Saint Eloi is named after the good bishop who ventured to advise King Dagobert about his costume.  And the church stands—­what is left of it —­all alone on the greenest of terraces jutting out toward the east; and the tower, ruggedly picturesque against the sky, resembles that of some crumbled abbey.  As a matter of fact, it has been a target for German gunners.  Dodging an army-truck and rounding one of those military traffic policemen one meets at every important corner we climbed the hill and left the motor among the great trees, which are still fortunately preserved.  And we stood for a few minutes, gazing over miles and miles of devastation.  Then, taking the motor once more, we passed through wrecked and empty villages until we came to the foot of Vimy Ridge.  Notre Dame de Lorette rose against the sky-line to the north.

Vimy and Notre Dame de Lorette—­sweet but terrible names!  Only a summer had passed since Vimy was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war.  From a distance the prevailing colour of the steep slope is ochre; it gives the effect of having been scraped bare in preparation for some gigantic enterprise.  A nearer view reveals a flush of green; nature is already striving to heal.  From top to bottom it is pockmarked by shells and scarred by trenches—­trenches every few feet, and between them tangled masses of barbed wire still clinging to the “knife rests” and corkscrew stanchions to which it had been strung.  The huge shell-holes, revealing the chalk subsoil, were half-filled with water.  And even though the field had been cleaned by those East Indians I had seen on the road, and the thousands who had died here buried, bits of uniform, shoes, and accoutrements and shattered rifles were sticking in the clay—­and once we came across a portion of a bedstead, doubtless taken by some officer from a ruined and now vanished village to his dugout.  Painfully, pausing frequently to ponder over these remnants, so eloquent of the fury of the struggle, slipping backward at every step and despite our care getting tangled in the wire, we made our way up the slope.  Buttercups and daisies were blooming around the edges of the craters.

As we drew near the crest the major warned me not to expose myself.  “It isn’t because there is much chance of our being shot,” he explained,” but a matter of drawing the German fire upon others.”  And yet I found it hard to believe—­despite the evidence at my feet—­that war existed here.  The brightness of the day, the emptiness of the place, the silence—­save for the humming of the gale—­denied it.  And then, when we had cautiously rounded a hummock at the top, my steel helmet was blown off—­not by a shrapnel, but by the wind!  I had neglected to tighten the chin-strap.