THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI--FLESQUIERES.
(_November 4th to 20th, 1917._)
From La Lovie in the Salient I went on leave. I was recalled by wire on
the 4th November to discover that, during my absence, the battalion had
moved south to our old training-ground at Wailly. The apathy and bitter
disappointment, caused by our misfortunes on the Poelcapelle Road, had
disappeared completely, and the company, scenting a big mysterious
battle, was as eager and energetic as if it had just disembarked in
France.
For once the secret was well kept. The air was full of rumours, but my
officers knew nothing. It was not until I saw the Colonel that I learnt
of the proposed raid on Cambrai, and discovered to my great joy that we
were to attack in company with the Fifty-first Division.
This Division of Highland Territorials had won for itself in the course
of a year the most astounding reputation. Before Beaumont Hamel in
November '16 it had been known as "Harper's Duds." Since that action it
had carried out attack after attack with miraculous success, until at
this time it was renowned throughout the British Armies in France as a
grim and terrible Division, which never failed. The Germans feared it
as they feared no other.
We trained with this splendid Division for ten days, working out
the plans of our attack so closely that each platoon of Highlanders
knew personally the crew of the tank which would lead it across No
Man's Land. Tank officers and infantry officers attended each other's
lectures and dined with each other. Our camp rang at night with strange
Highland cries. As far as was humanly possible within the limits of
time, we discussed and solved each other's difficulties, until it
appeared that at least on one occasion a tank and infantry attack would
in reality be "a combined operation."
The maps and plans which we used in these pleasant rehearsals were
without names, but although this mystery added a fillip of romance to
our strenuous preparations, we were met by a curious difficulty--we did
not dare to describe too vividly the scene of the coming battle for
fear the area should be recognised. There was a necessary vagueness in
our exhortations....
One fine day Cooper, Jumbo, and I motored over to this nameless
country. We passed through the ruins of Bapaume and came to the
pleasant village of Metz-en-Couture on the edge of the great
Havrincourt Wood. Leaving our car, we walked over the clean grassy
hills to the brand-new trench system, then lightly held by the Ulster
Division.
It was a country of bare downs, occasional woods, sunken roads,
plentiful villages, surprising chalk ravines, and odd disconnected
mounds, and the key to it was Bourlon Wood.
You will remember that on the east of the Bullecourt front was the
Quéant Salient. Beyond it the German defences then ran suddenly to the
south in order to obtain the protection of the enormous, unfinished
Canal du Nord. By Havrincourt village, which was set conspicuously
on the side of a hill, the Canal met Havrincourt Wood, and the enemy
line turned again to the east, skirting the fringes of the wood and
continuing cleverly at the foot of a range of low chalk hills. A rough
diagram may make this clear, and will enable you to connect this battle
with the lesser battles of Bullecourt.
[Illustration]
The front which concerned my brigade extended from Havrincourt to east
of Flesquieres. Havrincourt itself was defended on the west by the
Canal, and on the south by a ravine and the outlying portions of the
great wood. In front of the German trenches the trees had been cut
down, so that the approach was difficult and open. East of Havrincourt
the German trenches were completely hidden from view by the lie of the
ground. This method of siting trenches was much favoured by the Germans
at the time. Clearly it prevented direct observation of fire. Further,
it compelled tanks to start on their journey across No Man's Land,
unable to see the trenches which they were about to attack.
[Illustration]
The trenches on the slope immediately behind the enemy first line
were in full view, and the roads, buildings, patches of chalk,
distinctively-shaped copses, would provide useful landmarks, if they
were not hidden by the smoke of battle.
Apart from its natural defences the Hindenburg System was enormously
strong. In front of it there were acres of low wire. The trenches were
wide enough to be serious obstacles to tanks. Machine-gun posts, huge
dug-outs, long galleries, deep communication trenches, gun-pits--the
whole formed one gigantic fortification more than five miles in depth.
Yet we came back from our reconnaissance in the firm belief that tanks
could break through this fortification without any difficulty at all.
The ground was hard chalk, and no amount of rain could make it unfit
for our use. Natural and artificial obstacles could be surmounted
easily enough or avoided. Given sufficient tanks and the advantage of
surprise, there was no earthly reason why we should not go straight
through to Cambrai. What could stop us? The wire? It did not affect us
in the slightest. The trenches? They were a little wide, but we knew
how to cross them. Guns? There were not many, and few would survive the
duel with our own artillery. Machine-guns or armour-piercing bullets?
The Mk. IV. tank was practically invulnerable. If the infantry were
able to follow the tanks, the tanks would see them through the trench
systems. In open country it would be for common-sense and the cavalry,
until the enemy filled the gap with his reserves.
We were only troubled by the thought of Bourlon Wood, which, from its
hill, dominated the whole countryside between Havrincourt and Cambrai.
But Bourlon Wood was only a matter of 7000 yards behind the German
lines. If we were to break through at all, we should take the wood in
our stride on the first day.
Jumbo expressed our feelings admirably--
"Unless the Boche catches on before the show, it's a gift!"
We returned to Wailly bubbling over with enthusiasm. The last
rehearsals were completed, and our future comrades, the 6th Black Watch
and the 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, appeared implicitly to
trust us. We tuned our engines and practised with the wily "fascine."
Fascine is the military term for "faggot." Each of our fascines
was a huge bundle of brushwood, weighing over one ton. By an
ingenious mechanism it could be hoisted on to the roof of the tank.
When a dangerously wide trench was reached, the driver pulled a
rope, the fascine gently rolled off the tank into the trench, and
the tank crossed at its ease. It was a simple device that produced
an astonishing amount of bad language. Entraining was hideously
complicated. Dropping the fascine on to the truck in front of the tank
requires care and precision, while obviously if a fascine refuses to be
picked up again, tanks are prevented from coming off the train....
At dawn on the 13th we arose and trekked a matter of five miles to
Beaumetz Station, where, after an excellent and hilarious lunch at
the local _estaminet_, we entrained successfully for an unknown
destination, although it took a little time to arrange the fascines on
the trucks so that they would not fall off in the tunnels.
I watched the trains pull out from the ramps. The lorries had already
started for our next halting-place. We were clear of Wailly. I motored
down to the neighbourhood of Albert, and at dusk my car was feeling
its way through a bank of fog along the road from Bray to the great
railhead at Le Plateau, at the edge of the old Somme battlefield.
It was a vast confusing place, and even a major in the Tank Corps felt
insignificant among the multitudinous rails, the slow dark trains, the
sudden lights. Tanks, which had just detrained, came rumbling round the
corners of odd huts. Lorries bumped through the mist with food and kit.
Quiet railwaymen, mostly American, went steadily about their business.
I found a hut with a fire in it and an American, who gave me hot coffee
and some wonderful sandwiches, made of sausage and lettuce, and there I
sat, until, just after midnight, word came that our train was expected.
We walked to the ramp, and at last after an interminable wait our train
glided in out of the darkness. There was a slight miscalculation, and
the train hit the ramp with a bump, carrying away the lower timbers, so
that it could not bear the weight of tanks.
Wearily we tramped a mile or so to another ramp. This time the train
behaved with more discretion. The tanks were driven off into a wood,
where they were carefully camouflaged; the cooks set to work and
produced steaming tea; officers and men made themselves comfortable.
Then we set off in our car again. The mist still hung heavily over the
Somme battlefield and we continually lost our way. It was dawn before
a desperately tired company headquarters fell asleep in some large and
chilly huts near Meaulte.
That day (the 14th) and the next the men worked at their tanks,
adjusting the fascines and loading up with ammunition, water, and
rations. On the 14th we made another careful survey of our trenches
and, through our glasses, of the country behind the German line.
On the night of the 15th I walked along the tank route from our
next detraining station at Ytres to our final lying-up position in
Havrincourt Wood, a matter of seven miles, until I personally knew
every inch of the way beyond any shadow of doubt.
At dusk on the 16th I was waiting on the ramp at Ytres for my tanks to
arrive, when I heard that there had been an accident to a tank train
at a level-crossing a mile down the line. I hurried there. The train
had collided with a lorry and pushed it a few hundred yards, when the
last truck had been derailed and the tank on it had crushed the lorry
against the slight embankment. Under the tank were two men. I was
convinced that I had lost two of my men, until I discovered that the
tanks belonged to Marris and the two unfortunate men had been on the
lorry. The line was soon cleared. The derailed truck was uncoupled, and
the tank, none the worse for its adventure, climbed up the embankment
and joined its fellows at the ramp.
My tanks detrained at midnight without incident, and we were clear of
the railhead in an hour. It was a strange fatiguing tramp in the utter
blackness of the night to Havrincourt Wood--past a brickyard, which
later we were to know too well, through the reverberating streets of
Neuville Bourjonval, where three tanks temporarily lost touch with the
column, and over the chill lonely downs to the outskirts of Metz, where
no lights were allowed. We felt our way along a track past gun-pits and
lorries and waggons until we came to the outskirts of the great wood.
There we fell in with Marris's tanks, which had come by another route.
At last we arrived at our allotted quarter of the wood, three thousand
yards from the nearest German. The tanks pushed boldly among the trees,
and for the next two hours there was an ordered pandemonium. Each tank
had to move an inch at a time for fear it should bring down a valuable
tree or run over its commander, who probably had fallen backwards into
the undergrowth. One tank would meet another in the darkness, and in
swinging to avoid the other, would probably collide with a third. But
by dawn--I do not know how it was done--every tank was safely in the
wood; the men had fallen asleep anywhere, and the cooks with sly weary
jests were trying to make a fire which would not smoke. Three thousand
yards is a trifle near....
For the next five days we had only one thought--would the Boche "catch
on"? The Ulster Division was still in the line, and, even if the enemy
raided and took prisoners, the Ulstermen knew almost nothing. By
day the occasional German aeroplane could see little, for there was
little to see. Tanks, infantry, and guns were hidden in the woods. New
gun-pits were camouflaged. There was no movement on the roads or in the
villages. Our guns fired a few customary rounds every day and night,
and the enemy replied. There was nothing unusual.
But at night the roads were blocked with transport. Guns and more guns
arrived, from field-guns to enormous howitzers, that had rumbled down
all the way from the Salient. Streams of lorries were bringing up
ammunition, petrol, rations; and whole brigades of infantry, marching
across the open country, had disappeared by dawn into the woods. Would
the Boche "catch on"?...
There was but little reconnaissance for my men to carry out, since the
route to No Man's Land from the wood was short and simple. And to see
the country behind the enemy trenches it was necessary only to walk
a mile to the reserve trench beyond the crest of the hill, where an
excellent view could be obtained from an observation post.
By this time we knew the plan of the battle. At "zero" on the given
day we would attack on a front of approximately ten thousand yards,
with the object of breaking through the Hindenburg System into the open
country. It was essential to seize on the first day the bridges over
the Canal de l'Escaut and Bourlon Wood. We gathered that, if we were
successful, we should endeavour to capture Cambrai and to widen the gap
by rolling up the German line to the west.
On the front of our battalion, immediately to the east of Havrincourt
itself and opposite Flesquieres, Marris's company and mine were
detailed to assist the infantry in capturing the first system of
trenches. Ward's company was reserved for the second system and
for Flesquieres itself. The surviving tanks of all three companies
would collect in Flesquieres for a possible farther advance to the
neighbourhood of Cantaing.
On the left was "G" Battalion, with Havrincourt village as its first
main objective, and on our right was "E" Battalion, beyond which were
the 2nd and 3rd Brigades of the Tank Corps. There was one tank to every
thirty yards of front!
Until the 17th the enemy apparently suspected nothing at all; but on
the night of the 17th-18th he raided and captured some prisoners, who
fortunately knew little. He gathered from them that we were ourselves
preparing a substantial raid, and he brought into the line additional
companies of machine-gunners and a few extra field-guns.
The 19th came with its almost unbearable suspense. We did not know what
the Germans had discovered from their prisoners. We could not believe
that the attack could be really a surprise. Perhaps the enemy, unknown
to us, had concentrated sufficient guns to blow us to pieces. We looked
up for the German aeroplanes, which surely would fly low over the wood
and discover its contents. Incredibly, nothing happened. The morning
passed and the afternoon--a day was never so long--and at last it was
dusk.
At 8.45 P.M. my tanks began to move cautiously out of the wood and
formed into column. At 9.30 P.M., with engines barely turning over,
they glided imperceptibly and almost without noise towards the
trenches. Standing in front of my own tanks, I could not hear them at
two hundred yards.
By midnight we had reached our rendezvous behind the reserve trenches
and below the crest of the slope. There we waited for an hour. The
Colonel arrived, and took me with him to pay a final visit to the
headquarters of the battalions with which we were operating. The
trenches were packed with Highlanders, and it was with difficulty that
we made our way through them.
Cooper led the tanks for the last half of the journey. They stopped at
the support trenches, for they were early, and the men were given hot
breakfast. The enemy began some shelling on the left, but no damage was
done.
At 6.10 A.M. the tanks were in their allotted positions, clearly marked
out by tapes which Jumbo had laid earlier in the night....
I was standing on the parados of a trench. The movement at my feet had
ceased. The Highlanders were ready with fixed bayonets. Not a gun was
firing, but there was a curious murmur in the air. To right of me and
to left of me in the dim light were tanks--tanks lined up in front of
the wire, tanks swinging into position, and one or two belated tanks
climbing over the trenches.
I hurried back to the Colonel of the 6th Black Watch, and I was with
him in his dug-out at 6.20 A.M. when the guns began. I climbed on to
the parapet and looked.
In front of the wire tanks in a ragged line were surging forward
inexorably over the short down grass. Above and around them hung the
blue-grey smoke of their exhausts. Each tank was followed by a bunch of
Highlanders, some running forward from cover to cover, but most of them
tramping steadily behind their tanks. They disappeared into the valley.
To the right the tanks were moving over the crest of the shoulder of
the hill. To the left there were no tanks in sight. They were already
in among the enemy.
Beyond the enemy trenches the slopes, from which the German gunners
might have observed the advancing tanks, were already enveloped in
thick white smoke. The smoke-shells burst with a sheet of vivid red
flame, pouring out blinding, suffocating clouds. It was as if flaring
bonfires were burning behind a bank of white fog. Over all, innumerable
aeroplanes were flying steadily to and fro.
The enemy made little reply. A solitary field-gun was endeavouring
pathetically to put down a barrage. A shell would burst every few
minutes on the same bay of the same trench. There were no other enemy
shells that we could see. A machine-gun or two were still trained
on our trenches, and an occasional vicious burst would bring the
venturesome spectator scrambling down into the trench.
Odd bunches of men were making their way across what had been No Man's
Land. A few, ridiculously few, wounded were coming back. Germans
in twos and threes, elderly men for the most part, were wandering
confusedly towards us without escort, putting up their hands in tragic
and amazed resignation, whenever they saw a Highlander.
The news was magnificent. Our confidence had been justified. Everywhere
we had overrun the first system and were pressing on.
A column of tanks, equipped with a strange apparatus, passed across our
front to clear a lane through the wire for the cavalry.
On our left another column of tanks had already disappeared into the
valley on their way to Flesquieres. It was Ward's company, but Ward was
not with them. A chance bullet had killed him instantly at the head of
his tanks. When we heard of his death later, the joy of victory died
away....
At 8 A.M. Cooper, Jumbo, a couple of runners, and myself started after
our tanks. We questioned a group of Germans, who confessed that, while
they had expected a raid in a day or two, they had known nothing of the
tanks. We jumped down into the famous Hindenburg Line. At first we were
unhappy: a machine-gun from the right was enfilading the trench and the
enemy gunners were still active. We pushed along to the left, and after
a slight delay came to a deep sunken road, which cut through the trench
system at right angles.
We walked up the road, which in a few yards widened out. On either side
were dug-outs, stores, and cook-houses. Cauldrons of coffee and soup
were still on the fire. This regimental headquarters the enemy had
defended desperately. The trench-boards were slippery with blood, and
fifteen to twenty corpses, all Germans and all bayoneted, lay strewn
about the road like drunken men.
A Highland sergeant who, with a handful of men, was now in charge of
the place, came out to greet us, puffing at a long cigar. All his men
were smoking cigars, and it was indeed difficult that morning to find
a Highlander without a cigar. He invited us into a large chamber cut
out of the rock, from which a wide staircase descended into an enormous
dug-out. The chamber was panelled deliciously with coloured woods
and decorated with choice prints. Our host produced a bottle of good
claret, and we drank to the health of the Fifty-first Division.
A few German prisoners, with a large, stiff sergeant-major at the head
of them, were halted outside while their escort snatched a hurried
breakfast. The sergeant-major was trying earnestly to make himself
understood. He seemed to have something important to say. His escort
became impatient and irritated, but, before proceeding to more summary
punishment, the corporal in charge brought him to me.
The sergeant-major explained to me rapidly that the place would
undoubtedly be shelled. He knew that his artillery had already
registered upon it. He realised that as a prisoner he must do as he was
bid, but he besought me to instruct his escort to breakfast a little
farther on. His words were confirmed immediately by a large shell which
exploded in the bank above our heads.
I handed over the problem to a Highland officer who had come in for
shelter, and we, who had already dallied longer than we had intended,
left the corpses, the wine, and the panelled chamber....
In fifty yards or so the cutting came to an end, and we found ourselves
in the open with a tank a hundred yards away. We walked to it and
discovered my section-commander, Wyatt, with Morris, who had been hit
in the shoulder. They told me that we were held up outside Flesquieres,
which was being cleverly defended by field-guns. Several tanks had
already been knocked out and others had nearly finished their petrol.
And there was an unpleasant rumour that Marris was killed.
We took to a narrow half-completed communication trench and pushed on
up the hill towards the village, meeting the survivors of two crews
of another battalion, whose tanks had been knocked out in endeavouring
to enter Flesquieres from the east along the crest of the ridge. The
trench was being shelled. From the sound of the guns it appeared that
they were only a few hundred yards away. We walked steadily up the
trench until we came to the railway embankment, five or six hundred
yards from the outskirts of the village, and we could go no farther,
for on the other side of the embankment were the enemy and some of my
tanks.
Leaving Cooper to keep in touch with the situation, I hurried back
two miles to the nearest battalion headquarters with my runner. The
infantry Colonel would not believe my report. He was assured that
everything was going well, and, according to programme, we must be well
beyond Flesquieres. So I sent a couple of messages to my own Colonel,
whose headquarters were at those of the infantry brigade with which
we were operating. I pointed out to the infantry Colonel that, if we
had taken Flesquieres, it was difficult to account for the machine-gun
fire which apparently was coming from the neighbourhood of the village,
and half-convinced, he sent his Scout Officer with me to find out what
was happening generally, and to endeavour in particular to approach
Flesquieres from the west.
We set out at once, taking our direction by a little copse which lies
on the hillside a mile or so to the west of Flesquieres itself.
We were tramping across the open down, happily exposed, when the
Battalion Scout Officer was convinced by a long burst of machine-gun
fire that at least the western end of the village was still held by
the enemy. A spent bullet struck the heel of my boot. We hurried on
with more haste than dignity, and looking towards the village, I
thought I could catch the flash of the gun in the window of a large
white house. A particularly unpleasant burst and the Scout Officer was
crawling on his hands and knees towards a convenient trench. At that
moment I knew no one wiser than the Scout Officer, and I followed his
example. For the next five minutes the man in the window of the large
white house must have enjoyed himself thoroughly. The air sang with
bullets. With tremendous care we continued to crawl, until after a
lifetime of suspense we came to within fifty yards of the trench. I
jumped up and dashed forward, the Scout Officer and our two runners
following me, and in a moment we were lighting our pipes and feeling
acutely that somebody had made a fool of us both. We parted stiffly.
The Scout Officer trotted down the hill to solve the doubts of his
battalion commander. I pushed on again towards Flesquieres, keeping to
the trench until the curve of the hill interfered with the view of the
machine-gunner in the large white house.
Since there was little hope that I should be allowed to approach too
closely to the village, I walked to the battalion rallying-place under
shelter of the railway embankment, a mile or so to the west of the
section where I had been held up a few hours previously. I found a few
tanks there and the survivors of some crews.
I gathered that all attacks on the village had been unsuccessful. A few
field-guns, cleverly sited in ruins and behind hedges, had knocked out
at least a dozen tanks. The infantry, bereft of tanks, had been unable
to advance. It had been a stubborn and skilful defence.
Of my eleven tanks four had been knocked out. S., brooding over his
misfortune on the Poelcapelle Road, had engaged in a duel with a
field-gun; his tank had been hit fair and square by the surviving
gunners, and it was thought that he and his crew were either casualties
or prisoners. The majority of the remaining three crews had succeeded
in getting away. F. and one of his sergeants had shown the utmost
gallantry in collecting the wounded under fire and rallying the men.
The other companies of my own battalion, and that company of another
battalion which had attacked Flesquieres from the east, had met a
similar fate. The village was surrounded with derelict tanks, like a
boar at bay with dead hounds. Marris himself, who had gone forward in
one of his tanks, was missing, and it was said that he was killed.
Of my remaining seven tanks three had been ditched. Two of these
unfortunates in their eagerness to kill had collided and slipped
together inextricably into a trench. The remainder had rallied, and
were ready, if necessary, to go forward again, but they were alarmingly
short of petrol, and the tank with the supply-sledge had broken
down. It was impossible, too, at this stage, to secure the necessary
co-operation with the infantry, and an attack made by tanks alone would
obviously fail.
We were about to start down the hill when I received a message to rally
in the Grand Ravine, the title of the insignificant valley behind the
front system of the German trenches. I had already sent some of my men
to the regimental headquarters in the Sunken Road for food and shelter.
I now ordered the remainder of my men to rally there after they had
left their tanks under a skeleton guard in the Ravine itself.
An hour later we set out from the Sunken Road on our weary tramp back
to the camp in Havrincourt Wood. It was late in the afternoon. We
were inexpressibly tired, and of course it began to rain steadily. We
plodded along, passing guns, limbers, infantry coming up to make good
the victory. The five miles were like fifty, and a year at least went
by before we staggered into camp, slipping feebly in the mud....
The adjutant was much distressed, for he had had no news of the
Colonel, who apparently had left the infantry brigade headquarters
early in the day. A pile of messages were waiting for him, including,
to my chagrin, those which I had sent him in such haste when I had
discovered that the Highlanders were held up at the railway embankment.
It was after nine, and I was wondering whether or not to inform the
brigade, when the Colonel came in with Cooper.
The Colonel, who had gone forward early in the battle, had found Cooper
in the communication trench by the embankment, where I had left him
with Jumbo to keep in touch with the situation. In the afternoon they
had collected a few tanks and sent them into Flesquieres. The tanks
had paraded through the outskirts of the village, and not a shot was
fired at them; but later, when the infantry attacked again, the enemy
came up from their hiding-places and let fly with machine-guns. At dusk
Flesquieres was still inviolate.
We cared little about anything, except sleep. The Colonel told us that
we should not be required on the next day. So after a meal and a pipe
we turned in for the night.