Away beyond Bethune one could see
the blue hills in which the Germans were strongly entrenched. To the
right among these hills projected three sharp-pointed, pyramidal
hills, indicating the location of the dumps of French coal mines, then
operated by the Germans.
[Illustration: FRENCH SOLDIERS ADVANCING UNDER COVER OF LIQUID
FIRE.]
For a time during the battles of Givenchey, one of our field
ambulances had been located in the spacious shady grounds of the
chateau. A little graveyard near the main gateway, on the roadside, is
the last sleeping place of a number of Canadians who died in this
ambulance. To-day a neat fence surrounds this little area of Canadian
soil and the graves are kept trim and covered with flowers. Even
before the authorities took any action I saw the French country people
themselves decorating the little mounds beneath which lay "Les
Canadiens" who had come so far "to fight for France" in this struggle
for the freedom of the world.
It is a beautiful little sleeping-place, and somehow it never seemed
to me so sad a spot as some of the other graveyards in France where
our Canadians lie. As the roar of the British guns increase as the
months go by, and the number of shells carrying death and destruction
to the Germans, multiplies--one can imagine that the spirits of those
who lie below are watching the enemy lines being pressed back towards
Berlin, and that they will understand that their sacrifice has not
been in vain.
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