If it was hard for us to make this climb, if we stumbled as we walked, what had it been for them?  Our breath came hard and fast—­how had it been with them?  Yet they had done it!  They had stormed the ridge the Huns had proudly called impregnable.  They had taken, in a swift rush, that nothing could stay, a position the Kaiser’s generals had assured him would never be lost—­could never be reached by mortal troops.

The Pimple, for which we were heading now, was an observation post at that time.  There there was a detachment of soldiers, for it was an important post, covering much of the Hun territory beyond.  A major of infantry was in command; his headquarters were a large hole in the ground, dug for him by a German shell—­fired by German gunners who had no thought further from their minds than to do a favor for a British officer.  And he was sitting calmly in front of his headquarters, smoking a pipe, when we reached the crest and came to the Pimple.

He was a very calm man, that major, given, I should say, to the greatest repression.  I think nothing would have moved him from that phlegmatic calm of his!  He watched us coming, climbing and making hard going of it.  If he was amused he gave no sign, as he puffed at his pipe.  I, for one, was puffing, too—­I was panting like a grampus.  I had thought myself in good condition, but I found out at Vimy Ridge that I was soft and flabby.

Not a sign did that major give until we reached him.  And then, as we stood looking at him, and beyond him at the panorama of the trenches, he took his pipe from his mouth.

“Welcome to Vimy Ridge!” he said, in the manner of a host greeting a party bidden for the weekend.

I was determined that that major should not outdo me.  I had precious little wind left to breathe with, much less to talk, but I called for the last of it.

“Thank you, major,” I said.  “May I join you in a smoke?”

“Of course you can!” he said, unsmiling.

“That is, if you’ve brought your pipe with you.”  “Aye, I’ve my pipe,” I told him.  “I may forget to pay my debt, but I’ll never forget my pipe.”  And no more I will.

So I sat down beside him, and drew out my pipe, and made a long business of filling it, and pushing the tobacco down just so, since that gave me a chance to get my wind.  And when I was ready to light up I felt better, and I was breathing right, so that I could talk as I pleased without fighting for breath.

My friend the major proved an entertaining chap, and a talkative one, too, for all his seeming brusqueness.  He pointed out the spots that had been made famous in the battle, and explained to me what it was the Canadians had done.  And I saw and understood better than ever before what a great feat that had been, and how heavily it had counted.  He lent me his binoculars, too, and with them I swept the whole valley toward Lens, where the great French coal mines are, and where the Germans have been under steady fire so long, and have been hanging on by their eyelashes.