THE BRITISH RETREAT,
MARCH, 1918.
Rear-guard actions.--The Somme crossings.--Bennett relieved by the
20th Division at Voyennes.--Davenport with mixed troops ordered to
counter-attack at Ham.--Davenport killed.--The enemy crosses the
Somme.--The stand by the 184th Infantry Brigade at Nesle.--Colonel
Wetherall wounded.--Counter-attack against La Motte.--Bennett
captured.--The Battalion's sacrifice in the great battle.
After the battle for the Beauvoir Line the 184th Infantry Brigade was
ordered back to Nesle. At Languevoisin on March 23 we find the relics
of the 2/4th Oxfords under the command of Major Bennett, who with a
force including other members of the Battalion had been providing
rear-guards at the crossings of the Somme. What force was this? To
understand the story it is necessary to go back a little and see what
had been happening behind the line since March 21.
When the attack was known to have commenced, all transport,
quartermasters' stores, and men left out of the line were ordered back
to Ugny, where Bennett as senior Major present formed all our divisional
details into a composite Battalion some 900 strong. Early on March 22
Colonel Wetherall, limping and tired, arrived. He bore the tale of
his adventure. During the 21st we saw him disappear from Enghien
Redoubt to go on a reconnaissance. Near Holnon he was surrounded by an
enemy patrol and led a prisoner towards St. Quentin; but when the fire
of 6-inch howitzers scared his escort into shell-holes, the Colonel
escaped, and the same night, choosing his opportunity to slip between
the German digging parties, contrived to reach our lines.
As March 22 lengthened out, the tide of battle rolled nearer and
nearer towards Ugny, above which air fighting at only a few hundred
feet from the ground was taking place. At 7 p.m. Bennett had orders to
move his men westwards across the Somme. Soon afterwards a runner came
post-haste. He told of the fighting on the Beauvoir line; the intrepid
General had been wounded in the head while with his shrapnel helmet in
his hand he waved encouragement to his men. Colonel Wetherall had
already started on the way to Languevoisin but was caught up at
Matigny. He the same night (22nd) regained the Beauvoir line and took
command of the Brigade. As we have seen, he moved back with the
Brigade on the next day.
Further developments soon diverted Bennett's force, whose fortunes we
are following. At Matigny he was ordered by the Major-General with
half his force to guard the Offoy bridgehead and with the other half
to hold Voyennes. The Offoy garrison was despatched under Moberly, who
was commanding the details of the 184th Brigade, including a hundred
Oxfords. Moberly's force comprised many administrative personnel.
'What your men lack in numbers they must make up in courage,' was the
Major-General's encouragement.
But the men were not at once put to the test. The 20th Division, which
was covering the retreat across the Somme, relieved the Offoy
rear-guard, of which Davenport had now assumed command, early in the
morning of March 23, and Bennett was likewise relieved in his duties
at Voyennes, where the bridge was blown up. Though the Offoy
bridgehead had been taken over by the 20th Division, Davenport's
troops were kept in support along the railway embankment at Hombleux,
for it was feared that the enemy had already commenced to cross the
Somme at Ham. During the morning of the 23rd Davenport received
peremptory orders to make a counter-attack against the town with the
object of regaining possession of its bridgehead. Considerable success
resulted; Verlaines was cleared of the enemy's patrols, and the
advance reached the ridge east of that village.
[Illustration: THE RETREAT BEHIND THE SOMME.
Sketch map illustrating the rear-guard actions of 184 INF BDE
between HAM and NESLE on March 24 and 25 1918]
With fresh troops acting on a concerted plan something might have been
accomplished. Davenport's men were a disorganised mixture of many
battalions, including, besides the Oxfords and other representatives
of the 184th Brigade, a number of Cornwalls and King's Liverpools.
They were unfed, and the demoralisation of the retreat was beginning
to do its work. As always on these occasions, when officers of
different services were thrown together, divided counsels were the
result. Moberly, an officer who could have been relied upon to make
the best of the situation, was wounded in the leg during a moonlight
reconnaissance with Davenport.
By March 24 the position was unaltered; the troops were still lining
the ridge east of Verlaines and awaited the enemy's next move with
their field of fire in many cases masked by, or masking, that of their
comrades. Against this type of defence the enemy's tactics did not
require to be as infallible as they perhaps seemed. Our pity is drawn
to these English troops, disorganised, without their own proper
commanders, unsupplied with rations--the stop-gaps thrust forward in
the last stages of a retreat.
At 9 a.m. the enemy, whose patrols had during the night of March 23/24
been feeling their way up the slopes from the Somme Canal, commenced
to press forward in earnest. The mixed troops, who were lining the
ridge, had been 'down' too long to offer much resistance. They melted
away, as leaderless troops will. Davenport, a gallant officer who to
the very last never spared himself, was killed, shot through the head
at Verlaines. The enemy, whose advanced artillery was already in
action from behind Ham, had secured Esmery Hallon by the evening.
Nesle was threatened.
[Illustration: LIEUT.-COL. H. E. de R. WETHERALL. D.S.O., M.C.]
On the same day of which I was last speaking--March 24--the 184th
Brigade, minus those Oxfords who were in action with the 20th
Division, though sadly wasted in numbers, formed up again to make a
stand. Colonel Wetherall, the acting Brigadier, had received orders to
hold the line of the Canal east and south east of Nesle. On the left
of this line stood the Oxfords under Bennett, 200 Berks under Willink
were in the centre, while the Gloucesters, about 120 strong under
Colonel Lawson, guarded the right. At 11 a.m. on March 25 the enemy
attacked. As often during these days, when a line was held solidly in
one place, it broke elsewhere. By noon the enemy had captured Nesle,
and the left flank of the Brigade was turned. During the fight Colonel
Wetherall was wounded in the neck by a piece of shell and owed his
life to the Brigade Major, Howitt, who held the arteries.
The line was driven back to Billancourt and the same night (25th) the
remnants of the XVIII Corps withdrew in darkness to Roye, a town where
our hospitals were still at work, evacuating as fast as possible the
streams of wounded from the battle. One of the last patients to leave
by train was Wetherall, who at this crisis passed under the care of
Stobie, the Oxfords' old M.O.
On March 26 we see the 184th Brigade held in reserve near Mezières, to
be suddenly moved at midnight of March 27/28 by lorries. The lorries
made towards Amiens, and it appeared that the battered relics of the
Brigade were being withdrawn. The belief was disappointed. At Villers
Bretonneux Bennett received orders from a staff officer to go to
Marcelçave, where the 61st Division was being concentrated for a
counter-attack at dawn against the village of La Motte. In the darkness
the route was missed and the convoy drove straight into our front
line. Marcelçave was reached eventually, but so late that a dawn
attack was impossible. At 10 a.m. on March 28 the forlorn enterprise,
in which the 183rd Brigade, the Gloucesters, and the Berks shared,
was launched from the station yard. The troops were footsore, sleepless,
and unfed. They were mostly men from regimental employ--pioneers,
clerks, storemen--to send whom forward across strange country to drive
the enemy from the village he had seized on the important Amiens-St.
Quentin road was a mockery. Such efforts at counter-attack resulted in
more and more ground being lost. Still, the men staggered forward
bravely, to come almost at once under fierce enfilade machine-gun
fire. The losses were heavy. Craddock, a young officer now serving
under Bennett, moved about among the men, encouraging them by his
example of coolness and gallantry.
When 350 yards short of La Motte the advance was driven to take cover.
It was useless to press on; in fact, already there was real danger of
being surrounded. Bennett, whose leadership throughout was excellent,
with difficulty extricated his men by doubling them in two's across
the open. Towards evening those that got back were placed in trenches
outside Marcelçave.
By now that village was being severely shelled and bombed, and in
danger of becoming surrounded by the enemy. Soon after dark it was
attacked in earnest. Bennett stayed too long in Marcelçave attempting
to get news of the situation and some orders. Brigade Headquarters had
in fact already left, before Bennett, instead of returning to his
former headquarters, decided to join his men in the trenches before
the village. Those trenches were no longer being fought for. Near the
railway bridge he ran straight into the enemy as they swarmed towards
the village and was captured. The remains of the Battalion were driven
back on Villers Bretonneux, the contents of which village had to make
up for absent rations. Robinson, who had returned from leave in time
to take part in the La Motte affair, assumed command. The Australians
were at hand; fresh troops arrived to relieve those worn out by a
week's continuous fighting. After four days at Gentelles all that were
left of the 2/4th Oxfords, together with the other fragments of the
61st Division, were withdrawn for rest and reorganisation west of
Amiens.
A Battalion is too small for its historian to enter into any
controversy upon the measures taken for the defence of the St. Quentin
front. Whatever else the Oxfords could have done would have had no
effect upon the main issues of this great attack. But for the mist the
German onslaught, delivered in the preponderance of four to one, would
hardly have achieved the same historical result. The Battalion had
stood in the forefront of the greatest battle of the war. Accounts,
already growing legendary, tell how our men acquitted themselves that
day. Some posts fought on till all were killed or wounded. There were
few stragglers. Of B Company, only one man returned from the front
line. It is said of A Company that, when surrounded by the enemy,
Brown formed the men into a circle, back to back, and fought without
surrender.
The monument which stands above Fayet is happily placed. It is inscribed
to the sons of France who fell in action nearly fifty years ago. On
March 21, 1918, it was enriched by its association with a later
sacrifice. The credit won in this lost battle gives to the 2/4th
Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry a share of honour in the war equal to
that which has been earned by our most successful troops in the
advance.
The loss in all ranks had been so heavy that the killed and missing
could only be computed by counting over those few that remained.
Bennett and all four company commanders in the line were missing. The
Colonel and Moberly had been sent to England wounded. Jones was the
only officer from the front line who remained safe. Cairns, the
Sergeant-Major of A Company, had come through and earned distinction.
The loss in Lewis gunners, signallers, and runners had been especially
heavy. Douglas, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, after most valuable
work in the Battalion, had been killed. Transport and stores, for
extricating which credit was due to Abraham and Murray, alone came out
complete.