The landscape changes to the south of the Belgian border from the flatter coastal strip of Belgium around Ieper to a more varied landscape of small woods and streams rising to a ridge near Aubers and then falling to the flat land around Loos, once the home of the coal mining industry, evidenced by the remaining pit heads and slag heaps. Loos saw the first disastrous trial of the new volunteer British armies raised in the wave of patriotism which swept the country in late 1914. Again the land rises to an open rolling landscape of chalk ridges which the British soldiers compared to Salisbury Plain in England where many of them had trained. Vimy Ridge, just to the north of Arras dominates the whole area looking down into the coalfields around Loos.

The author's Great-Uncle who had started his war at the age of 17 on the battlefield of Le Cateau in August 1914 lost his life on the first day of the Battle of Arras, 9th April 1917, at the age of 20. He has no known grave and his name is recorded on the Arras Memorial to the Missing seen in the final picture of this group. There is a grave of an unknown soldier from his regiment who died on the same day, close to where he is known to have died, at Point du Jour just outside Arras. Maybe it is his.