I have seen the fury of this beginning, and all the sky on fire with it, the most tragic and frightful sight that men have ever seen, with an infernal splendour beyond words to tell. The bombardment which went before the infantry assault lasted for several days, and reached a great height yesterday, when coming from the south I saw it for the first time. I went up in darkness long before light broke to-day to watch the opening of the battle. It was very cold, with a sharp wind blowing from the south-east and rain-squalls. The roads were quiet until I drew near to Arras, and then onwards there was the traffic of marching men going up to the fighting-lines, and of their transport columns, and of many ambulances. In darkness there were hundreds of little red lights, the glow of cigarette ends. Every now and then one of the men would strike a match, holding it in the hollow of his hands and bending his head to it, so that his face was illumined--one of our English faces, clear-cut and strong. The wind blew sparks from cigarette ends like fireflies. Outside one camp a battalion was marching away, a regiment of shadow-forms, and on the bank above them the band was playing them out with fifes and drums, such a merry little tune, so whimsical and yet so sad also in the heart of it, as it came trilling out of darkness. On each side of me as I passed by men were deeply massed, and they were whistling and singing and calling out to each other. Away before them were the fires of death, to which they were going very steadily, with a tune on their lips, carrying their rifles and shovels and iron rations, while the rain played a tattoo on their steel hats.
I went to a place a little outside Arras on the west side. It was not quite dark, because there was a kind of suffused light from the hidden moon, so that I could see the black mass of the cathedral city, the storm-centre of this battle, and away behind me to the left the tall, broken towers of Mont-St.-Eloi, white and ghostly looking, across to the Vimy Ridge. The bombardment was now in full blast. It was a beautiful and devilish thing, and the beauty of it and not the evil of it put a spell upon one's senses. All our batteries, too many to count, were firing, and thousands of gun-flashes were winking and blinking from the hollows and hiding-places, and all their shells were rushing through the sky as though flocks of great birds were in flight, and all were bursting over German positions, with long flames which rent the darkness and waved sword-blades of quivering light along the ridges. The earth opened, and pools of red fire gushed out. Star-shells burst magnificently, pouring down golden rain. Mines exploded east and west of Arras, and in a wide sweep from Vimy Ridge to Blangy southwards, and voluminous clouds, all bright with a glory of infernal fire, rolled up to the sky. The wind blew strongly across, beating back the noise of guns, but the air was all filled with the deep roar and the slamming knocks of single heavies and the drum-fire of field-guns.