Since then “They” had never ceased to bombard Arras. From many points of view, as I had come through the countryside at night, I had seen the flashes of shells over that city and had thought of the agony inside. Four days before I went in first it was bombarded with one hundred and fifty seventeen-inch shells, each one of which would destroy a cathedral. It was with a sense of being near to death⁠—not a pleasant feeling, you understand⁠—that I went into Arras for the first time and saw what had happened to it.