attempt to reach Beugny, took a good grip of me immediately afterwards,
and I spent three or four days in bed at Bienvillers, at first in
my tumble-down billet, in a room that swarmed with flies and reeked
of chloride of lime, and then, when I could stand this no longer,
under a tarpaulin in an orchard. When I visited the camp at Bihucourt
again, after a lapse of a week, it was a scene of violent activity,
due largely to the Americans. Why these people called themselves the
301st Tank Battalion I never understood, as they were in fact the 1st,
but it was of a piece with their other eccentric customs. They took
over all the huts in the camp which A Company did not occupy, and they
provided us for days with interest and amusement. They seemed to spend
most of their time pulling their tanks to pieces. There was usually a
Mark V. in some stage of disintegration in the space between the two
main rows of huts, where it had no business to be, and over it and
around it swarmed crowds of Americans filled with what (to us) was
incomprehensible zeal. Perhaps by this time we were somewhat satiated
with tanks and with the war in general. Our Allies were inspired with
all the enthusiasm of belated proselytes. They were like children with
a new toy, and very like children, too, in other ways. Some of their
methods were stupefying even to casual persons like myself, who am no
stickler for pedantic ritual in anything. One did not expect to find an
American tank unit (or any other) behaving like the Guards; but mere
intelligent order and discipline, which common-sense should indicate
as essential to any military body, seemed to be unknown to these
people. Their orderly-room they themselves described very aptly as “the
mad-house.” The junior officers, a set of excellent fellows, lived in a
state of wholly unnecessary discomfort, partly from obscure notions of
democratic behaviour, and partly (I imagine) because they had obtained
from books some odd conviction that warriors should at all times be
Spartans. They appeared to have no batmen (presumably the free-born
American citizen would not serve openly in that capacity), and they
certainly had no mess, as we understand the term. Those of them who
visited our headquarters at Bienvillers were quite overwhelmed by the
primitive luxuries of A Company’s tarpaulin shelter, with its rickety
forms, dirty table-cloths, and imperfect crockery. An American officer
drew his meals in his tin pannikin from the men’s cook-house, sometimes
fetching the food himself, and sometimes being obliged in this little
matter by a condescending and casual-mannered N.C.O. or private, full
of familiar talk and audibly chewing gum. The meal was then consumed,
from the pannikin, wherever the officer happened to be. This was not
in some trench before an attack, but in camp at Bihucourt, now eight
or ten miles behind the line. The whole American Army, of course, was
“dry” in theory, and seemed to subsist largely on beans and bacon. Poor
Jack Brown, who was attached to the 301st for a few days when that
battalion left us for the Havrincourt region, complained bitterly that
he was half-starved while he was with them, as the officers, dependent
upon the men’s cook-house, had no meal after tea, and nothing alcoholic
to drink at any time. These peculiarities, trifling in themselves, were
symptomatic of that puerile element in the American character which
seems so incongruous in an otherwise preternaturally acute people. The
whole force was a strange compound of zeal, intelligence, fads, and
conceit. The men fought well enough, as did every one else except the
Portuguese. Being the first contingents drawn from a vast population,
they were physically and mentally of the best type. They were keen to
a degree, and honestly anxious, in their own peculiar way, to learn
everything. But they had learnt no more than the rudiments of their
job when the war ended. Their staff work broke down hopelessly under
any strain. The army, in short, wanted another year or so of hard
experience. After the Armistice, in America, I understand, people wore
in their button-holes little discs, on which were inscribed the words,
“We went to do it, and we’ve done it.” In the same spirit the Prussians
and the Belgians claimed to have won the battle of Waterloo.
This peaceful interlude at Bihucourt lasted for a fortnight.
The battalion was busy overhauling tanks, resting, washing, and
re-equipping personnel, and preparing in general for the forthcoming
attack on the reputably formidable position to which the Germans had
retired. The weather, changing with the fortunes of the war, after
a few rain-storms in the beginning of the month, had settled down to
another spell of sunny days, which made even the obliterated landscape
around Bapaume seem comparatively attractive. For amusements, we
had a veritable museum of battle relics at Achiet-le-Grand, where,
in addition to a host of disabled tanks awaiting trains for Erin,
there was the anti-tank stockade and a miscellaneous assortment
of captured German guns, which a week or two earlier had made our
lives a burden; while we were surrounded by a congeries of officers’
clubs that reminded one of St James’s Street after a social upheaval
and an earthquake. The E.F.C., after many months’ enforced absence
from the Promised Land, had erected once more its huge marquees at
Achiet-le-Grand itself, the 6th Corps had its clubs at Gommecourt and
Behagnies, and in Bihucourt there was a New Zealand Officers’ Club with
a first-rate library--manna from heaven in such a wilderness. For one
who lives on books it is difficult to speak with calmness of the spirit
and enterprise which inspired this literary mission. No British club
or institution that I ever discovered in France troubled about books
at all, if we except the dog’s-eared cheap editions in the Y.M.C.A.
canteens. The Canadians had a small library of instructional works
(horrible things) which followed them about; but it was left to the New
Zealand Division to establish, in a ruined house in Bihucourt, among
other places, a genuine library of volumes in good editions--shelves
of verse, history, geography, books of reference, fiction, and so
on, labelled and well kept, and obviously in demand. Among the many
miracles of this war, I count this discovery among the most noteworthy.
Unfortunately for me, I came upon it too late, although it was at my
very door. One does not look for pearls among the refuse of a battle,
and I only heard of the library by accident. Two days later we had left
the place, and did not meet the New Zealand Division again. But if any
one from that Dominion should read this book, I hope he will accept
the thanks of one (I have no doubt among many) who received benefits
from this exceptional enterprise.
On the morning of 18th September the battalion received orders to
trek to Morchies, north-east of Beugny, of evil memory. The Colonel
and the company commanders went ahead in cars to prospect for a camp,
and returned enthusiastic about some mysteriously empty huts (another
German hospital) which they had discovered. Early in the afternoon,
in brilliant sunshine, the eight tanks that A Company had now got
fit again for action were trekking across the rolling grass-land of
our old battlefield; B Company, from the valley behind us, and C,
from Favreuil, had joined in the procession; and before dusk we were
unpacking and settling ourselves down in our new quarters.
CHAPTER XX.
THE CANAL DU NORD AND BOURLON.
I.
The ruins of Morchies lay a mile and a half north-east of Beugny,
at the head of a valley which descended past Lagnicourt to Quéant.
On the summit of the high ground to the east of the village stood a
conspicuous group of large hospital huts containing a number of beds
and some rough furniture. Our men were accommodated in these, while the
officers occupied a group of smaller huts a quarter of a mile away at
the edge of the village. The tanks of the battalion (now twenty-four
in number) were camouflaged in the ruins. About this time battalion
headquarters moved to Bullecourt, to be in touch with the H.Q. of the
Canadian Corps, with whom we were to work in the next advance.
The valleys around Morchies were filled with horse lines and transport,
and there were many troops living in the village itself; and it struck
me at once as singular that we should have found this capacious
hospital empty, and not even ear-marked for any newcomers, especially
as it was the only camp of huts in the neighbourhood. When one sees a
cheap and otherwise desirable house untenanted in a popular district
one suspects bad drains: a solitary and empty camp in an area four
miles behind the line and crowded with troops made one think of shells.
Soon after our arrival I was looking round the country with my glasses,
and I discovered that we were overlooked, from a distance of seven
miles, by the trees of Bourlon Wood. I began to feel sure that these
apparently eligible quarters had their disadvantages, which had proved
too much for previous tenants; and in fact on the following morning,
just after the crews had marched away to their tanks, heavy shells
began to fall among the huts. A cook and a water-cart driver were
killed, and several other men badly wounded, and it became painfully
obvious that the hospital was no place for us. Bivouacs were formed at
once in the valley, and the men transferred to them that night. The
officers remained for another day in their own huts nearer the village,
but eventually were driven out by persistent shelling, and only one
large building was retained as a Reconnaissance Office. Beale (who
was now Battalion R.O. in place of Henriquez), Jack Brown, and I were
fortunate in discovering the only empty dug-out in the neighbourhood--a
cosy little place of two rooms partly excavated from the side of a
sunken road, where we lived in great comfort for the remainder of our
stay. Every one else moved into tents in the valley. Intermittent
shelling of the high ground continued every day.
We were very busy during this time with preliminaries for the
forthcoming renewal of the general offensive. The Germans had fallen
back to their last prepared position in the West, and this was to be
attacked by the 1st, 3rd, and 4th Armies on a front of over thirty
miles from the Sensée to St Quentin. The 1st and 3rd Armies were to
deliver the initial blow toward Bourlon and Cambrai on 27th September.
Operations in this sector were complicated, and to some extent
awkwardly cramped by a water obstacle which completely protected
Cambrai to the north and north-west. The marshes of the Sensée, running
from east to west, cross the line of the Agache and the Canal du Nord,
running from north to south, near Ecourt St Quentin, the two systems
forming an impassable angle of water and marsh which limited the share
of the 1st Army in the attack to its right wing, the Canadian Corps,
south of the Arras-Cambrai road. In addition to the marshes of the
Agache, the Canal du Nord, although unfinished, was full of water as
far as Sains-les-Marquion, five miles south of its crossing of the
Sensée. For another four miles to a point south of the Bapaume-Cambrai
road, where we were now east of the canal at Havrincourt Wood, it was
dry, forming an immense ditch 50 feet wide and 15 feet deep, with
steep banks of brick. At the village of Mœuvres, 3000 yards below
Sains-les-Marquion, it was crossed by the original Hindenburg or
Siegfried Line, which trended away to the south-east until it reached
the Canal de L’Escaut at Bantouzelle. West of Mœuvres this line was in
our possession; and operations since the German withdrawal, and known
as the battles of Havrincourt and Epehy, had carried the 3rd and 4th
Armies across the canal south of Mœuvres to within striking distance
of the eastern or German section of the famous trenches. Tanks of the
4th and 5th Brigades had helped the 4th Army in these operations on the
18th, 21st, and 24th September. From north to south our line on the
26th ran from Ecourt St. Quentin near the Sensée, west of the Canal du
Nord to below Mœuvres, thence across the canal and through Havrincourt,
Gouzeaucourt, and Epehy in face of the Siegfried Line. The main battle
was to open on the 27th, when the Canadians and the 3rd Army were to
carry the line of the canal and the Hindenburg trenches[41] as far as
Gouzeaucourt, the 4th Army carrying on the offensive to the south on
the 29th.
The impossibility of crossing the Canal du Nord above Marquion had led
to a redistribution of the 1st Tank Brigade. The 7th Battalion having
become well acquainted with the Canadians in the course of several
weeks’ training, was attached to them for their attack between Marquion
and Mœuvres. The 15th Battalion, with Mark V.’s, was borrowed from the
2nd Brigade to help the 17th Corps of the 3rd Army south of Mœuvres.
The 11th Battalion, also with Mark V.’s, having moved down from our
left, was allotted to the 4th Corps for the front between Trescault and
Gouzeaucourt. The 12th Battalion remained in reserve.
It is necessary to give here a more detailed description of the canal
and the country on either side of it. I have spoken of a valley
trending north-eastward from Morchies to Quéant. If one walked along
the high ground from our camp to the right of this valley one came
presently to another depression which fell away to Pronville, a mile
east of Quéant. From Pronville a third valley led at an obtuse angle
due east to Inchy-en-Artois and the canal. Down its centre curled
the dry bed of the Hirondelle stream, lined by willows, poplars, and
the anti-tank _abattis_ of railway iron; and along the ridges which
enclosed it to north and south were sited the deep trenches and
triple belts of wire of those portions of the Hindenburg Front and
Support Lines already in our possession. The southern ridge rose to
a considerable height--some 350 feet--and on approaching the canal
inclined northward in a final spur which sank to the levels of the
Agache near Sains-les-Marquion. The village of Inchy stood on the tip
of this spur, raised slightly above the levels and within 1000 yards of
the canal. Mœuvres, a mile to the south and almost on the canal bank,
was at the foot of the higher end of the spur. The eastern slope of
the latter fell gently like a _glacis_ to our front line, and through
scattered trees beyond one could see the white chalk embankment of
the canal about Lock 4. Our line took in both the villages, but there
was fighting in Mœuvres a day or two before the big attack, and the
front here was rather vague and was given incorrectly on our maps. On
one occasion, when Jack Brown had driven me almost into Inchy in his
side-car, we walked casually along behind the village until we found
ourselves in a ditch full of Stokes guns and people crawling about
in furtive attitudes, and learnt to our astonishment that we were
in our outpost line. Our subsequent attempts to see something from
the outer houses of Inchy itself, where not a soul was moving, were
marked by extreme caution. We could see little in any case, for the
canal was masked from this direction by intervening trees. From the
hill above Mœuvres, however, one looked over the whole area behind the
German front as far back as Bourlon Wood; and one particular point
in the Hindenburg trenches near Tadpole Copse (where there had been
severe fighting during the first Cambrai battle) gave us a bird’s-eye
view of the whole section of the canal which especially interested A
Company--the section about Lock 4. C Company was to cross north of
Inchy, where a fairly close reconnaissance was possible. Our chief
perplexity over this celebrated obstacle was caused by our lack of
reliable knowledge concerning it. Fragmentary information was obtained
from civilians engaged on its construction before the war, and was
supplemented by engineers’ drawings of various sections; but there were
intermediate patches about which we could find out nothing definite.
The sections were found to differ considerably in detail, and the
drawings themselves were of uncertain value. Time and shell-fire had
changed the profile of the canal banks in many places, while the
Germans were reported to have been at work on the unfinished portions
for some purpose of their own.[42] A number of indications pointed to
the fact that they considered the canal to be an insuperable obstacle
to tanks, except at the causeways they had cut through its banks. These
it was almost certain would be mined. The sum of our discoveries,
obtained from these sources and from aeroplane photographs and more or
less distant observation through binoculars, can be set out as follows.
It refers only to that portion which the 7th Tank Battalion had to
negotiate.
[Illustration: _The Canal du Nord and Bourlon._]
North-east of Inchy was a broken iron girder bridge. From this point
to another bridge, also destroyed, at Mœuvres, the canal ran in a dead
straight line pointing a little to the east of south. The embankments
on their outer sides were 6 to 10 feet in height. They were 20 feet
broad. The inner faces fell to the canal bed in two stages: first,
there was an almost sheer drop, partially bricked, of about 9 feet,
then a step or platform 8 feet wide, and finally a slope of 1 in 2
which descended for another 5 feet to the canal bed. The latter was 36
feet across. Midway between Inchy and Mœuvres there was an unfinished
concrete lock, numbered 4. Immediately south of the Inchy bridge
the banks had been cut and a causeway constructed out of the debris
across the canal bed. Two similar causeways existed between Lock 4 and
Mœuvres. All these were required for our artillery. It was suspected
that they were mined; and as they would be completely blocked by any
tanks which happened to be disabled while crossing, we were allowed to
use only one, that nearest to Mœuvres.
A and C Companies, each with eight tanks in two sections, were detailed
for the operation, B Company remaining in reserve. C, crossing near
the Inchy bridge, had a comparatively easy task. The canal at this
point was only half-finished, and the banks were low and dilapidated. A
Company on the right was faced by a far more serious problem. We had,
it is true, the use of a causeway, but this was a doubtful privilege.
If, as every one believed (and as the event proved) it was mined, the
leading tank probably would be disabled and would block the passage.
One section, however, was detailed to attempt this hazard. It remained
to find some crossing-place for the other section over the embankment
itself. The latter was known to be almost finished in this portion,
and appeared to be little damaged; and while it might prove easy
enough for tanks to slide down on to the canal bed (although the first
drop of 9 feet was not an attractive feature), to climb the other
side was a very different matter. As the brickwork was incomplete we
could only hope that the earth on top, after four years’ exposure to
rain and a recent pounding by shell-fire, had crumbled and fallen
over the steep upper lip to form a possible slope. The difficulties
were thought to be so great, however, that a very wild expedient to
overcome them was proposed and actually adopted. Three unfit Mark IV.
tanks were to be brought up, driven into the canal at zero, and there
manœuvred into position side by side across the bed to form a bridge
for the others. This was all very characteristic of theoretical staff
officers who had never driven a tank themselves and had no conception
of the difficulties involved in such a scheme. With unfit Mark IV.’s,
at least half an hour would have been taken in getting them into
position, if everything else went well. If one was hit by the barrage
which was almost certain to fall on the canal, the whole enterprise
would be ruined at the start. Finally, assuming the bridge to be made,
it is very doubtful if it would have stood the weight of the fighting
machines as they crossed over. Tanks are not constructed to support
thirty tons in movement on their roofs.[43] In the end, however, the
experiment never reached the point of test. The only machines available
were some of the 7th Battalion’s derelicts, still lying under repair
far behind at Bucquoy in the hands of salvage crews. Three were put
more or less in order and started on their long trek several days
before the battle, but the effort was too much for them. They broke
down repeatedly, and on the evening of the 26th were still some miles
from Pronville. The only result of this fantastic scheme was to put an
added strain upon already overworked salvage personnel.
In the meantime we had not troubled much about it. We continued to
work on more normal and practical lines, seeking some point on the
canal bank where tanks might cross unaided. From the Hindenburg
trenches near Tadpole Copse, after a careful scrutiny through my
glasses, I discovered what seemed to be a likely place immediately
south of Lock 4. Both banks were somewhat dilapidated and fallen in
through shell-fire at this point, and the nearer one was pierced by
a communication trench called Hobart Street, which ran down from the
front lines. Here, if anywhere, a tank could climb out from the bed. It
was decided that the left-hand section (M’Elroy’s) should follow Hobart
Street and attempt this crossing. The right-hand section (Paul’s) was
to use the causeway 700 yards to the south.
Beyond the canal the ground rose gently again to Bourlon Ridge. A
trench system, heavily wired, known as the Canal du Nord Line, ran
parallel to the farther bank. Behind this, 1200 yards from Lock 4, was
Quarry Wood, a T-shaped enclosure of meagre timber. From the Canal du
Nord Line communication trenches zigzagged up the slope on either side
of the wood to the Marquion Line, the last defensive work in front
of Bourlon. This line was still unfinished, and, as we found when we
reached it, was very imperfectly wired, there being wide gaps where
only the stakes had been planted. Bourlon village and wood, upwards
of 3000 yards east of the canal, were protected by a final series of
trenches and entanglements, nowhere very formidable. The Canadians’
ultimate objectives for the first day included Bourlon and Haynecourt
to the north, with the usual arrangements for further exploitation if
circumstances permitted.
[Illustration: Canal du Nord at Lock 4. A Company, 7th Battalion,
crossed where the lettering is, by end of Hobart Street. Quarry Wood
beyond.]
A Company’s eight tanks were to leave the front line at zero with the
infantry in the normal manner. The 4th Canadian Division, however, with
whom we were working, expected the tanks to be delayed considerably by
the canal, and framed its plan of attack on the supposition that they
would not overtake the infantry again until the latter was approaching
its second objective, the Marquion Line. This supposition, as it
happened, proved erroneous. As soon as the Marquion Line was carried
and the barrage lifted again, the two sections were to converge on
Bourlon village. The great wood was reserved for a novel treatment. We
had proved by bitter experience in the first Cambrai battle that gas
hung sluggishly about its hollows and undergrowth. On this occasion it
was to be deluged with gas-shells for two days and nights before the
attack. No frontal assault against it was to be made on the 27th, but
such of its defenders as survived the poison were to be captured or
driven out by envelopment from the north and south.
C Company, working on our left with the 1st Canadian Division, had
in hand the capture of Sains-les-Marquion, with a subsequent advance
against the northern part of the Marquion Line. The Divisional
Staff was unnecessarily anxious about the tanks being heard if they
approached the front line before zero, and accordingly insisted on
their starting 1000 yards behind the infantry. The attack on this flank
was cramped in its early stage by the water obstacle of the Agache
and the canal, the latter being flooded as far south as Lock 3, above
Inchy. Sains-les-Marquion and Marquion itself would therefore have to
be carried by a pivotal movement from the south and east, after the
canal had been crossed lower down; and this swing to the left on the
part of the tanks and infantry produced, among other things, a highly
complicated barrage table, the barrage turning back upon itself through
half a circle. In practice this difficult evolution was performed
without a hitch, as indeed were all the other arrangements made by the
Canadians, whose preliminary work was thorough and intelligent to a
degree which, unfortunately, was none too common. It was a pleasure to
be associated with most of the divisional and brigade staffs. They were
anxious to do all they could for us, they understood our difficulties,
and they appreciated our help. The Canadian infantry was at this time
in the best of condition. The whole corps had been withdrawn for
the first prolonged rest it had known some time before the general
offensive began; and by the breaking up of the new 5th Division in
England the four old ones in France were brought up to a strength
which no British unit could ever approach. The brigades we trained
with at Enguinegatte had forty-five officers and eleven hundred men
per battalion. Having broken triumphantly through the Drocourt-Quéant
Line in the first days of September, the corps was still fresh and but
little reduced in numbers. I never met the South Africans, whom many
people declare to have been the best of the Colonial troops; but of
the others, speaking from my own experience and on general grounds, I
should put the New Zealand Division first and the Canadians a close
second. The Australians, gifted with one essential military quality--an
aptitude for fighting--were in many other respects an unmitigated
nuisance.
II.
On the evening of the 25th we moved all three companies of tanks from
Morchies to the neighbourhood of Pronville. Each tank was now provided
with the latest development of the old Cambrai fascine--an immense
hexagonal crate of timber and steel, carried as before on top of the
cab. These things were intended for the Hindenburg trenches, but as the
7th Battalion worked to the north of that line, we never had occasion
to use them. Most of our tanks shed them at the first opportunity after
zero. I do not know that they were any improvement on the primitive
fascine bundle. They were little, if at all, lighter, and required a
lorry apiece to bring them on their fruitless journey to Morchies. On
one or two occasions when they were used by other battalions, I believe
they buckled up under the tank’s weight--an accident which could not
happen with the fascine. When carried into action they undoubtedly
terrified the enemy, who took them for some new engine of destruction.
Some of ours were riddled by machine-gun bullets.
The fine weather had held throughout our stay at Morchies, and
the night of the 25th was brilliant with a full moon. The trek to
Pronville, a distance of three miles, was accomplished in peace and
with only one or two slight breakdowns, which were soon rectified. The
little valley leading down to the village was full of 6-inch howitzers,
which fired intermittently with a blaze of flame and a shattering
noise. Across the mouth of the valley, where it widened and became one
with the larger depression leading eastward to Inchy, extended the
black barrier of the Hindenburg wire, looking in the moonlight like a
vast bed of some evil weed; and just in front of this, on the hillside
to the right, were two long banks, against which the tanks of A and C
Companies were parked up and camouflaged. The prodigious cribs which
they carried rose high above the top of the banks, and we stretched
camouflage nets outward from them to the slope of the hill beyond. B
Company’s machines had pushed on by the road which led through the
wire and trenches, to lie up under the willows lining the bed of the
Hirondelle in the bigger valley. We had found previously and marked as
our own (for what this was worth) a few small unoccupied dug-outs in
the front Hindenburg trench. They were still empty, and in one of them,
an L-shaped untimbered excavation about the size of a large cupboard,
accessible by the usual breakneck flight of steps, the Major, M’Chlery,
M’Elroy, and I settled ourselves down about 1 A.M., ate a little food,
drank a little whisky and chlorinated water, and composed ourselves for
a little folding of the hands in sleep.
The following morning (the 26th or Y-day) was again brilliantly fine.
I walked out once more to the high ground above Mœuvres and made a
final examination of the distant canal and the bare slope toward
Bourlon. In the afternoon I intended to take M’Elroy and Paul, the
two section commanders, over the route to Inchy and as far beyond as
seemed advisable. It was very simple going for tanks along the floor
of the valley, however dark the night might be, for the trees of the
Hirondelle formed a guide which it was impossible to miss; but no
one except myself had walked over this final stretch, and in case of
accidents it was advisable for the section commanders to know it.
Unpleasant developments, however, supervened to spoil our excursion.
As we were having lunch the German guns became active, and we could
hear and see the shells crashing in the valley toward Inchy. When we
set out, about two o’clock, we were obliged to keep to the high ground
along the front Hindenburg trench, so as to have a shelter to jump
into in emergency. We could follow the route of our approach-march
almost equally well from here, but when we got to the spur between
Inchy and Tadpole Copse, with the intention of seeing what we could of
the forward slope down to the canal, it began to rain shells. We spent
an anxious hour dodging among half-finished trenches and sheltering
in dug-outs about the head of Hobart Street, already mentioned, where
there was a nasty little gulley which for no apparent reason was
receiving marked attention. A small dump of 18-pounder shells was hit
and exploded, and the camouflage net which covered it having caught
fire, the smoke drew a heavier burst of shelling; and as the very
indifferent trenches in this neighbourhood were packed with infantry
and gunners, now tumbling over one another to get away from the
dangerous area, there were a good many casualties. When we managed
to get clear and return to Pronville about five o’clock, we were
exceedingly hot and thirsty, and very little wiser for our pains.
The Pronville valley was now filling up, in a discreet way, with
troops and guns. The Hindenburg trenches were crowded with men of the
63rd (Naval) Division, which was attacking on the right of the 4th
Canadians. In every little gulley which offered concealment there
were heavy howitzers, four huge 9-inch weapons being packed together
by a cemetery close to B Company’s tanks. Zero was at 5.20 A.M. the
next morning, and we decided to pull out our tanks half an hour after
midnight. As luck would have it, heavy clouds drove up after dusk, and
the night fell extraordinarily black until the moon rose. I had some
difficulty in this intense darkness in finding even the road through
the Hindenburg wire, only 200 yards from where our tanks were parked
up. By one o’clock, however, we had them in line at the head of the
Inchy valley, with the useful trees of the Hirondelle on our left. C
company was ahead of us. The only untoward incident in this early stage
was the fall of one of the huge cribs from the cab of a tank, which
crushed a man’s leg. Soon after we started a drizzle of rain set in,
increasing after a while to a heavy downpour; but the full moon having
risen, enough light filtered through the clouds to enable us to see our
way. A few shells whistled over and burst in the valley, but on the
whole the German artillery, after its activity earlier in the day, was
commendably quiet.
Crawling along at a snail’s pace, it was three o’clock when we reached
Inchy. C Company had already turned off to the left across the
Hirondelle to follow the valley round the back of the village. We had
still so much time to spare, being now within 1500 yards of the front
line, that we halted the tanks for nearly an hour, on a sort of terrace
cut out of the spur within a stone’s-throw of the ruined wall and trees
of Inchy Château. Before we moved on again the Major left us to return
to the 10th Canadian Brigade H.Q. in the Hindenburg Support Line across
the valley. The Colonel had insisted on this very sensible arrangement,
whereby company and section commanders, instead of wandering rather
aimlessly about after their tanks had gone into action, were under
definite orders to attach themselves respectively to the headquarters
of the infantry brigades and battalions concerned, where they were
better able to keep in touch with events, and where they could easily
be found.
Shortly before four o’clock, while M’Elroy and Paul got the tanks
started up again, I went ahead with a runner, one Corporal Deucars,
to examine the forward slope of the spur, it having been impossible
to reconnoitre this thoroughly in daylight. A road, lined by tattered
trees, ran from Inchy up the spur and over the main ridge to the
Bapaume-Cambrai highway near Doignies. The trees, and a conspicuous
ruined factory by the roadside, a quarter of a mile from the village,
stood up very prominently on the crest, and it was inadvisable to show
one’s self on this road in the daytime, as it was in full view from the
German lines. A second road, or rather lane, left the eastern side of
Inchy, descended the slope, and split in two almost on our front line,
one fork leading southward to Mœuvres and the other holding straight
on to the canal bank by Lock 4. It was my intention to lead the tanks
round the village until we struck this lane, which would take the
left-hand section direct to its crossing-place. The right-hand section
would have to head south-east after zero to make the causeway, but
there were several small landmarks, including a ditch lined by willows,
to serve as guides. Dawn, moreover, would be breaking as the tanks
moved off. Our front line for once was clearly defined between Mœuvres
and Inchy, where it ran along a light railway which would make an
excellent jumping-off point for the two sections.
I had taken some rolls of tape with me, as I knew that there were
several wired machine-gun posts on the forward slope, which it might
be necessary to avoid, while the ground here had been badly shelled at
one time and another. I found, however, that the Canadians themselves,
thorough in everything, had laid down that evening a number of tapes
to guide their infantry and field batteries to the front line; and,
following up one of these, it led me straight across the angle of the
village to the lane I wished to reach. On leaving the main street of
Inchy, this lane was lined for a short distance by houses and gardens.
As these were now being shelled, I did not push my investigations
right up to them, but having satisfied myself that the tape would
serve us, I returned with Deucars to meet the tanks. They had climbed
up out of the terrace by a limber track, and were approaching the
road on the crest when I found them, and found also that there were
only seven. One of Paul’s section had broken down--the trouble, I
think, was a twisted extension-shaft--and was left behind under the
trees of Inchy. I led the others across the road between the village
and the factory, and then along the tape. The rain had now ceased,
but the night was still very dark. Once on the forward slope we moved
with extreme care. At five o’clock, twenty minutes before zero, we
were close to the side of the lane and within 300 yards of the front
line. A few shells were still crashing and sparkling in the gardens
behind us. Halting the tanks for a few minutes, I collected the tank
commanders in a shell-hole and reviewed rapidly for the last time the
various points that they had to bear in mind in approaching the canal.
I have forgotten to mention that owing to our extraordinary shortage of
officers at this period, due to casualties, leave, and the departures
to England, six out of our remaining seven tanks were commanded by
N.C.O.’s. These, however, were all extremely capable men--the pick of
the admirable personnel we had brought originally from Bovington.
During the past week, in addition to reconnaissance, I had coached
them as thoroughly as possible on the map, helped by some of the best
aeroplane photographs I have ever seen; and I had little doubt of their
ability, if they were able to cross the canal without undue delay, to
accomplish all that was expected of them.
After five minutes’ talk they returned to their tanks, and we watched
the line of dark machines file very slowly down the slope beside the
trees of the lane. There was nothing more that M’Elroy, Paul, or I
could do. The tanks would follow the lane until they came to the
light railway, where they would wait during the few final minutes
before zero. Having watched them disappear in the shadows, we turned
back accordingly to a communication trench called Wartburg, which led
uphill to the main Hindenburg Line near Tadpole Copse, as we had now
to find the battle headquarters of the two Canadian battalions forming
the first infantry wave in this sector of the attack. The morning was
still very dark, its utter quietness broken only by the rare whine
and crash of a German shell. There is something very impressive and
eerie in this silent hour before an attack at dawn. Troops and guns
are crowded everywhere, in trenches and pits and hollows, behind the
front line, but one can see and hear nothing; and one wonders how
much the enemy, listening nervously (as he has listened perhaps for
a week or more) only a few hundred yards away, fears or suspects. As
we stumbled uphill along the convolutions of the trench, picking our
way among the waiting infantry whose equipment rattled faintly as they
moved, the east began to lighten rather suddenly. The clouds which had
blackened the night were clearing away. And ten minutes, perhaps, after
we had left the tanks, the whole crest of the spur behind us blazed
instantaneously with stabbing flames, and we were deafened and stunned
by the intolerable crash of the opening barrage....
III.
Wartburg trench curled up through the little gulley where we had been
caught by the German bombardment the previous afternoon. This gulley
was now a nest of field batteries, all firing furiously. Scores of
other batteries were in action higher up the slope and along the crest,
and from the Pronville valley came a howling torrent of shells from the
heavier howitzers. In the cup of ground up which we were climbing the
noise was abominable, and my whole head throbbed and ached with it.
It is always worse to hear concentrated gun-fire from close in front
than from close behind. The Canadians had brought their field-guns
very far forward in the night, and as the light increased I witnessed
a spectacle which spoke both for their supreme confidence and for the
altered aspect of the war. One or two batteries in the hollow did not
fire at all, but limbered up at zero, and went rolling and jolting
down the slope after the advancing infantry. I heard afterwards of an
artillery Major who rode forward on his horse with the first wave of
the attack to select new gun positions under the canal bank.
After much climbing about tortuous and misleading trenches on the big
hill, we found the headquarters of one of our infantry battalions. From
here we pushed on to the second headquarters. These were established
in a fairly capacious dug-out on the summit, 100 feet above Mœuvres.
It was now about six o’clock; but the whole country below was so
shrouded in mist and smoke that we could see nothing. Having informed
the battalion commander that the tanks had started, we sat about in the
welcome peace of the dug-out for some time, listening to reports as
they came through on the telephone, and having a comforting breakfast
of bacon and tea. (Incidentally, at whatever hour of the day or night
you interviewed Canadians, they were always drinking tea--without
prejudice to the ordinary alcoholic beverages which, of course, were
there as well.) From the fragmentary news which reached us the attack
seemed to be going like clockwork, but we could get no information
about the tanks. The bogey of the canal was always in our minds, and I
began to be afraid that they had failed to cross it. At seven o’clock
we scrambled to the surface again, to find the morning bright and sunny
and the trenches on the hill-top lined with interested spectators of
the battle. Groups of signallers were working heliographs from the
parapets, and a few heavy German shells thudded on the slope below;
but when I joined the audience I found that there was still little or
nothing to be seen. Sheets of white vapour, out of which rose the dark
trees of Bourlon Wood, covered the whole battlefield. M’Elroy and Paul
decided to remain here until it was time for them to go forward to the
sunken road, between the canal and Quarry Wood, which had been selected
as a rallying-point for the tanks; and I left them soon after to make
my own way back to the Major at the infantry brigade headquarters on
the opposite ridge above Inchy.
By the time I had got down into the valley, now full of roaring guns
and moving infantry and transport, and had climbed the farther slope
to the Hindenburg Support trenches, the sun was growing powerful and I
was becoming uncomfortably hot. I was wearing a trench-coat and other
warm garments which had been welcome enough in the cold and rain of the
night, and I was of course hung all over with the ghastly impedimenta
that civilised officers are impelled to carry with them into battle (or
near it)--glasses, water-bottle, box-respirator, revolver, map-case,
compasses, and so on, all depending from an infuriating harness of
separate little straps. I cannot imagine why officers are not provided
with a uniform combination equipment for these articles. It would be
easy to design one. The Sam Browne belt is a useless anachronism in
action, and the private soldier’s webbing or leather equipment, while
excellent for his own requirements, was worthless for ours. We were
compelled to walk about like badly-arranged Christmas-trees suffocated
by straps....
All this, however, is rather by the way. To return to our text, I
found at the infantry headquarters the Brigadier and staff of the 1st
Tank Brigade peering through their glasses at the battle, and also the
Major, full of good news. Plenty of information had been coming through
on the telephone, and all our apprehensions were proved needless. Our
tanks, indeed, had won a really notable little triumph by crossing the
problematical canal as easily as if it had been an ordinary trench,
and actually leading the Canadians the whole way from start to finish,
through the Canal du Nord Line, Quarry Wood, and the Marquion Line into
Bourlon. The left-hand section apparently (for, of course, no details
were to hand) had climbed in and out of the canal without a pause. The
first tank of Paul’s section on the right had been disabled by a mine
in the causeway, whereupon the other two had found their way over the
walls with equal agility. The Canadians, who had not counted on any
help from the machines short of the Marquion Line, were as astonished
as they were pleased by this performance, and were generously
flattering in their commendations.
From this crest by the brigade dug-outs one obtained an excellent view,
over the roofs of Inchy, of the whole undulating escarpment which
rose to Bourlon, and also of the country to the south around Anneux
and Graincourt, other old acquaintances of the first Cambrai battle.
Much of the smoke and mist had lifted, for already the tide of advance
was through Bourlon and Anneux and beyond the Wood. Graincourt, just
visible behind the spur above Mœuvres, was still holding out, and
continued to resist, like a second Flesquières, until late in the day.
I sat for some time watching this scene through my glasses. Columns of
thick white smoke were rising out of Bourlon Wood, where the enveloping
attack was clearing out the defenders under a screen of smoke grenades.
To the right, between Anneux and Graincourt, the bare upland was
diversified by the forms of four or five disabled tanks, presumably
Mark V.’s of the 15th Battalion. One of them was on fire, and a second
was emitting volumes of white smoke from a patent contrivance fitted
for this purpose on the roof. (A tank in M’Elroy’s section was equipped
with this novelty, and used it very effectively in front of Bourlon.)
And presently, out of the thin haze which still hung in drifts over
the slope beyond the canal, appeared one of our own machines homeward
bound; and at that the Major and I began to walk down into the valley
on our way to the rallying-point. The time must have been about
ten o’clock in the morning, five hours since the battle opened. We
followed the route the tanks had taken, round the southern gardens of
Inchy, and so on to the lane which led to Lock 4. There is always a
peculiar interest attached to one’s first entry into ground occupied
only a few hours previously by the enemy. It is like a journey into a
foreign country--which, after all, is exactly what it is. A hundred
little contrasts, even amid the levelling conditions of modern war,
differentiate one side of the line from the other. Either combatant
betrays his personality in such common tasks as digging trenches
or building cook-houses, and there seems to supervene a different
atmosphere, a sort of alien local colour, as one passes from No Man’s
Land into newly-captured territory. This may be largely my personal
fancy: certainly the grass is the same colour and the shell-holes
are very similar; and it is true that superficially there was little
to show which side of the light railway at Inchy-en-Artois had been
British and which German ground. Between the rusty metals and the
canal bank were a few groups of our dead--mostly, I think, casualties
suffered by the later waves of infantry under the counter-barrage. I
did not see any Germans among them, and it was evident that this first
stage had been carried at a rush with little or no trouble. Probably
the scattered outposts had surrendered on the spot. The canal itself,
the first solid obstacle capable of defence, did not appear to have
been held with any approach to determination. One German infantryman,
lying dead on his back and already stripped of every article that would
make a portable souvenir, was the only piece of jetsam in the wake of
the attack near Lock 4. Yet, as a singular example of the contrasts and
uncertainties of war, at the very time I was scrambling down into the
canal bed with the Major, six hours after the opening of the battle,
a group of plucky German machine-gunners was still holding out near
Mœuvres, three miles behind our new front.
The canal, which we examined with the keenest interest, bore very
little resemblance to the engineers’ drawings. The sides were far
steeper than represented, and the “step,” where it existed, was higher
up. The photograph reproduced in this book will show more clearly than
any description what sort of an obstacle it was that our worn-out and
obsolete Mark IV. tanks had surmounted with such ease and speed. The
farther wall near Lock 4, where M’Elroy’s four machines had crossed,
was so nearly vertical that only the layer of fallen earth, combined
with exceptionally skilful driving, made its ascension possible.
The two surviving tanks of Paul’s section, baulked at the causeway,
scrambled in some miraculous manner over the brickwork close by. His
leading tank, as we have seen, was disabled by a mine on the causeway
itself. The explosion broke the tracks, blew in the floor, and
shattered a man’s legs. The N.C.O. in command very sensibly ran at once
down the canal to Mœuvres, where some of the 15th Battalion’s tanks
were crossing, and managed to induce one of them to turn back and tow
the derelict off the causeway, where it was holding up our artillery.
The first drivers of all the six tanks which crossed were very properly
recommended for the Military Medal for this feat alone, and one or two
of them received it.
As we walked on from the canal we met our first tanks returning to it.
They had been shelled persistently on their way back from Bourlon to
the rallying-point, the German guns apparently being kept on to the
moving targets by an observation balloon which still hung insolently
behind the wood, unmolested by our aeroplanes. (It was an instructive
fact that when we ran up a balloon the next day from a similar position
on our side of the wood, a German aeroplane had it down within an
hour.) The ground at the rallying-point being entirely open, it was
no place for the tanks under this malignant scrutiny, and they were
returning accordingly to the canal itself for shelter. We led them
through the middle causeway and parked them up against the eastern
wall. The photograph shows the first three immediately after their
arrival. The figure in the trench-coat fluttering a map is, I believe,
myself.
[Illustration: Tanks of A Company, 7th Battalion, parked in Canal du
Nord after capturing Bourlon Village, September 27, 1918. (Official
Photo.)]
In almost every case the tasks allotted to the tanks had been easily
and rapidly accomplished. They were out of the canal as soon as the
infantry, and in consequence were able to lend the latter unexpected
help at the Canal du Nord Line and Quarry Wood, where they led the
attack, crushed the wire, and disposed of numerous machine-gun posts.
Still leading, the whole six charged the Marquion Line, which was
carried very quickly. One tank broke down here and was not ready
to move again until the others were returning for good. These, in
the meantime, patrolled beyond the Marquion Line while it was being
consolidated under cover of a stationary barrage, and as soon as the
latter lifted once more, pushed on for Bourlon. Two entered by the main
street and a third from the north, the remaining pair working along
the trenches round the village. The resistance was spasmodic, and as
soon as the tanks had crushed down the barricades in the streets and
silenced a few machine-guns which held out in the houses, the place was
rapidly overrun and cleared by the following infantry. One tank, fired
on by field-guns in the outskirts, screened itself very skilfully in
smoke from the experimental apparatus fixed on the roof, and passed
into the village unhurt behind this curtain. Another machine, after
Bourlon had been carried, pushed on at the request of the Canadians
to the railway which ran past the eastern end of Bourlon Wood to
Sauchy-Lestrée, silenced some machine-guns on the embankment, and
enabled the infantry to seize and consolidate the latter. In four
or five hours the whole action was over, so far as the tanks were
concerned. There were no casualties to personnel or machines, except in
the case of the mined tank on the causeway. All the other six rallied.
The attack had been a model of completeness and efficiency, and was
backed up throughout in the most intelligent and whole-hearted manner
by the infantry.
C Company had been equally successful, although it had not escaped
so lightly. Sains-les-Marquion was carried with very little effort,
and the tanks spent the rest of the morning cruising about beyond the
Marquion Line, mopping up machine-gun nests and enjoying some good
shooting at parties of fugitive Germans. Two tanks, however, were hit
and burnt out by field-guns near Deligny Mill, on the spur north of
Quarry Wood. After the action the Company rallied behind the canal in
the gulley below Tadpole Copse.
IV.
While our tanks were parking up in the canal bed I met the brigade
commander and the Colonel with Beale and one or two other people,
and after a little talk was sent back to Pronville to arrange for
some lorries to be in readiness to carry all the tank crews of both
companies, less the necessary guards, to Bullecourt, where a camp had
been erected. On my way I met the tanks of B Company moving up to the
canal. At Pronville, where I arrived very hot and dusty and incredibly
thirsty, about one o’clock, I was stopped within 100 yards of our
headquarters in the trench by a bucolic and extremely unintelligent
private of the Battle Police, who poked his bayonet at me and demanded
to know where I was going. As it never occurred to me that I could be
mistaken for a deserter, I thought the man was drunk, and was on the
point of putting him under arrest. Realising in time that he was only
densely stupid and performing what he conceived to be his duty, I burst
out laughing at his absurd face and manner, and left him there gaping
after me, and wondering, possibly, if he should have fallen upon me or
run me through.
By four o’clock that afternoon the tired crews had marched back to
Pronville and were packing themselves in lorries, while M’Elroy, Paul,
and I, glowing with a sense of virtue rewarded, were bumping over
the vile roads to Bullecourt in the car. Every road and track was
roaring with a flood of transport rolling eastward. All the guns about
Pronville had gone forward except the 9.2 howitzers, and Holt tractors
were standing by these unwieldy weapons in readiness to tow them
also away. A long naval gun had come up on the railway near Quéant,
and was firing from its truck. There was always something fresh and
exhilarating to me in this universal surge onward which came in the
wake of any big advance--perhaps because we were not yet habituated to
big advances. The tide had now set in with a vengeance, and we were to
become well accustomed to this healthy symptom of its progress before
the end.
At Bullecourt, where our tents had been set up amid the annihilation
of one of the most murderous and contested battlefields of the war,
we spent that night and most of the next day. We were, I suppose,
very fortunate to possess the transport which alone made these brief
interludes of rest and recuperation possible. They were certainly well
worth the trouble they involved. After twenty-four hours spent in
moderate comfort, with rational meals, baths of a sort, and a change of
clothes, officers and men returned to the forward area refreshed and
ready for another spell of work that, in our case, became increasingly
arduous the longer our old machines were denied their own turn of
renovation.
M’Elroy left us in the morning to go on leave. He had been due to
go a week before, but had stayed on to take part in the attack. When
he returned a fortnight later, the battalion had finished its work,
and was waiting to be withdrawn to refit. I was about to leave it
to join the 12th Battalion. And a short time after I had gone, he
was dead--killed, when the war virtually was over, by an epidemic of
influenza and pneumonia which swept through the unhealthy camp in
the Ternoise valley, and cost the battalion in addition the lives of
some of its best N.C.O.’s and men, who also had come through all its
battles, from Ypres to the second Cambrai, only to meet this miserable
end. M’Elroy and I had been much together in the later stages, having
been largely responsible between us for the company’s work in most of
the final actions, and I had come to know him very well. He was a tall,
dark Irishman, usually quiet and casual, but with that rare combination
of a level head and careless courage which earns so many of the
decorations that are worth anything, and which gained him his D.S.O. as
a subaltern at Cambrai. One has always a grudge against Providence for
the waste of such lives when all need for sacrifice is past.
During the interlude at Bullecourt we gathered some information about
the progress of the attack in general, and in particular about the
fortunes of the 15th and 11th Tank Battalions which had been in action
on our right. Both of these units had suffered heavily in a rather
desperate morning’s fighting. The tanks of the 15th, having negotiated
the canal at Mœuvres with some difficulty, reached their final
objectives beyond Anneux and Flesquières, but lost eleven machines out
of twenty-six, many of them around Graincourt. The 11th Battalion,
usually unfortunate, fared very badly. A dozen tanks were sent in
between Trescault and Gouzeaucourt, of which eight received direct
hits and two were ditched. Their casualties were heavy, and the attack
in this sector was only partially successful. Elsewhere, however,
everything had gone extraordinarily well. Ten thousand prisoners and
200 guns had been captured by the two armies; and on the evening of
the 27th our line, from north to south, had been advanced to east of
Oisy-le-Verger (in the angle between the Sensée and the canal), east
of Epinoy, Haynecourt, and Bourlon Wood, through Fontaine-Notre-Dame,
and east of Ribécourt and Beaucamp. Another five miles of the Siegfried
Line, from Mœuvres to Ribécourt, had been carried; and from Bourlon
Ridge we looked down upon the roofs and spires of Cambrai, less than
three miles away.
On the morning of the 28th, eight tanks of B Company, which we saw
moving up to the canal, led the infantry of the 3rd Canadian Division
in an attack on Raillencourt and St Olle, on the Arras-Cambrai road.
Both these villages were carried after severe fighting, several of the
German machine-gun crews continuing to resist until they were crushed
to death by the tanks. All the latter rallied. St Olle was a suburb of
Cambrai, and the Canadians were now on the outskirts of that town, but
still faced by the formidable obstacle of the Canal de L’Escaut.
That evening the personnel of A and C Companies, having spent exactly
twenty-four hours at Bullecourt, returned by lorry to their tanks
in or near the Canal du Nord. Both companies were to trek forward
that night to the neighbourhood of Bourlon, and the Major and I went
straight to that village in the car to decide where we would put our
machines. As we passed through Inchy we found that the indefatigable
Y.M.C.A. had already established a canteen there, and were using one
of our abandoned cribs as a background for their triangular sign. The
day had been fine and hot, and the country everywhere was full of
pungent smells. The Canadians had a bad habit of leaving their dead
horses and mules for weeks without burial, even alongside the roads,
and some of these carcases had by now attained an appalling stage of
decomposition. At Bourlon we fixed on the huge château wall, riddled
with immense holes but still erect, as a good shelter for the tanks;
and having sent the car off, walked back across country to the canal to
survey an approximate route. The Major then left to interview the 4th
Canadian Division. I waited about for two or three hours while a number
of small irritating defects were put to rights; and toward ten o’clock,
the night being starlit but very dark, we managed to get away. We had
now six tanks left out of the fourteen with which we had started from
Bienvillers five weeks before. Wadeson, just back from leave, was in
charge in M’Elroy’s absence.
The beginning of the journey was unpropitious. Our exit from the
canal bed, by way of the middle causeway, coincided with the arrival
immediately above us of a bombing squadron of German aeroplanes, which
proceeded to drop their cargoes liberally all round. I pushed everybody
inside the tanks and walked on hopefully in front. The bombs were
thudding and flashing in large numbers in the direction of Mœuvres,
and some fell much nearer than was pleasant; and presently one of
the raiders released a magnesium flare attached to a small parachute
or balloon, which hung for a long time a few hundred feet overhead,
and seemed to light up the whole country for miles. The illumination
was so bright that I thought of halting the tanks until it expired,
but reflected that these lights are always much less efficient, from
the point of view of the observer up above, than they appear from
the ground. The flare dwindled out after a while, the humming of the
aeroplane engines and the crash of the bombs receded behind us as
the raiders swept over the canal, and we pursued our journey without
further interruption.
On arriving, after some struggles in trenches and wire, at Bourlon
Château, we found that our wall bounded a narrow lane in which was
situated an artillery brigade headquarters. As our tanks would have
blocked the lane and interfered with traffic that might include the
cars of infuriated Generals, we decided to push the machines through
the holes in the wall into the tangled garden beyond. The fact that
this was possible will convey some idea of the size of the holes (which
did not reach even to the top of the wall in most cases), and of the
immense height and solidity of the structure. After much backing and
swinging and dislodging of bricks, the manœuvre was accomplished, and
all six tanks were safely inserted under the trees inside. It was now
midnight, or after, and we proceeded to make ourselves comfortable
under a couple of tarpaulins stretched over a trench, where, packed
like sardines, we had some sort of a meal and went to sleep.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE FIGHTING ROUND CAMBRAI: SANCOURT.
I.
When the 1st and 3rd Armies attacked on 27th September, the general
bombardment was extended southward to the extremity of the British
Line, although only preliminary operations were undertaken by the
4th Army on that day and the next. The 28th was notable for two
simultaneous blows delivered upwards of 100 miles apart--by the 2nd
British and 3rd French Armies and the Belgians from the coast to
Ypres, and by the 5th and 10th French Armies on the Aisne. On the
29th, after two days’ continuous shelling, the 4th Army and the right
wing of the 3rd took up the attack against the last and strongest
remnant of the enemy’s final organised position in the West, the Canal
de L’Escaut and the Siegfried Line from Marcoing to Bellenglise.
This reversion to something like the old type of offensive, with a
preliminary bombardment, was necessitated by the obstacle of the Canal
de St Quentin (a continuation of the Canal de L’Escaut), which could
be crossed by tanks only at the gap, 6000 yards wide, where it passed
under the famous tunnel between Vendhuile and Bellicourt. The 3rd, 4th,
and 5th Tank Brigades with about 170 machines took part on the first
day of this decisive battle, and had some desperate fighting, losing
a great number of tanks and men. The 301st Americans in their first
action met with tragic disaster, apparently through no fault of their
own. Moving forward from Ronsoy, they ran into a mine-field which we
had laid down before the March retreat. It consisted of rows of buried
trench-mortar bombs, each loaded with 50 lb. of ammonal. In a few
minutes ten tanks were blown up, their bottoms being torn out and most
of their crews killed by the terrific explosions. The remainder of the
battalion, shaken though it must have been by this appalling stroke of
misfortune, got into action and suffered heavily there, only 11 tanks
rallying out of 34. On subsequent days units of all three brigades were
helping to widen the initial penetration of the Siegfried trenches at
various points, as many as 40 tanks going in on 3rd October, when we
broke through the northern part of the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line five
miles beyond the canal tunnel, and saw in front of us at last open
and cultivated country. These events led up to the final phase of the
battle, which began on 8th October.
In the meantime, the Canadians, with the 22nd and 17th Corps
respectively on their left and right, had a week of very severe and
costly fighting around Cambrai, in the course of which the 7th Tank
Battalion fought its last action. After the surprise and collapse on
27th September, the German resistance stiffened appreciably every
day as it had stiffened a month earlier at Bapaume; and Sancourt,
Abancourt, and other villages played the same _rôle_ which had fallen
before to Ecoust and Beugny. Our advance was still hampered by the
obstacle of the Sensée Marshes and the floods to the north of them.
This vast area of water cut across our front at right angles, with
the result that as we penetrated eastward toward Cambrai we developed
a long flank facing due north; and the German guns south of Douai,
enfilading this salient, caused much annoyance. The re-formed and very
weak 5th Army facing Lens and Douai was unable to help actively until
the operations on its flanks were further advanced.
The morning of 29th September found the three Companies of the 7th
Tank Battalion disposed as follows: A Company, as we have seen, was
at Bourlon. C Company had moved overnight from its rallying-point near
Tadpole Copse to the top of Bourlon Ridge north of the village, where
its tanks were camouflaged in the open in a shallow basin of ground. B
Company, after its fighting in Raillencourt and St Olle, had rallied at
the former village and still remained there, its machines hidden under
the trees of the Arras-Cambrai road within 3000 yards of the front
line. Early in the morning a despatch-rider reached us at Bourlon with
orders for the company to join C on the ridge; and after breakfast we
backed the tanks out of the château garden through the holes in the
wall and trekked northward round the village. We made a considerable
gambit to avoid appearing on the crest, where a few shells were
falling as we approached, and climbed eventually to our destination
under a bridge, still intact, which carried the railway from Cambrai
to Sauchy-Lestrée. We camouflaged our tanks in the open a few hundred
yards from those of C Company, one of whose officers had just been
wounded by the shelling. We were screened here from direct observation
by the final rise, the ground ascending very gradually from our basin
to the Arras-Cambrai road, only 500 yards away. The double line of
trees along the road ran obliquely across our front and dropped down
the ridge behind us to Marquion and the Agache flats. Standing on the
highway, one saw straight ahead the cluster of villages on the spurs
which fell to the Sensée north and north-west of Cambrai--Haynecourt
and Epinoy, west of the Douai road, and now in our possession, and,
beyond, the trees about Sancourt, Blécourt, Abancourt, and others still
held by the Germans. To the north extended the long hostile flank
beyond the Sensée, with such places as Bugnicourt and Fressain easily
distinguishable. The morning being misty, although brilliantly fine,
visibility was limited, but it was easy to see how vitally important
was this ridge, and how on a clear day one could have overlooked Douai
and all the enemy’s communications across the plain. Cambrai, three
miles to the south-east, and lying low, was hidden from this point by
the trees of Raillencourt and Sailly. The shallow depression in which
we lay, like all the rest of the country around, was bare grass-land,
crossed by a multitude of dusty tracks, a lane leading from Bourlon to
the main road, and a line or two of half-finished trench. There was
a big dug-out, an old German headquarters of some kind, close to the
railway bridge at our back. To our right stood a solitary half-ruined
building called Pilgrim’s Rest, which poked a blackened gable above
some shrubs; and a few small copses beyond led the eye up to Bourlon
Wood, towering above a sudden little hill which was superimposed,
as it were, on top of the ridge itself. It was this steep acclivity
which caused the wood to be visible from so great a distance (from the
towers of Mont St Eloi, behind Arras, for example), and to dominate so
effectively all the valleys leading toward it from the west. During our
reconnaissances before the 27th this sinister mass of trees seemed to
overlook every movement. But now its ladders and its lofty observation
platforms had had their final day, and curious wanderers were peering
and poking among the glades and thickets bleached with gas and
scarred by shells, where some of its later victims still lay rotting
in the undergrowth, and where there rested, smashed and stripped and
rust-eaten, the shells of tanks we had lost there nearly a year before.
Two-faced, like Janus, the wood had now turned a menacing visage
eastward, and lowered over Cambrai. A new activity flowed beneath its
shadow. Khaki had replaced field-grey in the dismembered village; and
over the dusty plain to the canal, along the reverse slope of the
ridge, and even in the little hollow by Pilgrim’s Rest, were scattered
infantry bivouacs and endless horse lines and the massed limbers of
ammunition trains. The countryside was alive with movement, and near
Bourlon a Canadian band was playing, its instruments glittering in the
sun....
When we had camouflaged the tanks in pairs, we set about finding some
shelter for company headquarters, and the few other officers we had
with us. A half-finished trench ran across the basin, and over a part
of this we rigged up a tarpaulin roof. C Company, the first in the
field, had found a large excavation in a bank near the railway, where
they made themselves moderately comfortable. It was always well to take
these precautions, for one might be stranded in such a place for a
week. As it happened, this little gutter of ours was in use as a base
for several days. Close to us here, curiously enough, were some odd
by-products of the tank idea, a number of open lorries carrying Vickers
guns and Stokes mortars, part of a singular unit which included motor
machine-guns and armoured cars, and was known as Brutinel’s Brigade.
It had been organised by the Canadians for the battle on 8th August,
with a view to rapid exploitation in company with our Whippets and cars
along the Amiens-Roye road. I believe it met with a certain measure of
success on that exceptional occasion, but its subsequent opportunities
were few. All Canadian operation orders at this time ended with an
optimistic paragraph asserting that “Brutinel’s Brigade will seize
every opening for a vigorous exploitation and pursuit of the enemy,”
and the heterogeneous medley of vehicles did its best to find such
openings; but with the Germans very wide awake, and fighting for every
inch of ground, nothing on wheels had any prospect of penetrating far.
The brigade was badly cut up more than once, and the armed lorries, in
particular, were described by their unfortunate crews as death-traps.
After lunch Wadeson and I walked to the high ground by Bourlon Wood,
where there were a number of abandoned German guns and many dead of
both armies, and looked down upon the roofs and spires of Cambrai.
The canal and all the approaches to the town were hidden in trees,
and there was nothing to be seen but an ambulance or two passing
below us into St Olle. It was more interesting to turn our glasses
to the south-west and follow the immaculate line of the Le Cateau
road, its double row of trees in full leaf rising and dipping over a
succession of ridges increasing in height as they receded, and topped
by villages and small towns untouched by actual hostilities since
the first month of the war--Awoingt, just outside Cambrai, Beauvois,
Caudry, Bethencourt, and yet another Inchy. I had no suspicion then
that I was to know all these places well enough a few weeks later.
Le Cateau itself, lying in a deep valley, was hidden from us; but we
could follow many of the roads leading eastward from the main highway,
and these were black with German transport pouring to the rear before
the blast of the 4th Army’s attack along the Canal de St Quentin that
morning. Another cheering portent was the fact that the enemy’s line of
observation balloons was withdrawn well to the east of the Le Cateau
road. It was while we were standing here that one of our balloons,
run up an hour before by the side of Bourlon Wood, was shot down by a
German aeroplane which escaped with the usual ease. Neither at this
time nor before nor after during the whole advance did I see a German
balloon brought down.
A very disgusting feature of this neighbourhood was the number of
ghoulish pilferers of the dead who infested it. These noxious creatures
are common enough in the wake of any battle: indeed the ordinary decent
soldier is callous to a degree in the way he will handle some mangled
body in his search for what he calls souvenirs; but the Colonial troops
always supplied an excessive proportion of the deliberate looters. A
case which filled me with peculiar horror, because I had known and
liked the man whose corpse was so mercilessly stripped and rifled, had
occurred in the Canadian Corps a short time before this. An officer in
our battalion who joined it as a Captain in the Salient, and afterwards
shared a cubicle with me at Meaulte, went to the 11th Battalion as a
company commander. He was killed by a shell during an approach-march
in the course of the attack on the Drocourt-Quéant Line. His body was
left for a quarter of an hour while two men ran to a dressing station
close at hand for a stretcher. When they returned they found that the
Canadians, in this short interval, had stripped the body of everything
worth taking--tunic, belt, glasses, and even field-boots. I do not know
if I am peculiar, but this practice, which was reduced to a science,
filled me with loathing. And around Bourlon Wood, where in places the
dead lay thickly, there were a number of men prowling furtively about,
turning over bodies, peering into holes and trenches, carrying out
systematically their search for money or such pitiful small valuables
as a man will carry even into action. These scoundrels sheered off when
any officer approached, and if summoned and interrogated, explained of
course that they were looking for the body of a friend....
II.
At five o’clock that evening (the 29th) the usual harbinger of evil
arrived at our trench in the shape of a despatch-rider, with an urgent
message to the Major to report at once to the headquarters of the 12th
Canadian Infantry Brigade. This headquarters was quite near us, in some
dug-outs just off the Arras-Bapaume road, by a building called Lilac
Farm. I accompanied the Major in his car, which we took to save time.
As we arrived on the highroad several heavy shells crashed about Lilac
Farm, and we left it for the dug-outs with some haste. We had a brief
interview with the Canadian Brigadier, in which he propounded a rather
ambitious scheme for the next morning, and asked for three tanks. C
Company was working on our right with another brigade. The situation on
the front of the 12th Brigade was as follows:--
Beyond the Arras-Cambrai road was the road to Douai, which trended
a little to the west of north toward Aubencheul-au-Bac, where it
crossed the Sensée. On a line drawn north-east from the Pilgrim’s
Rest these roads were about 4000 yards apart, and midway between them
was the village of Haynecourt. Beyond the Douai road, again, was the
main Cambrai-Douai railway. Road and railway ran side by side out of
Cambrai for two miles, when the line curved eastward before returning
to a parallel crossing at Aubencheul-au-Bac. Where it turned away from
the road it passed between the villages of Sancourt and Blécourt, the
former being half a mile east of the road and a few hundred yards short
of the railway, on which at this point there was a _halte_ or small
station. A road from Sancourt crossed the railway in a north-easterly
direction, and descended a narrow and steepish valley called the _Ravin
de Bantigny_, through Blécourt and Bantigny itself, 800 and 2500 yards
respectively from the level crossing. A mile and a half south of
Blécourt, just beyond the railway, was Tilloy.
The Canadian line, as given to us, ran almost due north from the Arras
road at St Olle, crossed the Douai road 3000 yards out of Cambrai, and
continued just to the west of the railway, passing between Sancourt
and the _halte_. The railway was a serious obstacle, and already had
held up the advance for two days. It ran alternately over embankments
and through deep cuttings, which were lined thickly with machine-guns;
and the Germans were fighting desperately to retain it, and so prevent
Cambrai being outflanked from the north. There is no need to go at
length into the plan of attack proposed by the Canadians for the 30th,
because half of it was a signal failure. It will be enough to say that
one brigade on the right, with three tanks of C Company, was to carry
the railway west of Tilloy and then seize that village, while the 12th
Brigade, with our three tanks, on the left, was to cross the line on
either side of the Sancourt _halte_, capture the high ground enclosing
the _Ravin de Bantigny_, and then perform a complicated swing to the
left, which was intended to cut off the German forces holding the curve
of the railway northward. Our tanks, having assisted to clear and
consolidate the railway at Sancourt, were to move along to north and
south of the _Ravin_, avoiding Blécourt and Bantigny in its depths, as
these villages were to be smothered and isolated by artillery fire and
occupied at leisure.
[Illustration: _Sancourt._]
The General explained this plan of attack in a dashing and confident
sort of manner, which seemed to take a good deal for granted. It took
more for granted than we guessed at the time; but one could not help
reflecting even then upon the speculative qualities of the scheme.
The Canadians had been fighting now for three days, during the last
two of which they had battered their heads against the Douai road and
railway, and had lost very heavily in the process, without making
any material advance. The task set for the 12th Brigade was highly
ambitious, in face of the very obstinate resistance which the enemy,
as usual reacting strongly against the consequences of his initial
defeat, was offering along the whole Cambrai front. Fresh divisions
had come into the German line, fresh batteries had accumulated behind
it, and machine-guns were sown everywhere like dragon’s teeth. The
situation was similar to that which had developed around Bapaume at
the end of August, with the additional incentive to the enemy that
he was now fighting in his last organised position; and Sancourt, as
it turned out, was to prove for A Company a second and more tragic
Beugny. The Major and I came away from the brigade headquarters feeling
already rather dubious about the whole affair. We did not suspect,
however, after our recent experience of the usual efficiency of
Canadian methods, that the attack was to be doomed to failure before
it began through inexcusable blunders by the brigade staff. Zero hour
had not been fixed at this conference. We were to return later for
detailed orders. The General had stated, however, that he wished our
tanks to be lined up before dawn in a sunken road which ran southward
from Haynecourt, where he proposed also to establish his headquarters
for the action. By this time we had only four machines out of our
six fit for action at short notice. C Company was even worse off. It
could supply only two tanks, and borrowed our fourth to make up the
deficiency. It was about six o’clock when we returned to Pilgrim’s
Rest, and already growing dusk, as the sky had clouded over. While the
tanks were uncamouflaged and overhauled, I studied the map and took
compass-bearings to help us in the approach-march. Toward seven, the
Major and I started off to walk over this route, and on our way called
at the brigade headquarters for our further orders; but there were
none forthcoming. Zero, we were told, probably would be at 10 A.M.
The General and his staff would be at the sunken road at five, when
everything was to be arranged and the belated orders issued to us. In
the meantime we were to get our tanks there. We set off accordingly on
our walk, feeling more dubious than ever. The daylight attack alone
was against all our instincts and precepts, and was the more puzzling
because Jack Brown had told me that the zero hour for C Company and
its infantry was six o’clock, just after dawn. There might be method,
however, in this apparent madness: attacks were sometimes carried out
in this fashion, in echelon, at different hours. In any case, we were
definitely under the orders of the 12th Brigade, and had to do as we
were told. The trouble was that so far we had been told so little.
We found the sunken road without much difficulty, although it was now
very dark indeed. A perfect maze of light railways, radiating out
from Cambrai and linking up a number of big dumps with the original
German positions behind the Canal du Nord, covered all this country,
and being marked on our excellent maps, were invaluable guides at
night. The road, midway between the diverging Arras and Douai highways,
connected Haynecourt with the outskirts of Raillencourt and St Olle to
the south. It ran parallel to the Douai road at an average distance of
1200 yards. Toward its northern end at Haynecourt its banks were 10
to 12 feet high, forming perfect cover for the tanks, and we selected
a hiding-place for the latter 1000 yards from the village, near where
the road was crossed by one of the light railways which would lead us
directly to it. In the western bank were the black shafts of several
dug-outs in which the brigade headquarters was to take up its abode.
A few dead lay in the roadway, and infantry in support were moving
about in the shelter of the banks. The front was very quiet at this
time, but Very lights were rising and flaring from the outpost line.
It struck me at once that they were much nearer to us than they should
have been if that line coincided with the one given us by the brigade
staff. They seemed to rise from the Douai road itself, whose mangled
avenue of trees was visible intermittently in the cold illumination.
According to the brigade (whose information I had set down at the time
on a map that lies before me now) our line at Sancourt, toward which we
were looking, took in the village and ran close to the railway, nearly
1000 yards beyond the road. It was impossible to decide this point
either way with certainty, and some infantrymen whom I questioned
were characteristically vague. An outpost line in semi-open warfare is
always nebulous and variable, but if appearances were correct and our
information wrong, it might make a serious difference, as it would mean
that Sancourt was not, as stated, in our possession. I never understood
the real facts of the case. As late as eight o’clock next morning
Sancourt undoubtedly was full of German machine-guns, but whether this
was due to a temporary fluctuation of the line, or whether we had
never really held it, I do not know. Our original information proved
in all respects so erroneous that I incline to the latter opinion. The
Canadians gained it definitely in the course of this attack, but, as
we shall see, this was all they were able to accomplish on the 12th
Brigade front.
The Major and I were a little careless on our return journey, and
overrunning the particular branch of the light railway which we
should have followed, wandered for some time around Haynecourt. It
was nearly midnight when we reached the Arras road again, both of us
rather leg-weary, as we had been stumbling about in the dark for five
hours; but there was no rest for us yet. We found the three tanks, with
Wadeson, who was in command, waiting at the side of the road by a farm
called Mont Neuve, westward from Lilac Farm. All three were commanded
by N.C.O.’s, among them Sergeant Duddridge, whom we have met at Beugny,
and who was to be one of the victims of the deplorable muddle the 12th
Canadian Brigade made of this attack. We started off again at once,
leading the tanks past Mont Neuve to the little railway line which led
straight to our sunken road. The distance, following this railway, was
just two miles, but we had ample time, and took it very slowly. Soon
after we started I saw C Company’s tanks, three black shapes outlined
momentarily against a distant glare, crawling away to our right. The
journey was accomplished without incident, except that toward the end
I became seriously alarmed by the noises proceeding from our worn-out
machines. They were on their last legs, or, to be literally accurate,
their last rollers. These had not been replaced since we drew the
tanks from Erin two months before, and now, ground down and misshapen
by overwork, they began suddenly to complain only too audibly. It
seemed impossible at times that this shrill squeaking should not be
heard by the enemy, especially if his outposts were as near as the
pistol lights still indicated that they were. We struck our road at a
point where the banks had fallen away to nothing, so that only a level
field stretched before us to the trees along the Douai highway. The
occasional flares which soared and died above them silhouetted every
branch, and once a yellow glow appeared at the ground-level and grew
swiftly to a bright tall flame which seemed to lick the trunks before
it dwindled and expired. A few shells whined and burst far to our
right, but apparently no one heard the noise of the tanks, for nothing
more urgent happened to disturb us. By 2.30 we had the three machines
under cover of the bank and the crews busy with the camouflage nets. I
felt the usual intense relief that comes after the strain of conducting
any approach-march, however short or simple. The responsibility
(which I loathe in any form) and the sense of being tied to the tanks
if anything went wrong or if we were discovered, always made these
journeys my especial bugbear. Time could not stale nor custom wither
their infinite anxiety. Or so I always found it. To go into action in a
tank was, in a way, a lesser evil.
Having seen the machines camouflaged and the crews settled down for
as long a rest as Providence, the Germans, or the Canadian Corps
permitted, I accompanied the Major and Wadeson to the Brigade dug-out,
a couple of hundred yards up the road. We found there, representing for
the moment the staff, the brigade Intelligence Officer. He appeared
to be the reverse of intelligent, and had no orders for us and no
news. He had heard nothing about tanks until we arrived. We made
ourselves as comfortable as possible among the feet of the innumerable
orderlies, signallers, and other vagrants of no apparent occupation
who always infest headquarter dug-outs, and endeavoured to sleep. It
was very cold outside, and the warmth below, if a trifle poisonous,
was comforting. Wadeson found it excessive after a while, and climbed
upstairs again. The Major and I dozed off during the intervals when
no one was treading on us. I was aroused finally by a great deal of
trampling and excitement, and heard at once, muffled by twenty feet of
earth, the unmistakable throbbing of concentrated gun-fire overhead. It
was six o’clock; and although I thought for a moment that this might be
merely covering-fire for the attack on the right, we soon discovered
that our own infantry had gone forward--or attempted to do so. There
were no orders for us, and no signs of the General and his staff, who
should have arrived an hour before. The Intelligence Officer remained
the sole representative of the brigade headquarters. He was hanging
on to the telephone, receiving messages from the battalions in the
line, and seemed very harassed by his responsibilities; and he could
give us no satisfactory advice. Our position was extraordinary and
very unpleasant. We had been told by the Brigadier himself that zero
would be at ten o’clock or thereabout, and that we should receive our
orders from him on the spot. Beyond this, and an incomplete outline
of the proposed attack, we had been given no instructions, verbal or
otherwise. The attack had now started _four hours before the specified
time_. Our tanks, camouflaged and unready for immediate action, were
still in the sunken road, some 1500 yards behind the original front;
and the infantry, if successful, must already be on the railway or
beyond. The Major and I scrambled up the stairs of the dug-out,
now packed to suffocation with earnest helpers who very naturally
preferred life below ground to life above at this juncture; and when
we had fought our way through them and emerged again in the road, we
found a dreary dawn just breaking. Close behind us massed batteries
of 18-pounders were bellowing. The Germans were replying with vigour
and with heavier metal. The inevitable 5.9’s were bursting freely on
both sides of the road, in which there was now a crowd of infantry,
all packed against the farther bank, digging themselves holes in it
with entrenching tools. Wadeson and his crews were standing by their
tanks, as perplexed as ourselves by the situation arisen out of this
precipitate muddle. It was still too dark to see much when we climbed
the bank and looked over the top. The mournful trees along the Douai
road stood up like spectres out of the smoke and mist, the dark shape
of the little wood at Sancourt was just visible beyond, and here and
there in the level foreground the heavy shell-bursts sprayed upward
their fountains of black soil. One shell missed our tanks by a few feet
and exploded in the opposite bank of the road.
We got the machines uncamouflaged as a preliminary measure, and, after
waiting by them for a little while, descended again to the dug-out
to attempt to communicate with the Brigadier by telephone. Nothing
came of this: the cable, I believe, was cut. Telegraphic messages,
however, were still coming through from the headquarters of the
battalions in front, and these provided another inexplicable instance
of that morning’s confusion. I was standing by the instrument with
the Major and the Intelligence Officer, and I followed on the map the
apparent progress of the attack as the signaller at the board decoded
the irregular bursts of Morse. The hostile machine-gun fire was very
heavy.... Colonel So-and-so had been killed ... Major So-and-so
was wounded ... Many casualties ... Advance held up in places, but
elsewhere progressing. And then came a quite definite statement from
one of the battalions. Our infantry had reached the road in Square S
9 c. Now S 9 c was on the high ground south of Blécourt, and the road
indicated was 1000 yards beyond the Sancourt _halte_. This meant good
progress. Some little time had passed while we had been listening
to these messages, but it was not yet seven; and after a further
fruitless attempt to get in touch with the brigade, the Major decided
to send the tanks forward. They might have to cover anything from one
to two miles before they overtook the infantry, assuming this recent
information to be correct; but there was a chance of their being
useful, if only for mopping-up purposes. It was about 7.15 when they
climbed the bank and headed across the level field toward Sancourt.
Wadeson walked with them, intending to see them as far as the Douai
road. The morning was dull, and beyond the trees of Sancourt itself
one could see nothing for smoke. Shells were still crashing fast
on both sides of the sunken road, but it was never actually hit--a
fortunate circumstance, as by now it was crowded with the best part
of a battalion of infantry, the R.A.M.C. personnel of two dressing
stations, a number of walking wounded and a few stretcher cases, and
an assortment of machine-gunners, engineers, and other people. A shell
or two square between the banks would have made a fearful shambles of
it. At its northern end, in a lane which ran across to the Douai road
from Haynecourt, I saw some of the armed lorries of Brutinel’s Brigade
waiting “to seize an opening for vigorous exploitation.” They did not
wait long. A German aeroplane came over, flying low, circled above the
batteries behind us, machine-gunning them, and discovered the lorries.
Soon afterwards the Haynecourt lane was plastered with shells, and
Brutinel’s Brigade withdrew in a hurry. Of our own aeroplanes, two
squadrons of which (the 8th and 73rd) were supposed to be co-operating
in the attack, I did not see a single one throughout the morning. They
may have been somewhere on the scene doing good by stealth; or, as
is quite probable, the breakdown of the Canadian staff work may have
affected their movements as it affected ours.
We waited for nearly two hours before any news of our tanks reached us.
In our ignorance we pictured them striving to overtake the advancing
infantry. Wadeson came back, having seen them across the Douai road,
which he found covered with fallen trees and dead Canadians, and we
divided our time between the dug-out and the surface, watching the
shells fall above and trying occasionally to get a little rest below.
It was at nine o’clock that I came up into the road after an attempt at
sleep and saw two tanks returning. It was a very fragmentary story that
we got from their crews, but one at absolute variance with everything
we had been led to believe. They had encountered machine-gun fire from
Sancourt itself, at the very start, when they had supposed themselves
still to be a long way behind the infantry. (They should have been
at least a mile behind, according to the telegraphic message we had
heard.) Crossing the railway at the _halte_, where a road led down
through a gap in the walls of a cutting, they had been simply plastered
with bullets. So fierce was the fire that they had to close all flaps
and resort to periscopes. There was not a sign of our infantry, and
indeed this reception made it clear that if the latter had ever crossed
the railway at all, they had gone back very soon. The tank commanders,
however, decided to carry out their orders, at least in part, and
headed north-east toward Blécourt, always under intense machine-gun
fire. Two of the machines reached the neighbourhood of the village.
One was pulling so badly that it would not take some small obstacle
in the front, and the N.C.O. in charge had no choice but to enter
Blécourt and risk the bombardment which that place was supposed to be
undergoing. This bombardment proved to be another myth: hardly a shell
was falling in the village, which was, however, full of Germans. As it
was now manifest that the infantry attack had failed, the half-crippled
tank started to return, still pelted with bullets. Near the railway it
was met by Sergeant Duddridge, who was in command of the third tank.
This, it appeared, had fallen on its side in a large pit just east of
the _halte_, neither the sergeant nor his driver being able to see
the obstacle through their periscopes. Duddridge, having scrambled
out of the only sponson door which could be used, found himself under
machine-gun fire at close range, and dropped into the pit for shelter.
Two men who tried to follow him were shot instantly, and the others
remained inside the overturned tank. After crouching in the pit beside
it for a while, Duddridge saw the other tank returning from Blécourt,
and contrived to crawl on his stomach through a heavy fire until he
could hail it, when he was taken on board. He wished to divert this
tank to the rescue of his crew, but it was in no condition for any
extra work, being in fact on the verge of a complete breakdown, and
only induced to move by continued hand-feeding with petrol. Every
man inside was injured about the face and hands by splinters and
bullet-splash. It contrived to crawl back across the railway to the
sunken road, pursued by the hail of bullets to the last. Duddridge’s
crew was left imprisoned in the pit. In the meantime, the second of
the surviving tanks had pushed up on to the ridge south of Blécourt,
meeting everywhere the same terrific fire; and having established the
fact that there were no Canadians east of the railway, still less
in Square S 9 c, where they had reported themselves to be an hour
before, it turned back also and arrived at the sunken road close
behind the others. The N.C.O. and several of the crew were injured by
bullet-splash. Both tanks were simply coated in places with a deposit
of lead as a memento of the ordeal they had been through.
[Illustration: Sancourt, with Cambrai-Douai Road and Railway. The line
of pits, in one of which Sergeant Duddridge’s tank was overturned, are
the last row of white dots beyond the railway.]
The urgent need remaining was to rescue the men imprisoned in the
overturned tank, if it were possible. Duddridge, who was desperately
concerned for them, begged to be allowed to go back himself to see what
he could do. But we had still one tank capable of moving, and its crew,
wounded and exhausted as they were, at once volunteered to return in it
to the _halte_. It seemed possible that by now the infantry would at
least have got a hold on the railway, from where they could command the
level ground around the pit (which was only 300 yards farther on), and,
by keeping down the hostile machine-gun fire, facilitate the rescue.
Our remaining tank, accordingly, was sent forward again, accompanied
by Wadeson, Duddridge, and a runner, Hilton. The little expedition
disappeared among the smoke of shells bursting between us and the Douai
road, and we settled ourselves to wait.
It was not long, however, before the tank returned, at a crawl. It had
developed engine trouble almost at once, and Wadeson had sent it back.
He had gone on himself with Duddridge and Hilton to try to reach the
capsized tank on foot. The story of this conspicuously gallant attempt
makes a tragic footnote to the chronicle of that morning’s misfortunes.
It was, I suppose, nearly an hour later, and the Major and I were below
in the dug-out, when Wadeson reappeared, the only survivor of the
little party. He looked frightfully ill, and was in fact hysterical
and on the verge of a collapse, having been badly gassed. Afterwards,
while I was trying to get him to rest near one of the dressing stations
in the road, where a Canadian doctor had attended to him, I heard his
account of the forlorn hope.
Having sent back the tank, the three rescuers crossed the Douai road
and cautiously approached the railway. They passed the level crossing
without incident, although they could see nothing of our infantry and
had no idea of where the front line ran. Having come so far in safety,
they assumed that it must now be beyond the railway. Creeping forward,
they were allowed to reach the tank. It lay completely on its side
(I saw it a few days later) in the end one of a row of four or five
large pits, each about 30 feet by 12 and 5 feet deep. One track had
slipped over the edge, and the machine (a female) had then fallen on
its left sponson, filling the pit. Whatever these excavations were,
they were not deliberate tank traps, as alleged. Some had steps cut in
the walls, and probably they were dug out to accommodate sunk huts in
connection with a large engineers’ dump of timber, wire, &c., which was
formed at the _halte_. The rescuers found Lewis guns lying outside the
tank, and its right sponson doors wide open to the sky. They had just
looked inside, and realised that the crew was gone, when a number of
machine-guns opened on them at close range. Except for the pit itself,
in which they would merely have been trapped, the nearest sort of cover
was a small mound of earth fifty yards away toward the railway, the
ground everywhere else in this neighbourhood being absolutely flat.
They ran for the mound, pursued by converging streams of bullets.
Hilton was killed almost at once. Duddridge was shot, apparently
through the body, within a few yards of the exiguous shelter. Wadeson
alone reached the latter unhurt and flung himself down behind it. He
made repeated attempts to crawl out again to Duddridge, who was dying
before his eyes and almost within reach, but every time he showed
his head the bullets whipped up the earth all round it. He must have
lain here for some time. At length, seeing that poor Duddridge was
dead, he began the hazardous task of creeping back to the railway. He
accomplished this successfully, although under heavy fire; but on the
way a gas-shell burst immediately in front of him, and he inhaled the
fumes before he realised what had happened.
III.
So ended, as far as the 7th Tank Battalion was concerned, not only
this miserable and inexcusable fiasco at Sancourt, but also all direct
participation in the war. The battalion was not again employed in
action, although we sent a few tanks to Escadœuvres a week later; for,
excepting one or two in B Company, it no longer had any machines fit
to fight. While we had been suffering for other people’s blunders on
the morning of the 30th, C Company had met with better fortune, but
had lost two-thirds of their little section. The tank borrowed from
us broke its tracks while crossing the railway between Sancourt and
Tilloy. The crew of a second machine had a positively miraculous
escape. A 5.9 came through the roof and burst inside, and yet no
one was touched except the tank commander, Collins, who sustained a
scratched finger. The third tank reached Tilloy, helped the Canadians
to establish themselves there, and then rallied.
I have said enough, perhaps, about the staff work of the 12th Canadian
Brigade. As, however, the Canadian Corps took up the cudgels on
behalf of their unit, and complained of our alleged misdeeds, I will
recapitulate the evidence. Apart from the circumstances that we
received no definite operation orders whatever, verbal or written,
and that zero was fixed (and put forward four hours) without any
notification being sent to us, the Brigadier, having told us to meet
him in the sunken road at 5 A.M., did not in fact arrive there until
11. Nor did any responsible member of his staff: during this period,
with the action already in progress, the only brigade representative at
advanced headquarters was the Intelligence Officer, a subaltern, who
did not even know that tanks were co-operating. The initial error about
the position of the front line (which was never more than a few yards
beyond the Douai road, and almost certainly did not include Sancourt)
may have been excusable in the uncertain conditions of semi-open
warfare; but the fables which came through on the field-telegraph after
the action had begun are more than I can explain. Bad map-reading may
have had something to do with them. Even the artillery was afflicted
by the general malady, to judge from the fact that Blécourt was found
by our tank to be almost untouched, at a time when it was supposed to
be smothered by concentrated shell-fire. This accumulation of blunders
convicts the 12th Brigade of mismanagement, not, unfortunately, too
uncommon in our huge army as a whole, but quite exceptional in the
Canadian Corps. Before this date tanks had often suffered, from other
quarters, in a similar manner. The attack on Monchy-le-Preux, on 11th
April 1917, is a case in point.
The general situation at the end of the morning, in so far as it was
susceptible of definition, appears to have been that the 12th Brigade
had at length a permanent grip of Sancourt and a more uncertain one of
the railway beyond. Nothing more had been accomplished. The ambitious
plan of exploitation on the left never, of course, got so far as a
beginning. The brigade suffered very heavy casualties. The other
brigade on the right seems to have made adequate arrangements, and
in consequence carried most of its objectives, including Tilloy, an
important outwork of Cambrai, although only a single tank was in at the
finish. Before Cambrai itself fell, however, the Canadians were to have
several hard days of fighting in front of them.
In this, our final action, one officer (Wadeson) and twenty-five
N.C.O.’s and men of A Company were engaged. Of this little total, two
at least were killed, seven were captured, of whom two were known to
be seriously wounded, and twelve were slightly injured in various
ways--twenty-one in all. On the following day we received notification
of the award of a D.C.M. to poor Duddridge for his exploit at Beugny.
For his two attempts to rescue his crew at Sancourt a recommendation
for a posthumous V.C. was sent in, but I do not think anything more was
heard of it. Wadeson received the Military Cross.
IV.
The affair at Sancourt, besides closing the active career of the 7th
Tank Battalion, happens to provide also an appropriate peg on which to
hang a few general remarks which I have been storing up against such an
opportunity. They may not appear to be essential to the subject of this
book, but they will be all the better for an airing.
Local operations of the Sancourt type, recurring daily, naturally
attracted little attention amid the larger features of the general
offensive. They were insignificant episodes in the whole, even when
they employed as many troops and cost as many lives as ever fought
and died at Talavera or Inkerman. On the other hand, a modern battle,
after the set programme of the first day, becomes merely a series of
these episodes. They react upon one another, and by their success or
failure influence in a varying degree the main strategy. They form, in
short, the greater part of an offensive, which the public conceives
only as a succession of spectacular, full-dress attacks on well-defined
positions. And to those who take part in them they assume inevitably
a dimension out of all ratio to their true scale. The modern army
commander sits in a house many miles behind the line, and is able to
take a detached view of all that happens: perhaps he goes fishing,
like Kuroki or the General of the story in the ‘Green Curve’; but the
platoon or company commander who sees his men slaughtered in front
of some trench or village, and can yet reflect philosophically that
they are only inconsiderable atoms in a huge and complex mechanism,
will never, happily for mankind, be discovered. It is partly for this
reason that contemporary newspaper accounts of battles are now so
diluted as scarcely to make even sense, all individual impressions of
the fighting, if unfavourable in tone, being suppressed. For these
impressions, while perfectly honest, may together give a totally
false idea of the situation as a whole. A case in point is that of
the informants who supplied the data for the famous Sunday telegram
describing the retreat from Mons. They told the truth so far as they
knew it, and an unscrupulous or very gullible journalist, feeling
himself a second Russell, did the rest. In any case, there is no excuse
for the opposite extreme of ignorant optimism and buffoonery to which
our newspapers became wedded, and in which, presumably, they were
encouraged. The point I am approaching laboriously in this digression,
however, is that a similar state of things seems to obtain, with no
justification whatever, now that we are getting professedly sober and
accurate histories of the war. Instead of a faithful picture, made up
like all things of good and bad, we find the details keyed up to a
universal and artificial tone, and so altered beyond recognition, to
suit the blazing colours of the general design. All is for the best
in the best of all possible armies. Unmerited misfortune occasionally
intrudes, but it is never admitted that any one has made a mistake. All
Generals are infallible and all soldiers heroic. I am not speaking,
of course, of that class of history which deals only with large
strategical and tactical features, and from which the personal equation
and the small undercurrents of battle, pulling this way and that,
necessarily are omitted. Histories of this kind usually are written by
soldiers, and the general public does not read them: it likes stronger
and simpler fare; and we have in consequence volumes which attempt
to give a detailed picture of events as they affected units and even
individuals. These, apparently, are to be written by novelists. The
ordinary novelist is at his worst when he tries to keep to facts.
He mistakes a profuse harvest of names and numbers for an accurate
statement. He depends for the most part on official documents which
are sure to be more or less unconscious perversions of the truth. And
so it is that we are threatened with elaborate histories which are
not histories at all, books in which an appearance of almost pedantic
veracity is built up out of a mass of inaccurate and misleading details.
I have been provoked especially to this discursion by an accident.
While I was writing my account of the action at Sancourt, as I saw
it, I found in a library the final volume of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
‘British Campaigns in France and Flanders.’ With some difficulty, owing
to the peculiar arrangement of the narrative, I discovered his brief
reference to the fiasco on 30th September. It is a typical example of
the facile journalistic style which conceals while it affects candour.
“By 9.45 in the morning,” he writes, “the 12th Canadian Brigade had
taken Sancourt and had entered Blécourt, where some fierce bludgeon
work was going on.... For a moment the 12th Canadian Brigade was
staggered by a heavy counter which broke upon it, but the ranks
soon rallied and the ground was regained.” There appears to be no
particular point here to which one can take exception, apart from that
characteristic touch about “bludgeon work” at Blécourt; and yet the
general impression deliberately given to the reader is entirely opposed
to the facts. There lies the mischief of this ill-informed type of
narrative, especially when it is inspired by a determination to find
no fault with any one. Even as a statement of events, the account is
typically vague. Ground, we are told, “was regained.” What ground? No
place is specified. The reader very wisely is left in doubt as to what
happened in Blécourt after the “bludgeon work,” but he is at liberty
to assume, on his own responsibility, that it was that village which
was “regained.” Nothing, of course, is said about any breakdown in
the arrangements, because Sir Arthur, having depended upon official
Canadian sources of information, probably was quite ignorant that
such a breakdown ever occurred. These incidents are not mentioned in
official documents. He seems to realise, however, that everything
had not gone according to plan, and, true to his brief, conceals the
suspicion in vague phraseology. It must never be admitted that things
go wrong if it can possibly be avoided. My chief contention is that
in the circumstances it would have been far better if he had left the
matter (and the book) altogether alone.
This will seem an impertinent fuss about nothing, and in any case
an unfair method of criticism. An isolated and trivial instance of
inaccuracy is no proof that the disease is chronic. But, unfortunately,
we have a multitude of proofs that it is. I could quote a dozen or
a score of similar instances, within my own experience, out of this
one volume, to say nothing of the earlier ones which I have read and
forgotten. Now this book probably has a very large circulation. It
was trumpeted everywhere as the first authentic history of our share
in the war. Yet, as a history, while desperately conscientious in
its own way, it is thoroughly bad. Some unhappy person or persons
must have spent months, which might have been far better employed,
in collecting and verifying the names of battalions and individuals
which clog its pages. Not only is it impossible to see the wood for
the trees; one cannot see even the trees because of the undergrowth.
Verisimilitude, which is infinitely more important than literal
accuracy, is not to be obtained by reciting a string of nouns and
numerals, still less by concealing every fact which does not agree with
the thesis of perfection conquering adversity. There is no attempt
at any broad treatment of events, nor any comprehensible explanation
of the sudden reversal of fortune which ensued after the three great
German offensives had shot their bolt in 1918. The most revolutionary
feature of the war (to reintroduce our King Charles’s head) is hardly
noticed. The author seems to be unaware of the complete change of
tactics initiated at Cambrai and determining every subsequent operation
we undertook; or, at least, if he is aware of it, he has not troubled
to convey it intelligibly to his readers. It is enough to point out
that in a volume dealing with the whole of our final offensive, from
Hamel and the great tank victory on 8th August up to the Armistice,
and professing especially to deal with the fortunes of every division,
brigade, and battalion, the word “tank” does not even appear in the
index! From the few cursory references to tanks in the text, the
reader might imagine that these machines controlled themselves, rather
indifferently and in a comic manner, and fired automatically their
own guns. He is left to discover, by the light of nature, that there
existed such an organisation as the Tank Corps, with six brigades, vast
workshops, a numerous personnel distributed in eighteen battalions,
novel tactics and problems of its own, and a predominant influence upon
the fate of the war. We read of “dour” Yorkshiremen, of “hatchet-faced”
Colonials, of the inevitable “grim, determined” faces of every one,
of “iron” divisions, and even of infantry who go “blithely” into
battle (which no sane creature ever did); but in this last volume I
can remember only one perfunctory reference to the men who fought and
stifled and were burnt alive in tanks while leading these others to the
ultimate victory....
It is a great pity (if one may say so without further offence) that
the creator of Sherlock Holmes did not stick to his very excellent
last, instead of creating a bad precedent. One devil does not make
a hell; but the trouble of it is, we shall get more of these books,
more tactful omissions, more _clichés_ and claptrap and crown octavo
journalese. The average Englishman would far sooner read a history of
the war by, let us say, Mr Hall Caine or Miss Ethel M. Dell, especially
if published in cheap parts with cheaper illustrations, than one by a
competent authority. He is built that way, unfortunately, and he will
get what he wants and deserves. There is no statute of limitations for
literature; and, what is at the heart of the mischief, there seems to
be no longer such a thing as a literary or artistic conscience, call it
which you will.
CHAPTER XXII.
FROM NIERGNIES TO THE ARMISTICE: CONCLUSION.
I.
In his recent book, ‘The Last Four Months, the End of the War in the
West,’ General Sir Frederick Maurice describes how Marshal Foch, when
asked by the statesmen at Versailles for his plan of countering the
final German offensive, “answered by striking out three rapid blows
with his right, with his left, and again with his right, following
these by launching out a vigorous kick.”
The preliminary punches, begun on 18th July on the Ourcq, and ending
with the American capture of the St Mihiel Salient in mid-September,
were uniformly successful--successful, indeed, to a degree which even
the Marshal himself can hardly have anticipated. The British armies,
having lost 300,000 men and 1000 guns, with immense accumulations
of material, within four or five weeks, accomplished the most
extraordinary recovery in history, and played the leading _rôle_ in
this counter-offensive. I do not know what effect the tremendous
disasters of March and April had upon opinion in England, but I
know that they abated in no way the illogical conviction of the
ordinary Englishman in France, that we were bound to win the war in
the long-run; and this self-confidence, based neither on reason nor
on knowledge, innate, matter-of-fact, and often very irritating in
prosperity, was an unrecognised inspiration of our resistance and
reaction. It took extraordinary form at times. I remember how, when
three British armies out of four were in full retreat or fighting for
their lives, and when people in Calais and Boulogne were packing up for
flight, one rushed to the newspapers to follow, not the progress of the
war, but the case of Mr Pemberton Billing and the 47,000. Our belief
in ourselves is so unconscious and irrational that it must always be
incomprehensible to such a people as the Germans, who hate the casual
and have a conscious sort of arrogance which is a very different
thing; and no doubt it has its dangers. But it served its purpose
once more in 1918. We went forward again, as a matter of course, when
the tide turned, without any particular exaltation or parade, still
less any surprise at our own powers, and with hardly a thought (so
far as the great mass of us was concerned) of the genius which was
directing all our movements, as well as those of three other national
armies. But I think that toward the end of the preliminary stage, when
Foch’s successive punches, carried just so far as was necessary and no
farther, had exhausted and demoralised the enemy and driven him once
more to the fallacious shelter of the Hindenburg Line, we began to
understand that something more than luck and confidence lay behind this
transformation. For the first time since the war began every man in the
Army felt an interest and a pride in the combined strategy in which so
obviously he was playing a part. The peculiarly English analogy of the
skilled boxer was patent, and appealed to all. And from now to the end,
in spite of losses and exhaustion, a new spirit of enthusiasm urged us
on, and was manifest in many ways.
With its growth, not only in our ranks but in those of the French,
Belgians, and Americans, coincided a notable decline in the German
_moral_. The resistance to our advance became spasmodic and liable to
sudden collapses. And before the end of September--far earlier than at
one time any one can have hoped--the hour was ripe for the big kick.
This was launched on a scale, and on broad principles of calculated
opportunism, beside which the isolated German blows earlier in the
year seemed mechanical and clumsy. On 26th September the American
1st and French 4th Armies opened the ball on a front of forty miles
astride the Argonne: on the 27th came our assault on the Canal du
Nord: on the 28th, Belgians, French, and British were sweeping over
the lost desolation of Flanders, and the 5th and 10th French Armies
were climbing once more the slopes beyond the Aisne; and on the 29th
the remaining fraction of the battered German front, the Siegfried
Line from Vendhuile to St Quentin, began to slide into ruin before
General Rawlinson’s 4th Army. A compound operation of this magnitude,
reaching its climax in four days, extending over 250 miles of country
and involving twenty-four separate armies, or from four to five million
men, with 30,000 guns, is almost beyond the capacity of the human brain
to imagine as a whole. It is like contemplating infinity. Some one has
called it, I believe, the Battle of Europe, and this seems indeed the
only name by which it can be described.
Everywhere along this immense front tanks were helping to complete the
overthrow they had done so much to bring about. The French used their
light Rénaults in clouds before every attack. Our own Tank Corps,
with no reserves, had lost in two months’ continuous offensive action
three-fourths of its machines and a third of its personnel, but it
played a conspicuous part, as I have tried to show, on 27th September
and after. Sixty-six tanks were in action on the first day, and another
170 on the 29th. Everlasting reorganisation and reshuffling of units
was one of the trials of this period, and indeed the manner in which
battalions were shifted from one brigade to another before almost
every attack caused more worry and labour than the attacks themselves.
“The rapidity with which these changes were made would have bewildered
both the Tank Corps Headquarters Staff and the brigade and battalion
commanders themselves a few months back: now the knack of rapid
movement had been mastered, and though great energy had to be exerted
during such reorganisations, they were generally accomplished in time
and efficiently.”[44] The necessity for some of them, it must be said,
was not apparent. The 1st Brigade was very fortunate in this respect,
as, except for the battle of Bapaume, it retained throughout at least
its three original battalions; but some of the others suffered such
constant permutations that their staffs must have been driven almost
crazy. The 3rd Brigade, consisting on 8th August of the two Whippet
battalions, the 3rd and 6th, was completely reconstituted on the 18th,
when it was made up of the 9th, 11th, and 14th Heavy Battalions, while
early in September its units were the 3rd, 6th, and 9th. The 4th
Brigade, which started its career in December 1917, with the 1st, 4th,
and 5th Battalions, found itself with the 4th, 5th, and 13th in May,
the 5th and 10th in June, the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th early in August
(the 9th being added a little later), dropped back to its original
constituents before September, received the 301st Americans on the
19th of that month, the 16th Battalion on 5th October, and the 10th a
day after, and fought its last battle with the 1st, 6th, 10th, 16th,
and 301st. The 5th Brigade, which had no corporate existence until
April, had the following battalions at one time or another on its
strength: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 16th,
17th, and 301st! These bewildering transfers were not always on paper
only. They involved very often long additional treks for various units
immediately before an action, and they were complicated by the wide
dispersion which each individual battalion suffered in the course of an
advance, disabled tanks, dumps, and rear headquarters being scattered
for miles behind the line. When, for example, we moved from Bihucourt
to Morchies in the middle of September, the battalion and companies’
rear headquarters, with a mass of stores, were still at Bienvillers,
at least twelve miles away, while there were three or four tanks under
repair at Bucquoy and a couple left at Bihucourt itself. This was quite
a normal situation; and when it is remembered that every one of the
seventeen battalions with the armies had left a similar trail behind,
swallowing up men for guards and other duties, it will be realised that
the co-ordination of these scattered fragments in the event of any
reshuffling, and the ordinary routine of keeping in touch with them
and feeding them, were complicated problems which entailed an immense
amount of work for the staff and the transport. Nor was this all. There
were in the field as well seven tank supply companies (two of which
worked with infantry and artillery), each with twenty-four machines,
a number of field (or salvage) companies, and an advanced stores
attached to each brigade. All these various units, whether combatant
or administrative, moved forward with the armies, and all drew their
maintenance supplies in the last resort from the Central Workshops at
Erin. It was a tremendous organisation that had sprung from the two
companies which fought on the Somme in 1916; and not the least of its
achievements was the adaptability and energy displayed in keeping the
battalions supplied with their manifold requirements during the final
rapid advance. The deplorable shortage of tanks themselves was the
fault of no one in the Tank Corps. In the fighting units during these
days perhaps the busiest men were the battalion and company engineers
and equipment officers, who toiled like slaves to keep the dwindling
residue of machines fit for service.
II.
I have carried the story of the 7th Battalion up to its last fight on
30th September. I will run very briefly through the remainder of its
history, and through that of the Corps as a whole up to the Armistice.
On the day after Sancourt I returned from Pilgrim’s Rest to Pronville,
where battalion headquarters had arrived from Bullecourt and where our
tents were now erected. Our few remaining tanks (there were no more
than six fit for action in the three companies) were still at Pilgrim’s
Rest and Raillencourt. For over a week we were left in peace. On our
front the Canadians were pushing slowly forward, in the teeth of a
most determined resistance by fresh German divisions, toward the line
of the Canal de L’Escaut north of Cambrai, being hampered by that town
on their right and by the Sensée marshes on their left. But farther
south the Germans were being pressed back upon the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme
Line, and the big kick, with more room for its swing, was preparing to
demolish these last defences. St Quentin had fallen, and everywhere
south of Cambrai we were across the canal by 6th October, while the
Canadians were approaching Ramillies and Eswars. On 8th October the
storm burst. The Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line, Malincourt, Esnes, and
Niergnies, with all the high ground south of Cambrai, were in our
hands by the evening. Cambrai was entered that night, and the Germans
were retreating to the Selle in great confusion, having lost 10,000
prisoners, 200 guns, and much _matériel_.[45]
The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Tank Brigades had a conspicuous share in this
victory, although the six battalions engaged mustered between them
only 82 tanks. Of these, 20 were furnished by the 12th Battalion,
which had not been in action since 3rd September. It signalised its
re-entry by becoming involved in the second tank _v._ tank battle of
the war. It was working single-handed with the left and centre of
the 3rd Army, its companies being attached to the 4th, 6th, and 17th
Corps. B Company, on the right, with seven tanks, having helped our
old friends the New Zealanders and the 37th Division about Lesdain
and Esnes, rallied without further incident. One machine had been
disabled by a shell which killed four of the crew. C and A Companies,
attacking Seranvillers and Niergnies with the infantry of the 6th and
17th Corps, saw the latter established on the high ground east of the
villages, and were returning to the rallying-point, when the Germans
made a counter-attack led by seven captured Mark IV. tanks. The
Germans had fitted their own 5.7 cm. guns, with very clumsy mountings,
into the male machines, but retained the Lewis guns in the others. For
the interesting episode which ensued, I will quote the 12th Battalion
‘History,’ beginning with A Company’s experiences:--
“Owing to the smoke and imperfect light, these (the German tanks) were
at first taken to be some of our own, both by our infantry and tank
crews, the latter supposing the strangers to belong to C Company. L
16, Captain Roe, was near the farm of Mont Neuve, east of Niergnies,
when these tanks appeared in sight, and the foremost was within
fifty yards before that officer realised that it was an enemy. One
6-pounder round was then fired at it, apparently disabling it, but
almost simultaneously L 16 received two direct hits, one of which came
through the cab, wounded Captain Roe, and killed his driver. Roe,
believing his tank to be disabled, as the engine had stopped, got his
crew out, went to L 9, which was near at hand, and led it back toward
the German tanks. L 9 had already had five men wounded, had been on
fire, and, having no gunners left, could not use its 6-pounders; but
its commander, 2nd Lieut. Warsap, engaged the enemy with his Lewis gun
until his tank received a direct hit, setting it on fire a second time.
He was now forced to evacuate it, and as the counter-attack appeared to
be successful, he blew the machine up to prevent it falling into the
enemy’s hands. L 12, another 6-pounder tank, was hit twice and disabled
before its commander had discovered that the strange tanks did not
belong to C Company. There remained L 8, 2nd Lieut. A. R. Martell, but
this tank had a leaking radiator and was almost out of water. Lieut.
Martell therefore sent his crew back and went himself with an artillery
officer to a captured German field-gun, which the two turned round
and used against the enemy’s tanks, knocking one out. The tank which
L 16 had engaged was crippled, either by the 6-pounder shell or by a
captured anti-tank rifle, and the remaining two having been driven
away by a female tank from C Company, the situation was restored.”