitable lull has come. There is nothing in the least surprising or disturbing about it, and to feel surprised or to be disturbed would be gross treachery to the Army and its prudent Commander-in-Chief, whose tactics extort grudging acknowledgment even from the Germans. Sir Douglas Haig has laid his plans for the battle. He has told us that his operations are proceeding according to plan, and it is very certain that when he says this he does not indulge in mere senseless repetition of a deliberately deceitful German formula.
Let the nation, therefore, have patience and try to realize the nature of the task which the Army is performing. The very reticence and modesty of the bulletins which come from Headquarters make it the more difficult for them to do this. But it is the least they can do, and no great effort of imagination is required. Since the Army took the field in France it has had to buy its experience. It has bought it, and sometimes has bought it very dear. The knowledge thus painfully and hardly gained was tested last summer on the Somme and found to be accurate in all essentials. Its full results are now being put into practice. The chief lesson learnt is that against strong defensive positions the pace of a sustained attack is the pace of the heavy artillery. To attempt to force the pace is to neglect the searching preparation which alone can make assaults in force successful without overwhelming sacrifice of life. If time is given for the guns to get into position and to prepare the way for the infantry, then the strength of the defensive lines crumbles to chaos, a pillar of fire grows between the men who hold then and their supports, they are blinded and deafened and almost paralysed where they stand, and at last the lines of storming infantry pass over the mere phantom of armed resistance.
What is happening now is that the British troops have reached for the moment the limits of this area of devastation. To send them beyond it would be a useless sacrifice of life. For the time their work is done. The role of the guns must be taken up again, and when they have played their part again the the storming lines will go forward.
April 21, 1917
A Republican Society for Great Britain
To the Editor of The TimesSir, Will you permit me to suggest that the time is now ripe to give some clear expression to the great volume of Republican feeling in the British community? Hitherto that has neither needed nor found very definite formulation. Our Monarchy is a peculiar one; the British system is in its essence a “crowned Republic” and it is doubtful whether even in Ireland there is any considerable section disposed to go beyond the implications of that phrase. But it will be an excess of civility to the less acceptable pretensions of Royalty and a grave negligence of our duty to liberal aspirations throughout the world of thinking men if we do not now take unambiguous steps to make clear to the Republicans of Europe, Asia, and the American Continent that these ancient trappings of throne and sceptre are at most a mere historical inheritance, and that our spirit is warmly and entirely against the dynastic system that has so long divided, embittered, and wasted the spirit of mankind.
The ending of this war involves many permanent changes in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. In particular there is the question of the future of the reunited Polish people. The time has come to say clearly that the prospect of some puppet monarch, some fresh intriguing little “cousin of everybody”, as a King in Poland is as disgusting to liberal thought in Great Britain as it is to liberal thought everywhere. We have had two object-lessons in Bulgaria and Greece of the endless mischief these dynastic graftings cause.
For the demonstration of such sentiments as these, for the advancement of the ends I have indicated, and for the encouragement of a Republican movement in Central Europe some immediate organization is required in Great Britain. To begin with, it might take the form of loosely affiliated “Republican Societies” centring in our chief towns, which could enrol members, organize meetings of sympathy with our fellow-Republicans abroad and form the basis of more definitely purposeful activities. Such activities need not conflict in any way with one’s loyalty to the occupant of the Throne of this “crowned Republic”. Very sincerely yours,
H G WELLS,
Easton Glebe, Dunmow, Essex.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-20/register/airmens-part-in-arras-battle-8x3n7d5zh
April 20, 1917
Airmen’s part in Arras battle
The weather continues impossible. In place of the howling wind and squalls of the last few days steady rain set in during the night and has been falling all day, shrouding everything in a thick, November-like mist. It is as if the elements themselves hated the war.Unthinking people may say it is the same for both sides, but this is not true. Apart from the difficulty of rapid movement necessary to the attacking party, the thick mist robs us of all the advantage of our air supremacy and observation. We have the high ground now commanding the battlefield and a mastery in the air hardly less complete than in the Battle of the Somme. Each day enemy machines make, perhaps, a dozen crossings of our line, sometimes a few more, and every time a German machine comes over it scurries back again. Since the Battle of Arras began we have made daily over 400 crossings of his line — not hasty dashes, but deliberate reconnaissances, with careful observation, taking thousands of photographs and making long-distance raids and excursions over German territory.
Probably to the airmen, almost more than to anybody else, we owe the completeness of our victory, for it is the information brought by them that enables the guns to smash up the enemy’s batteries and pound his defences to pieces. Our guns smothered every enemy battery within range; the observation of our airmen and the practice of our guns being equally admirable. It is wonderful to see everywhere along the line in the captured German positions, not only heavy guns knocked out by direct hits, but small machine-gun emplacements, and always the firing is done as the result of aeroplane observation. Our flying men have paved the way for victory.
The nation will never be grateful enough to the Royal Flying Corps for what it did on the Somme and is doing here today, in spite alike of the enemy and the storms. In the thick mist which veils everything as I write, enemy aeroplanes stay at home, safe from attack, and his infantry and gunners know they are safe from the eyes that watch from above, and the immediate sequel to whose watching is the terrible work of our guns.
The bad weather is all in his favour, and all to our disadvantage.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-19/register/objectors-life-at-dartmoor-3pff9ws3d
APRIL 19, 1917
Objectors’ life at Dartmoor
From The Times, April 19, 1917Mr Wiscard, representing the Home Office, visited Princetown, Dartmoor, today and held an inquiry respecting the treatment of conscientious objectors and their work. As a result, discipline will be made more severe, and the warders, who are described as “instructors”, will be given more power. Men who persistently “slack” work will be sent back to prison. Judging by letters to the local Press, the feeling against the conscientious objectors who occupy the Dartmoor convict prison is growing.
Princetown frankly does not like the newcomers, and if it had the choice would probably prefer to have the convicts, who until recently were confined in the prison. The villagers feel that these men are allowed by the Government to live in comparative ease and luxury, while the prison warders and other men, who have been forced into the Army, are enduring far worse conditions. When they first came to Princetown a couple of months ago they had, or were to have, a scale of dietary about double that fixed by the Food Controller for the civil population. The incongruity of this was so apparent that the Home Office was made to see the necessity of changing it, and the food officially supplied is now more in accordance with national necessities.
There is, however, no limit put on the amount of food which the men may buy, and complaint is made by people in the neighbourhood that, on occasion, supplies at the village shops have been bought up to the detriment of ordinary customers. It is certainly a fact that the conscientious objectors have a very good time. Their living quarters are as comfortable as such a convict prison can be and the men have a good deal of liberty. Large numbers of objectors were allowed leave at Easter, though they had only arrived at Princetown a few weeks before, and were given free railway passes to their homes in distant parts of the country. Many objectors are actuated by political rather than religious motives, and there has been some attempt at propaganda. At the conclusion of service in Princetown Church, when “God Bless the Prince of Wales” and the National Anthem are sung, the objectors walk out. The work on which they are engaged is farming and quarrying. A good deal has been said about the slackness which prevailed, and whether the work is of any real value.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-18/register/blighty-on-the-way-home-p997dghf3
Blighty. On the way home
From The Times, April 18, 1917There was a noise like a train rushing over Holborn Viaduct, the night sky seemed to fill with spectroscopic flashes, and the next thing I knew was that I was being jolted over a rough road in an ambulance. A smell of iodine and disinfectant took me miles away to a sheep-dipping race under some big blue-gums. I saw the sheep go faster and faster through the race until I lost count and gave up. When I came to again there was a neat nurse who listened patiently to my sheep story and told me to go on counting them.
Later I realized I was wounded, and the thought pleased me, for there was every chance of getting home, or at least across the Channel, the next best home to a man who comes from the other side of the world. Doctors came and scribbled cryptic marks on a label which they hung on the top button of what had once been my tunic. I could make nothing of it, but the nurse smiled. “Blighty,” she said, and I blessed her.
There came a long white train with beds down both sides, and into one of these I was hoisted. I fell asleep again, to dream of a long dusty road and an old skewbald horse that I knew quite well was in New Zealand. It was a grand dream, and I was sorry when it finished, as it did when the orderlies lifted me up the gangway to the hospital ship.
Then someone removed my torn clothing, and much soil of Flanders. And then, oh I the luxury of it, I was put between clean white sheets. When the ship started I lay so that I could see out of the port, and the air, sharp and salt, rushed over my face. Hours I lay like this, and then there was a slackening of speed and a cheer from the deck. We cheered down below too, for we were nearing the quay. It was Blighty. We cot cases were taken into another train, which sped through lanes of brick houses all turning their backs on us, but on every second one was a “Welcome home” notice. One old man stood beside a huge calico sign that bore the legend, “Well done, lads, and good luck to you.” He got a cheer of thanks from every carriage.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-17/register/a-reprisal-raid-lh6zp3vfx
April 17, 1917
A ‘reprisal raid’
On Saturday a large squadron of British and French aeroplanes raided the German town of Freiburg. The Admiralty announced last night that this was a “reprisal raid”, undertaken “in consequence of the attacks made by German submarines on British hospital ships in direct and flagrant contravention of Hague Convention No 10.”Submarine attacks on hospital ships were proclaimed to the world as the deliberate policy of Germany at the beginning of February, but long before that there had been gross cases of such attacks. It was not, however, till February that Germany told a shocked world that she would thenceforth sink hospital ships in the English Channel at sight. She attempted to justify the threat by the statement that the Allies had “misused” hospital ships “for the transport of munitions and troops”. The British Government at once denied this palpably mendacious assertion, and added a warning that if hospital ships were sunk “reprisals will immediately be taken by the British authorities concerned”.
The Germans soon showed that they meant what they had said. The Asturias was sunk without warning “while steaming with all navigating lights and all the distinguishing Red Cross signs brilliantly illuminated”. The Germans went so far as to include her destruction among the published feats of their submarines. A day or so later the hospital ship Gloucester Castle met the same fate, and again the crime was made the occasion for a German boast.
The raid on Freiburg is the reply of the British and French Governments. It cost three British aeroplanes — not a large proportion of those engaged — but it had “good results”, for “many bombs were dropped”. The immediate result, however, is not what matters in such a case. The British and French Governments have judged that German towns must be made to suffer for German sea crimes against the Red Cross. They have considered other forms of reprisal, no doubt, and have determined that these raids are the best. There has been a good deal of evidence that they cause real dismay among the Germans. The German Government may have to listen to the panic clamour of their people. They have shown clearly enough that they have no ear for anything else.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-15/register/fighting-waist-deep-in-mud-22rg887qp
APRIL 15, 1917
Fighting waist-deep in mud
From The Times, April 15, 1917These are truly great days. On these forbidding miles of mud and hummock of French soil things are passing to thrill the readers of history to all time. For obvious reasons, in former dispatches, it has been inadvisable to call attention to the threat to Lens involved in our advance. There is now no longer need for reticence, because the Germans are already nearly out of Lens. We are pushing in, and for two hours today watched the enemy’s retirement. The actual corporeal German is not visible; but from where I watched I could trace his footsteps in the line of dropping shells, hustling him as he went.
Having broken and shattered the German front line both south and north of the Souchez River yesterday, our men then pushed through Lievin on the heels of the retreating enemy. Between Lievin and Lens there are two very formidable German lines. In places our men had to fight almost to their waists in mud; but nothing checked them. South of the river we breached the more formidable of the two lines by the hamlet of La Coulotte, where the lines of trenches wind across the Lens-Arras road a mile south-west of Avion. I hear heroic stories of the character of the fighting in some of the woods and of the way in which we rushed machine-gun posts and captured sometimes as many as 25 or 30 prisoners in a single dug-out.
It was a beautifully clear day, with sunshine and a high wind. The capture of the trenches and positions in this part of the front seems to have been unexpected by the enemy, and he had no time to construct his usual booby-traps.
What should be a pastoral scene of great beauty is now desolate beyond description. The woods are splintered and the fields are seamed with trenches and torn in every yard by shells, and they are made more desolate now by patches of snow. Snow is filling the old shell holes and has drifted against parapet or parados, and in the tangled belts of rusty wire. It is impossible not to wonder how far spring will be able to work its usual miracles in such a region, and it is extraordinary to put up pairs of mating partridges in what yesterday was No Man’s Land between the lines, and to see occasional lemon blossoms and coltsfoot thrusting up among the loose earth thrown up by the shells.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-14/register/fierce-vimy-fighting-few-prisoners-lxd03plcd
april 14, 1917
Fierce Vimy fighting. Few prisoners
On the extreme north of our advance fine work was done yesterday by the left Division of Canadians and home troops operating there. The left attack was delivered on both sides of the Souchez River, and, besides breaking through a new reach of the enemy’s front line, we carried the wood, very strongly fortified and held, known as the Bois-en-Hache, and also the outlying hill of the Vimy Ridge called the Pimple. The dominating height of this area is, of course, Hill 140, so gallantly captured by the Canadians on Monday night. The Pimple lies northward from Hill 140, separated by a valley, and though it is 60ft less in height than the other hill, nevertheless, the position is of strategic importance and it was heavily entrenched and fortified.The attack was made in a snowstorm, the ground ploughed up with shells, seamed with trenches, and encumbered with wire and other litter. In the snow over such ground, under heavy fire from the enemy ensconced on the hill, to attack was a task to test any troops in the world. The enemy here fought stubbornly, waiting for our men until actual hand-to-hand and body-to-body, encounters took place. The troops opposed to us were Bavarians, with supports of 5th Guard Grenadiers of the 4th Guard Division. Prussian or Bavarian, Guard or not, Germans are never a match for our men when they come to grips. On both sides of the Souchez Valley, up the hill and through the wood, Canadian and home troops were equally successful.
On this occasion, contrary to the rule in this battle, the prisoners were few, only a little over 100 altogether, because this time the enemy fought instead of surrendering, and his casualties are in dead and wounded. Evidently the Germans were reluctant to give up all hope of retaining the Vimy Ridge. We hear frequent reports of a massing of enemy troops about Vimy village and the Bois des Hirondelles. More than one counter-attack has already been broken up by our artillery, and all indications point to hard fighting hereabouts yet to come.
All the troops praise the behaviour of our airmen, who stayed up for hours, in spite of a storm of snow, flying very low, using their machine-guns on the enemy, and giving invaluable assistance to our guns by marking the German batteries.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-04-13/register/sir-douglas-haigs-progress-btxqsgf6w
APRIL 13, 1917
Sir Douglas Haig’s progress
From The Times, April 13, 1917After the first great surge forward of the British assault in the Battle of Arras the inevitable lull has come. There is nothing in the least surprising or disturbing about it, and to feel surprised or to be disturbed would be gross treachery to the Army and its prudent Commander-in-Chief, whose tactics extort grudging acknowledgment even from the Germans. Sir Douglas Haig has laid his plans for the battle. He has told us that his operations are proceeding according to plan, and it is very certain that when he says this he does not indulge in mere senseless repetition of a deliberately deceitful German formula.
Let the nation, therefore, have patience and try to realize the nature of the task which the Army is performing. The very reticence and modesty of the bulletins which come from Headquarters make it the more difficult for them to do this. But it is the least they can do, and no great effort of imagination is required. Since the Army took the field in France it has had to buy its experience. It has bought it, and sometimes has bought it very dear. The knowledge thus painfully and hardly gained was tested last summer on the Somme and found to be accurate in all essentials. Its full results are now being put into practice. The chief lesson learnt is that against strong defensive positions the pace of a sustained attack is the pace of the heavy artillery. To attempt to force the pace is to neglect the searching preparation which alone can make assaults in force successful without overwhelming sacrifice of life. If time is given for the guns to get into position and to prepare the way for the infantry, then the strength of the defensive lines crumbles to chaos, a pillar of fire grows between the men who hold then and their supports, they are blinded and deafened and almost paralysed where they stand, and at last the lines of storming infantry pass over the mere phantom of armed resistance.
What is happening now is that the British troops have reached for the moment the limits of this area of devastation. To send them beyond it would be a useless sacrifice of life. For the time their work is done. The role of the guns must be taken up again, and when they have played their part again the the storming lines will go forward.
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