THE ADVANCE TO ST. QUENTIN,
MARCH TO APRIL, 1917.
The enemy's retirement.--Road-mending in No-Man's-Land.--The
devastated area.--Open warfare.--The Montolu campaign.--
Operations on the Omignon river.--The 61st Division relieved before
St. Quentin.--End of trench-warfare.
On March 16, 1917, the Germans left their front line and scuttled back
behind the Somme.
The news of this threw everything into a miniature ferment. The Berks
stopped practising a raid which they were to do on the Brigade's
return to the old trenches. The General rode off apace. After orders
and counter-orders the 2/4th marched dramatically to a map reference
near Lihons and commenced pulling logs out of old French dug-outs.
Much good work was done, but I believe the logs were never used. On
the next day German aeroplanes saw the Battalion parade at X 17 c 3.
8. and march to its old billets at Rainecourt. Never was the old song
'Here we are again' more heartily rendered.
Meanwhile Divisional Headquarters advanced and seized a colony of
dug-outs at Vermandovillers. Great eagerness was shown by everyone to
see what the enemy had left behind and whither he had gone. Often
during the advance parties of Infantry detailed to clear a village
found members of a Royal Corps already in possession. In this race of
the curious we were severely handicapped, for it had fallen to the 182nd
Brigade to be the Advanced Guard of the 61st Division and to the 184th
to follow in reserve. To us the task of roadmaking in No-Man's-Land was
assigned. This proved quite interesting work. Except where shells had
fallen on them or trenches been dug through, the roads, when once the
mud had been removed, were found virtually intact. Soon G.S. wagons
and limbers and 18-pounders were passing forward. The war was on the
move.
To explore the former German trenches was a pleasing novelty. The
front line was deep and fairly dry. Elbow marks at every 50 yards or
so and bombs with caps screwed off vouched for the situation of old
sentry posts. Communication trenches were derelict, nor did proper
support nor second lines exist. The enemy's defence had been the
merest shell.
The Battalion moved to Chaulnes on March 22. That village, damaged by
our artillery, had been finally wrecked by the departing enemy, whose
rude notices were scrawled on any walls still standing. 'One million
tons of English shipping sunk in the month of February,' said one more
polite than others. In spite of all that the Germans had done, quite
good accommodation was found for all ranks, and its improvement by old
doors, shutters, and selected _débris_ from other ruins provided much
amusement. Father Buggins and the Doctor, with a wheelbarrow, were
to the fore collecting armchairs covered in red velvet. Stoves and
fuel were abundant, and at this time booby-traps were few.
March 23 was spent in road mending between Vermandovillers and
Chaulnes. An example of how surely organisation wins wars was there
provided. We, who had come from Chaulnes, to work near Chaulnes were
sent to fetch our tools from Vermandovillers. In fetching them we
passed a company of Devons, employed on similar work at
Vermandovillers, who were fetching their tools from Chaulnes--an
episode fit for a war-pageant.
On the same afternoon we marched to Marchélepot. German sign-posts,
old gun positions and burnt dug-outs were objects of interest on the
way. Though cold, the weather was fine. Freedom from shelling was a
treat. We moved again on March 25, when the Bucks arrived to take over
our quarters at Marchélepot. Passing St. Christ, where the R.E. had
bridged the Somme, we saw the first samples of German back-area
demolition. At Ennemain the first big road-crater held up the
Transport. Our destination, Athies, formerly a flourishing little town
but since utterly wrecked and still smouldering, it was quite
difficult to reach. Sent on ahead as member of a billeting party, I
had to cross the Omignon river by a single plank thrown across a weir.
Until they are blown up one rather forgets the blessing of bridges.
In Athies good enough quarters in cellars and half-basements were
found for all. Headquarters went into the only roofed house in the
town--and afterwards questioned their own wisdom. The house had been
foreman's shed to a large factory, had been a Boche canteen, and,
finally, the billet of the wrecking party. Though our advanced troops
were in touch with the enemy some seven miles away in front, we were
made to hold an outpost line each night east of the town. To bring up
rations the Transport had all the distance from Framerville to
cover--about eighteen miles. Never had Abraham so long a journey for
this purpose.
The wanton mischief, now manifest everywhere that the advance carried
us, became a favourite topic for correspondents from the front, but
cannot be passed over without some record here. To us Infantry this
advance was a sort of holiday from the real war. It was like going
behind the scenes at a pantomime and discovering the secrets of the
giant's make-up. No list of things destroyed could lend any conception
of the wholesale massacre by the Germans of all objects both natural
and artificial. Château and cottage, tree and sapling, factory and
summer-house, mill race and goldfish pond were victims equally of
their madness. Hardly the most trivial article had been spared. The
completeness of the work astonished. Yet withal our discomfort was
slight. It was the French civilians, whose lives and homes had been
thus ruined, that such Prussian methods touched.
Amid this wreckage signs were perceptible of the enemy's weakening
morale. Villages in no wise organised for defence and so remote from
the German front as to have been outside the range of our furthest
gun-fire, inevitably contained deep dug-outs. Such precautions
surpassed all prudence and were sufficient almost to argue lack of
mental balance. Germans seemed crazy on dug-outs.
To resume the war. On March 30 the Warwicks entered Soyécourt and
shortly afterwards the Bucks relieved their outpost line. We ourselves
reached Tertry on the 30th, and the next night made bivouacs at
Caulaincourt Château, formerly German Corps Headquarters, now wrecked
past recognition. Amid the rubbish, whose heaps represented buildings
of grace and dignity, the eye caught the half of a gigantic Easter
egg. During our stay a German High Velocity gun several times shelled
the château grounds. Our own artillery was now getting to work and
made the nights lively with noise and flashes.
At 3 a.m. on April 1 C and D Companies were ordered forward to support
the Bucks in an attack on the line of single railway which runs
northwards from Vermand. The attack gained the ridge east of the
railway and no support by us was wanted. Ten prisoners were captured
by the Bucks, whose only casualties resulted from our own shells
dropping short and an unfortunate mistake of some other troops, who
lost direction and, pressing forward, encountered men of their own
side. Towards evening the General ordered D Company forward to occupy
Montolu Wood. The journey was made at dusk through a blinding storm of
hail and rain. The wood to which I went was the wrong one altogether.
Nevertheless to my wood my company returned twice later, till tactical
recognition was gained for it from the failure of the staff to
observe the mistake and my own to disclose it. The wood I went to was
some half-mile distant from the proper one, but the same shape, as
near the railway, and answering the General's map-description to a
nicety. I like to think of my wood, where I was so rarely found,
whither perplexed runners brought orders so late, where I never was
relieved, but where my old shelters of tin and brushwood escaped
disturbance in my absence.
At midnight, April 3/4, the Battalion relieved the Bucks. B, C, and D
Companies shared the new outpost line. Headquarters and A Company went
to Soyécourt. The relief, the first of its kind, was difficult. In my
own front a small brushwood copse was reputed to contain a sentry
post. The ground was dotted with small copses which the darkness made
indistinguishable, and no report of this post's relief was ever made.
When dawn was breaking in the sky, Sergeant Watkins, accompanied by
the Bucks guides, returned to say that no sentry group nor post in any
copse could be found. The most likely copse was then garrisoned and
the night's mystery and labour ceased.
[Illustration: THE ADVANCE TO ST. QUENTIN
Inset: 'a' company's attack, good friday 1917]
Further advance was evidently in store. The smoke of burning villages
still mounted the sky. At night a glow showed where a great fire in
St. Quentin was ablaze. The weather now changed for the worse. Hail,
rain and snow prevailed alternately. A fierce wind blew. Winter
conditions were repeated in the outpost line, where no shelter other
than tarpaulins rigged across the shallow trenches existed. Nor was
the artillery inactive. As the enemy's resistance stiffened, shells
commenced to fall on fields yet unscarred by trench or shell-hole.
Better ammunition seemed to be in use--or was it a month's holiday
from shells that made it seem so?--and more subtlety was shown by
German gunners in their choice of targets. Our casualties, though not
numerous, proved that the war, in most of its old incidents, had been
resumed.
In the early morning of April 4 the 59th Division, which was operating
on the Battalion's left, attacked Le Vergier. Fighting continued till
noon, but the village was not taken. The 59th lost heavily. As they
formed up for their advance--which was for some 1,000 yards across the
open and exposed to view--behind the line the Battalion was holding,
considerable enemy fire was brought down upon us and I lost Sergeant
Watkins, wounded in the arm, and several other casualties. It snowed
nearly all day. In the shallow trenches, which were ill-sited both for
drainage and concealment from the enemy, life was miserable. On the
next night a battalion of Sherwood Foresters relieved D Company, which
returned to its wood, but B and C Companies remained holding the line.
John Stockton, who now commanded B, was ill, but refused to leave the
trenches and carried on in a most determined manner under shocking
weather conditions. A new officer, Allden, in my company also proved
his worth about this time. Events of some sort were of hourly occurrence.
The 2/5th Gloucesters held the line on the Battalion's right, near the
Omignon river. One night, after a heavy bombardment with 4.2s, the
Germans rushed one of their posts. It had recently been evacuated,
and the enemy spent his trouble in vain.
For April 6--Good Friday, 1917--an attack on a large scale had been
arranged. The 59th Division on our left, the Gloucesters and the 182nd
Brigade on our right, shared in the operations. The line was to be
advanced a mile on both sides of the Omignon. The Battalion's
objective was a line of trenches recently dug by the enemy and running
between Le Vergier and the river. To capture them Brown's company,
which hitherto had stayed in reserve at Soyécourt in tolerable
accommodation, was selected. B and D Companies were ordered to keep
close behind A to support the attack, while C remained to garrison the
outpost line.
Zero was midnight, but before that snow and sleet were falling
heavily. It proved the dirtiest night imaginable. Companies moved in
columns across the 1,000 yards of open fields between their old
positions and the objective, against which our artillery kept up as
severe a fire as possible. That fire was less effective than was
hoped. In its advance A Company lost men from our own shells, of which
nearly all were seen to be falling very short. The German wire, still
the great argument to face in an attack, was found uncut. Although at
first inclined to surrender, the enemy soon saw the failure of our men
to find a gap. Machine-guns were manned, which swept the ground with a
fierce enfilade fire. Brown, Aitken, and Wayte behaved in a most
gallant manner, the line was rallied, and a renewed attempt made to
storm the trenches. In vain. No troops will stand against machine-gun
fire in the open when no object can be achieved. It was idle to
repeat the attack or send fresh companies to share the forlorn
enterprise. Before dawn our troops were in their old positions.
In the attack the sergeant-majors of both A and B Companies were hit.
Of the officers, Barton, commanding B, and Tilly, of A, were killed.
Aitken and Wayte were wounded. Nearly 40 of rank and file were
casualties.
The attack had proved a failure, but, as often happened, hopes of
success were reluctantly abandoned by the staff. Thus my company was
warned that it might have to repeat the attack at dawn. Pending such a
fate, I was sent to bivouac in a windswept spinney known as Ponne
Copse. It was still snowing. After their week's exposure I was loth to
inform my men of such a destiny. But a more favourable turn of events
was in store. The weather cleared, and at 11 a.m. on the 7th I was
allowed to return to my version of Montolu Wood. On the same day the
Battalion was relieved by the Bucks and marched back through Soyécourt
to Caulaincourt. There we found Bennett, who had come from the
Aldershot course to be Second in Command. The château grounds were
quieter than before, for our guns had now moved further up towards the
line.
At 3 p.m. on April 8 a curious noise was heard in the air. A German
aeroplane had attacked the kite balloon, which hung, suspended by its
gas, above the château park. A French machine, not a moment too soon
for the balloon's safety, had swooped and shot the attacker to the
ground. All the Battalion was out staring up at the balloon rotating
on its wire, and the portions of the German 'plane, which amid smoke
were fluttering to earth. A rush, as always, commenced towards the
scene. The aeroplane, brought down from a height, was half embedded in
the mud. It was an Albatross, painted all colours, and possessed two
machine-guns and several sorts of ammunition for use against balloons.
I could see nothing of its former occupant, who must have been removed
for burial, except a pool of bright blood upon the ground.
During the night orders arrived for a move forward to support the
Warwick Brigade, which had been fighting for several days between
Maissemy and Fresnoy. At 7.30 a.m. on April 9 we marched in wind and
rain to Marteville, and then formed a reserve line in front of
Maissemy and Keeper's House. All day we dug trenches and erected wire.
A divisional relief was to take place. The weather was vile; almost
every hour a violent squall of hail and snow swept over us. That night
was spent in bivouac in sunken roads.
Next morning many of us walked along the Holnon road to view St.
Quentin, whose cathedral and factory chimneys were only visible
between the storms. The town seemed undestroyed. The Germans were busy
shelling its approaches. Salvoes of their 5.9s fell steadily, and
black splashes of earth jumped up ever and again, whilst smoke from
the preceding shells coiled and drifted away to the west.
The 61st Division was relieved on April 11 and moved back to the Nesle
area. The 2/4th Oxfords marched to Hombleux, a village where the
enemy had left the church and a few houses standing.
The German retirement from the Somme, now practically complete, had
opened a new phase in the war. For the first time since 1914 ground in
France had changed hands upon a large scale. The enemy's
relinquishment of 30 miles of front line trench and his withdrawal to
a depth, in places, of 40 kilometres, restored the principle of
manoeuvre to armies which had fronted one another for two years in
positions hitherto justifying the description of stale-mate. Strong
moral and political effects accompanied. And this manoeuvre, though
carried out upon a part only of the entire battle front, infused a
sense of change and movement into the most static portions of the
allied line. From theory open warfare had passed into practice. In its
old sense trench-warfare was no more; its genius had departed.
Trenches and dug-outs, which in some sectors had been visited and
revisited with changeless repetition for thirty months, lost their
sense of eternity. Who could say when the trenches opposite might not
be found empty and the burning wake of a German retreat glow in the
skies? Schemes for action in event of enemy withdrawal began to take
precedence over trench standing orders. Corps lines ceased to be the
show-places for Russian colonels, and the Corps Commander's gardener
paused before sowing a new season's peas in the château grounds.
G.H.Q. were agog.