CHAPTER XV

Now Captain Godfrey leaned back and smiled at us.

“There’s Vimy Ridge,” he said.  And he pointed.

“Yon?” I asked, in astonishment.

I was almost disappointed.  We had heard so much, in Britain and in Scotland, of Vimy Ridge.  The name of that famous hill had been written imperishably in history.  But to look at it first, to see it as I saw it, it was no hill at all!  My eyes were used to the mountains of my ain Scotland, and this great ridge was but a tiny thing beside them.  But then I began to picture the scene as it had been the day the Canadians stormed it and won for themselves the glory of all the ages.  I pictured it blotted from sight by the hell of shells bursting over it, and raking its slopes as the Canadians charged upward.  I pictured it crowned by defenses and lined by such of the Huns as had survived the artillery battering, spitting death and destruction from their machine guns.  And then I saw it as I should, and I breathed deep at the thought of the men who had faced death and hell to win that height and plant the flag of Britain upon it.  Aye, and the Stars and Stripes of America, too!

Ye ken that tale?  There was an American who had enlisted, like so many of his fellow countrymen before America was in the war, in the Canadian forces.  The British army was full of men who had told a white lie to don the King’s uniform.  Men there are in the British army who winked as they enlisted and were told:  “You’ll be a Canadian?”

“Aye, aye, I’m a Canadian,” they’d say.  “From what province?”

“The province of Kentucky—­or New York—­or California!”

Well, there was a lad, one of them, was in the first wave at Vimy Ridge that April day in 1917.  ’Twas but a few days before that a wave of the wildest cheering ever heard had run along the whole Western front, so that Fritz in his trenches wondered what was up the noo.  Well, he has learned, since then!  He has learned, despite his Kaiser and his officers, and his lying newspapers, that that cheer went up when the news came that America had declared war upon Germany.  And so, it was a few days after that cheer was heard that the Canadians leaped over the top and went for Vimy Ridge, and this young fellow from America had a wee silken flag.  He spoke to his officer.

“Now that my own country’s in the war, sir,” he said, “I’d like to carry her flag with me when we go over the top.  Wrapped around me, sir—­”

“Go it!” said the officer.

And so he did.  And he was one of those who won through and reached the top.  There he was wounded, but he had carried the Stars and Stripes with him to the crest.