ARRAS

Hokitika Guardian, 25 June 1918, Page 4

ARRAS

, A DOUBLE HINGE OF BATTLE. ' (By George A. B. Dewar.) After Amiens, Arras is probably the most observed town in Northern France to-day. It- is the most important town bordering 011 British and German fronts. As Verdun in 1916, soAiras to-day is a mighty hinge on which the battle line s.viugs. It is a double hinge ; .if the enemy’s hold gave here, he obviously would be in peril ; equally should we be if ours gave. .Arras has had a wonderful history since the war began, tier tapestries some may still lie seen in old chateaux in the British war zone—and her laces, even her “rat-eyed incarnation of attorneyism,” as Carlyle called Robespierre, are small deer indeed compared with a day or '■two of her experiences any time from August, 1914 to last year, when the enemy left her suburbs. Arras illustrates how difficult it is even" for years of sheil fire from heavy gun and howitzer completely to gut or level a large town. In 1914 the French and Germans clashed in a tremendous fight for Arias; we were busy near Vpres then, we hardly observed it. The town was shelled heavily, and finally the Germans sat down in one of the suburbs and stayed there till they had to go at tiie Battle of Arras last year. At some points only eight to twelve yards separated our trendies from the enemy’s, but the two sides saw nothing of eacli other, for the trenches were in the thick of buildings. However, Arras was always under observation by an enemy ‘•" sausage,” and if you motored up into the open space by the station you did so at your own risk, for the enemy could see your motor-car there.

Despite years of shelling, usual y steady, now and then furious, Arras is rebuildable. The civic buildings have been destroyed. They were beautiful, Historic; so the enemy took their lives, as he took that of Ypres Cloth Hall. Arras Cathedral is also a ruin. It was one of the

marks on which the enemy regulaUv registered his guns. But it never was good architecture. Its glass windows were rich and fine; they have gone. Some houses in Arras have not been touched, but the vast majority have been hit hard or riddled.

111 one way Arras has a strange power to affect one more than than Bapaume, than Per onne. Bapaume is only a heap of rubbish. When the enemy had mined it to pieces in March 19:7, he withdrew leaving only its town hall whole: but under the building he set a slow death-trap, the spring's of which took eleven days to snap on those who had settled in it ! Sc. Bapaume, like Ypres, is mere rubbish—nothing left. Peronne is almost as dead ; but Arras shows many houses where one or two walls have beeu carried away, and yet within you note almost everything as the families left it when

the evacuation took place. Women’s hats and coats still hang from pegs on the walls; children’s toys in the cupboards and on the table and ground where they were left in 1014. Kndless little signs of tender family care ai.d piide/the French housewiie’s neatness and frugality, wherever we pry into in Arras.

The writer has been in hundreds of smashed towns and villages which are due to the devilry of German and Austrian—for the.iefined Austrian is, if anything, more devilishly cruel than the clumsy German—hut he has never hated the enemy s > heartily as when he has been in Arras.

All through the years when the enemy squatted in the suburbs some 30 civilians lived 011 at Arras undergiound— it is famous for its cellars. Once while someone was passing through Arras about a year and a halt ago a boy issued from one of these cellars with a little pile of papers under his arm for sale—The Daily Mail in Arras !

Before the battle a year ago we dug a great system of tunnels, linking u}) the. underground quarries and cellars in Arras and suburbs to provide safe quarters for a great number ot troops. Long subways took them out to the trenches east of the town. All these bilLts below ground were electrically; lit, and Sir Douglas Haig specially described them in his despatch on the battle.