Then for the first time I went into Ablain St. -Nazaire, which afterward I passed through scores of times on the way to Vimy when that ridge was ours. The ragged ruin of its church was white and ghostly in the mist. On the right of the winding road which led through it was Souchez Wood, all blasted and riven, and beyond a huddle of bricks which once was Souchez village.

“Our men have fallen on every yard of this ground,” said the French officer. “Their bodies lie thick below the soil. Poor France! Poor France!”