We left Houchin on April 18th, and soon found familiar signs of our proximity to the front. In Noeux-les-Mines, a not exactly encouraging notice said "These cross-roads are registered." Needless to say we did not loiter there, especially as it had been shelled several times during the preceding few days. Passing Petit Sains and Aix Noulette--the latter mostly in ruins--another notice warned us that "Small box Respirators must be worn in the alert position East of this point". A little further on we found parties of men at work making good the roads, and laying temporary corduroy tracks across what had recently been No Man's Land. Passing over this waste we descended to Angres--known later as "Angry Corner"--and entered Liévin, where we took over billets from the 13th Middlesex.
[Illustration: AIR PHOTOGRAPH OF LENS-LOOS AREA, 1917. _Reproduced by permission of Captain P. Huskinson, M.C._]
Liévin had only been evacuated by the enemy and occupied by the 24th Division two days before our arrival. This evacuation was not part of his general scheme of withdrawing from some of his salients and shortening his line, which we had experienced at Gommecourt, but had been forced on him by the capture by the Canadians early in April of Vimy Ridge.
Included in the line now held by the enemy West of Lens were the strong positions of Fosse 3 and Hill 65, opposite the South of the front taken over by the 46th Division, and Hill 70 on the North. His outpost line ran through the Cité-de-Riaumont and Eastern outskirts of Liévin, across the Lens-Liévin Road, through Cité-St. Laurent to Hill 70. Lens itself was one of the most important centres in the mining district and the whole area was a mass of mining villages or "Cités," with their rows of cottages and neat gardens, pits or "puits," slag-heaps, and other usual features of a colliery district.
The town of Liévin lay astride the Souchez river, about three miles West of Lens. Previously a thriving mining centre, it had now been badly knocked about by shelling, though large numbers of houses were still more or less intact. The Boche had done much work in strengthening the cellars of the houses by covering them with concrete, paving setts torn up from the road, bricks and other material, the only drawback being that much of the extra strengthening had been put on the side facing the old front line, so that we now got little advantage from it, and felt we should like to turn the houses round, as the side towards the enemy was often none too strong. The evacuation had been so hurried that the enemy had not had time to destroy or remove much of the furniture and clothing from the houses, in many of which we found all the available beds collected in the cellars, which were also well furnished with chairs, tables, cupboards, cutlery and much other civilian property and made very comfortable billets. Sappers made an inspection of all these cellars, and of the dug-outs recently evacuated by the enemy before we occupied them, in order to ensure the absence of "booby traps," and in this respect we had no excitement.