YPRES TO CAMBRAI: SEPTEMBER TO NOVEMBER 1917
Having once more left its Artillery and Pioneers in line, under the
orders of another division, the 36th Division, after four days'
rest about Winnizeele, moved south by train. The troops detrained
at Bapaume and Miraumont, ruins now, upon the church steeples of
which some of them had looked from the Mesnil Ridge a little over a
year before. With the Division moved the 1st Battalion Royal Irish
Fusiliers. This regular battalion had joined the Division in the
Salient before the Battle of Langemarck, but had not taken part in
that dolorous affair. Its arrival was highly significant. It was a
sign of the shortage of recruits from home. The 36th Division had not
been made up to strength between Messines and Langemarck, and was now
deplorably below it.
The country into which the troops stepped from their trains was of
a like they had not yet seen in all their active service. Behind
them lay the "shelled" area; that in which they now stood was the
"devastated" area. The former was featureless to an indescribable
degree. Marks of battle there were few, save for the stumps of trees.
All the countryside, its débris and its shell-holes, was covered with
a mass of very coarse grass. There were not even ruins, for buildings
had been blown flat and their rubble carted away to help maintain
the excellent main roads with which the area was now traversed. It
was hard to discover the sites even of villages. Most people who
used the Albert-Bapaume Road will remember a wooden cross whereon was
written: "This is the site of Le Sars Church." For that statement it
was necessary to take the writer's word. There was no other evidence.
The devastated area, on the other hand, had not been fought upon.
It represented the ground evacuated by the enemy in his retreat to
the Hindenburg Line. It had, however, been cleared of civilians and
scientifically demolished to make it as difficult and comfortless as
possible for our troops. All houses had been blown up by explosives,
bridges destroyed, fruit-trees cut down or gashed to death. Yet it
was far from being as dreadful or as ugly as the battle-field. The
ground was unbroken and covered with good grass or crop run to seed.
There were still woods and copses. It was depressing, yet far less
so than the Salient. It resembled primeval prairie, and the hutments
springing up here and there might have been the encampments of bold
pioneers.
Between the 28th and 30th of August the Division relieved the 9th
(Scottish) Division in the line. The right boundary was marked by
a communication trench, "Queen Lane," on the Beaucamp-Ribécourt
Road, a thousand yards north of the former village; the left was on
the Demicourt-Graincourt Road. The frontage was very considerable,
upwards of six thousand yards in a straight line. All three Brigades
were in line, the 107th on the right, in what was known as the
Trescault sector; the 108th in the centre, in the Havrincourt sector;
and the 109th Brigade on the left, in the Hermies sector. The men of
the Scottish Division made a very good impression upon their comrades
of the 36th by working on their trenches till the moment of relief.
As the troops of the 107th Brigade filed up the long communication
trenches they saw the men of the 9th Division's South African
Brigade carrying up the last sacks of chalk from the deep dug-outs
under construction. It was a friendly gesture, typical of the good
sportmanship of this fine Division.
It was an interesting and remarkable front that was taken over by
the 36th Division. Its principal feature was the Canal du Nord,
designed to link up the Canal de la Sensée with the Canal de la
Somme at Peronne. The Canal du Nord had been about half completed
at the outbreak of war. It ran due south to the northern skirts of
Havrincourt Wood, the height from its bottom to the ground level
varying from fifteen to a hundred feet, dry where it crossed the
Bapaume-Cambrai Road, but with a few feet of water in it further
south. North of Havrincourt Wood it turned west along the Grand
Ravin, then south again, disappearing at Ruyalcourt, and reappearing
a couple of miles further on north of Etricourt. Just at the
destroyed railway bridge between Hermies and Havrincourt it formed a
barrier between British and German.
The other important feature was the Hindenburg system of trenches,
two great lines, from five hundred to two thousand yards apart, each
consisting of front and support trenches. The system constituted in
all probability the most formidable fortification constructed in the
course of the war. The Germans had sited and dug it at their ease, to
a great extent with gangs of Russian prisoners and forced civilian
labour. The trenches were wide, deep, and well revetted. The mined
dug-outs were all designed to a pattern; the stairways, supports, and
all timber used in them having been turned out by the sawmills in
replica by the thousand pieces. They represented the first successful
application of mass production to the construction of dug-outs.
The wire defences were of huge extent, generally in three or four
deep belts, at least twenty feet apart. The system had already been
pierced by our troops at Bullecourt, but on a tiny front and at vast
cost. It appeared practically impregnable.
From the village of Mœuvres the front system of the Hindenburg
Line[41] followed the western bank of the Canal du Nord for four
thousand yards, then crossed it, sweeping in a bold curve round
the village of Havrincourt and south of that of Ribécourt. It did
not, however, represent by any means the line held by the German
outposts, which were in general a thousand yards in advance of it,
and frequently in themselves stout and well-wired positions. Along
the banks of the Canal du Nord there were at intervals spoil heaps,
consisting of the chalk dug from its bed. Of these, two were of
great importance to the Division. The northern spoil heap was on the
front of the 109th Brigade, on the west bank of the Canal. Sixty
feet in height, it was strongly wired and had machine-guns mounted
on its flat top which swept our trenches. The southern spoil heap
was smaller, at the sharp bend west of Havrincourt, where the Canal
turned westward along the Grand Ravin. It was known as Yorkshire
Bank. There was a British trench on the top of it, but on its eastern
rim the Germans had established posts, rather unaccountably in view
of the aggressive character of the troops of the 9th Division. They,
too, seemed to feel that such a legacy to a relieving division was
unworthy their fame. On the night of August the 30th, before General
Nugent had taken over command of the front, a party of Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders, advancing after the German part of the spoil
heap had been shelled with gas, drove out the enemy piquets and
established posts of their own. The 9th Division, therefore, was able
to leave an honourable legacy here after all, but a peculiarly lively
one. Next evening, after General Nugent had taken over the command
and established his headquarters in Little Wood, outside the village
of Ytres, the Germans hit back. After a bombardment of Yorkshire
Bank, they drove in our posts and re-established their own. At 4-15
a.m. next morning they were re-ejected. Next night they came again,
two parties bombing their way up simultaneously from either side.
At 1 a.m. on the 2nd the 12th Rifles retook the posts, with bomb
and Lewis gun. That evening at dusk an officer visiting the posts
saw Germans looking over the edge of the bank. They were rushed
immediately and driven out, leaving a wounded prisoner. Two nights
later they tried yet again, with typical German persistence. A shower
of bombs from the top of the spoil heap drove them off, and as they
were retreating a shell from a Stokes mortar was seen to drop in the
centre of a group. One other attempt was made, to meet with like
decisive failure. It was not an important affair, though it caused
the name of Yorkshire Bank to appear in the British _communiqué_
three days running. The 36th Division had had the better of the
exchanges, but did not unduly pride itself thereon, having a manifest
advantage in position.
For the rest, the area was rolling, well watered, and fairly thickly
wooded. In the big Havrincourt Wood, which had originally covered
some four square miles, the Germans had cut down much timber and
used it on the Hindenburg trenches, besides leaving a great many
trees lying on the ground. It still contained enough, however, to
afford excellent cover. The Hindenburg System was admirably sited,
and afforded to the enemy good observation of the area held by us,
particularly from the dark mass of Bourlon Wood, crowning the height
of the hundred-metre contour north of the Bapaume-Cambrai Road. In
such country as this, however, it was impossible for the Germans to
deny to us all the good ground. From the Hermies Ridge, from trees
in Havrincourt Wood, from the very front line on the Trescault
spur, the British had admirable views of their positions. Very
tantalizing they were to men who dwelt among ruins, for the villages
on the German side were intact, save for the nearest, which had been
slightly damaged by our shell-fire. Very distinct from one point, and
little more than eight miles off, were the steeples and roofs of the
beautiful city of Cambrai.
There was a striking contrast between the trenches in the Trescault
and Havrincourt sectors, and those in the northern or Hermies sector.
The former consisted of a whole series of lines, so many trenches
that they had to be occupied and defended at intervals only, by a
system of "localities," each manned in general by a platoon. These
trenches had, in fact, been prepared in the spring for assembly with
view to an offensive which did not eventuate. In the Hermies sector,
on the contrary, there were practically no defences at all, save a
shadowy front line and some trenches round the village. This northern
sector had been held by the 27th Brigade of the 9th Division,
commanded by the celebrated Brigadier-General F. A. Maxwell, V.C.,
who was killed in the Salient shortly after his Division had moved
north. He, apparently, was not a believer in trenches, and relied
on holding his position by counter-attack from the Hermies defences
and from behind the high ridge along which ran the Hermies-Demicourt
Road. The plan did not appeal to General Nugent or to General
Ricardo, commanding the 109th Brigade, and a heavy programme of
trench-digging and wiring in the Hermies sector was at once drawn up.
Meanwhile, in the Salient, the Artillery and 16th Rifles endured a
bitter period. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether any Divisional
Artillery, since the second Battle of Ypres in 1915, had been
subjected to strain such as that which now fell to the lot of the
36th Division's gunners. They had gone into action on July the 14th,
in support of the 55th Division. They remained in action after the
36th Division had departed, and on August the 21st supported an
unsuccessful attack by the 61st Division on the same front. They were
not relieved till the night of the 23rd. And these six weeks had
represented battle conditions in their worst form, a huge expenditure
of ammunition, heavy and continuous hostile counter-battery, shelling
of wagon-lines, the scantiest of accommodation, mud and indescribable
wretchedness. A great proportion of the personnel had disappeared,
new officers were commanding sections and junior officers batteries,
when they detrained at the end of August at Bapaume. The lot of the
Pioneers was not quite so hard, but their period in the Salient was
longer. Two companies worked on the ruins of the infantry barracks
at Ypres, the remainder on screening the Menin Road, on a trench
tramway to Railway Wood, on the construction of strong points on
the Westhoek Ridge, and like tasks, till September the 30th, when
the battalion was entrained at Vlamertinghe and sent to rejoin the
Division.
The line now held by the Division was on the whole the pleasantest
it had ever known. This does not imply that the troops were allowed
to take life easily. On the contrary, the fighting arms displayed
considerable aggression, with important results. The German methods
of defence, with outposts far in front of the main Hindenburg System,
not always very strongly defended, and sometimes held at night only,
offered considerable opportunity for those little silent raids upon
isolated piquets which the Canadians had perfected, and knew by the
expressive term "winkling." The first affair was on a scale rather
bigger than this implies, parties of about sixty being engaged on
either side. The scene was Wigan Copse, north of Yorkshire Bank, and
the result the retirement of the Germans, leaving a wounded prisoner
in the hands of the 12th Rifles, who had an officer and four men
slightly wounded. That was on October the 6th. Three days later,
at dusk, the 10th Rifles cut the wire of a post on the edge of the
eastern arm of Havrincourt Wood, known as Fémy Wood, waited for the
garrison to arrive, captured its leader, a corporal, and killed the
remaining ten. On the 23rd, a party of the 11th Rifles, covering
work on our wire, made a neat capture of six men who approached
it, closing in on them from either flank, and taking them without
a shot fired. Another prisoner was captured by the 1st Royal Irish
Fusiliers, now in the 107th Brigade, when one of its saps north of
Trescault was unsuccessfully attacked by the enemy. Various other
deserters and single wanderers were also taken from time to time.
On the British side was one minor disaster. A patrol of one officer
and nine other ranks of the 1st Irish Fusiliers, examining the
results of trench mortar fire on the German wire, was ambushed by a
party of about thirty Germans. After heavy fighting, in which they
inflicted numerous casualties on the enemy, the Fusiliers were forced
to withdraw, three wounded men being captured. But the most heroic
of these little episodes was when a party of Germans approached a
sap-head held by a section of four men of the 15th Rifles, calling
out in English: "It's all right. We're coming to visit you." Deceived
by the ruse, the Riflemen's first warning was a shower of bombs,
which wounded one of them. At the same moment the Germans jumped into
the sap. The three remaining Riflemen might well have been excused
had they retreated down the sap. Instead, upon the instant, they
charged the enemy with the bayonet. The Germans ran, but the plucky
defenders laid hands upon one that they had wounded, and kept him.
The prisoner stated that his party had consisted of an officer and
eight men. And at dawn the body of that officer, dead from a bayonet
wound, was found outside the sap-head. It was in truth a gallant
exploit.
In two or three other cases our men were unsuccessful in entering
posts, finding the enemy on the alert. One raid only on a big scale
was carried out, on the trenches south of the Hermies-Havrincourt
Road and east of the Canal. At 7-30 p.m. on November the 3rd,
three parties of the 9th Irish Fusiliers, numbering in all, with
stretcher-bearers and sappers, four officers and sixty-seven other
ranks, moved out from Yorkshire Bank and passed through gaps in the
German wire. They then sent up a red flare, which brought down a
heavy barrage on all approaches. The raid would have been a complete
success had not the right party come upon some wire repaired by
the Germans since it had been reported destroyed by our artillery.
Eventually they stormed the obstacle and cut down the defenders,
but not without heavy loss to themselves. Our total casualties were
one man killed, three missing, believed killed, and one officer and
fourteen men wounded. The Germans were estimated to have had forty
killed. Had the men, for the most part newly transferred troopers of
the North Irish Horse, not been more eager to kill than to capture, a
considerable number of prisoners might have been taken.
Among other offensive methods employed must be recorded a new horror
of war, the Livens projector, which the troops of the 36th Division
now saw for the first time. It was simply a large steel drum filled
with lethal gas, under compression, fired from a short tube. Its
range was upwards of two thousand yards. Six hundred of these mortars
were dug in at the bend of the Canal, and on the night of the 14th
of September fired into Havrincourt. It was definitely established
by the evidence of prisoners captured the following month that the
losses in the village were very heavy. The battalion which held it
had to be relieved that night. In two dug-outs alone twenty men were
killed by the gas.
The artillery also was active. The ammunition allotment was high.
It was, indeed, the huge increase in the supply of 18-pounder
ammunition that had made really "quiet bits" almost unknown upon
the British front. For when the British had ammunition they fired
it off. The French, on the other hand, on a quiet front, preferred
to live quiet lives. The IV. Corps ordered that two-thirds of the
allotment should be expended at night, in harassing fire upon roads.
As most of our batteries had little flash-cover, such shooting
betrayed gun positions. Recourse was therefore had to single guns for
night-firing, pushed forward at dusk and withdrawn before dawn. Some
of these forward guns had an unpleasant reception. One was destroyed
by accurate enemy fire. The Germans, for their part, paid greater
attention to our batteries than to our trenches. Their favourite
method, which the 36th Division had experienced in Flanders, was
a deliberate "shooting-up" of a single battery, beginning with
aeroplane observation, and continued by the aid of high shrapnel
bursts, which could be "spotted," for five or six hours at the rate
of about a round a minute. These bombardments did some damage and
caused some loss to the gunners, but the latter had more than once
the satisfaction of drawing fire upon dummy or abandoned positions,
while those in use went scatheless.
Mention has already been made of the arrival of the 1st Irish
Fusiliers from the 4th Division. This battalion was, on August the
27th, posted to the 107th Brigade. To make place for it two other
battalions of that Brigade, the 8th and 9th Rifles, were amalgamated,
becoming the 8th/9th Royal Irish Rifles. It was a sad occasion, above
all for such officers and other ranks of these original battalions
as still survived with them. It meant the end, or well-nigh the end,
of a cherished tradition. The next arrivals were over three hundred
all ranks of the North Irish Horse, a regiment of which had been
dismounted. This large draft was posted to the 9th Irish Fusiliers,
thereafter officially known as the 9th (North Irish Horse) Battalion
Royal Irish Fusiliers. Then came the 7th Irish Rifles from the 16th
Division, and a regular battalion, the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles,
from the 25th Division. The 7th Battalion, of a total strength of
less than four hundred all ranks, was broken up, and its personnel
transferred to the 2nd. The latter was then posted to the 108th
Brigade, while to make place for it the 11th and 13th Rifles were
amalgamated, becoming the 11th/13th Royal Irish Rifles. In each case
surplus personnel was drafted to the remaining battalions of the
107th and 108th Brigades, which were now over strength. The 109th
Brigade, which received considerable reinforcements during the month
of September, was little below it.
The work of the 36th Division in this area almost equalled that
of Flanders. The "localities" in the front line trenches soon
resembled model fortifications, such as might have been made for
the instruction of an engineering school. Curving round the village
of Hermies, the Pioneers dug perhaps the best trench ever made in
entirety by the Division, which was christened in their honour
"Lurgan Switch." The best deep dug-outs the Division had ever
known, with thirty feet of cover, were dug in the chalk under the
instruction of the Field Companies, now no mean experts in such work.
Here, too, what were known from their shape as "champagne" dug-outs
were constructed, on a pattern invented by that artist in trench
warfare, the enemy. In these the team of a single machine-gun could
shelter from the heaviest bombardment, and bring its gun into action
in the time it took two men to run up a ladder. Behind the lines
work was equally hard. In such country as this, with not a solitary
house standing, the troops had no other accommodation than that which
they constructed for themselves. This was the land of the "Nissen"
hut, too well known even to people who never saw the Front to merit
description here. They sprang up everywhere, these ugly but useful
buildings, with their arched roofs of corrugated iron. Excellent
Divisional Headquarters were built in Ytres, to replace those in
Little Wood. Fine new Brigade Headquarters appeared in Neuville and
Bertincourt, to which the two northern Brigades moved back from
unsafe and uncomfortable headquarters further forward. Bertincourt
represented perhaps the best example of scientific work upon a ruined
village. It was parcelled out between the various units, each being
allotted its own section, on which no other might encroach. General
Ricardo offered prizes for the best designed and best kept billets.
Under the stress of this competition Bertincourt had become, when the
109th Brigade reluctantly quitted it, a model village.
So, in line and behind it, the troops were as comfortable as
conditions on any part of the British front allowed. They would
have been as happy as was possible under any conditions of active
service had it not been for the desolation about them, which bred
a feeling of loneliness. The British soldier had grown used to
being billeted in villages, or lodged in encampments within reach
of them. He missed vaguely the sights of village life, the gallant
old men and the women setting about their endless toil, the clatter
of the farm, the children who watched him falling in for parade,
and came in the afternoon to listen to the band. More definite was
the loss of the shops, the eggs to be bought from the villagers,
the warmth and comfort of the _estaminet_, where he drank his beer,
solaced himself with bacon or fried potatoes if he had gone short
of a meal, joked with the daughter of the host, or played "House"
with his friends on benches about the fire. Officers of the Provost
Staff have stated that in their experience there was almost always
less crime and unrest among troops in inhabited regions than among
those living upon the Teuton-made _veldt_. There was among the men
of the Ulster Division little crime at any time, but undoubtedly
they also were in some degree a prey to the inevitable nostalgia
born of desolation. They would have come far more completely beneath
its influence but for the efforts that were made to afford them
distraction and increase their comfort. "Peace hath her victories,"
and a comparatively peaceful life afforded as much opportunity as
battle for the Quarter-master General's Staff--"Q"--to prove its
ingenuity and resource. In this sector the work of the 36th Division
"Q" was certainly triumphant in this respect; first of all under the
direction of Colonel Comyn, for eighteen months A.A. and Q.M.G., and
then, on his transfer to the War Office, under his successor, Colonel
S. H. Green, who had worked under him as D.A.Q.M.G. It organized in
the first place daily trips to Amiens. Three lorries, one to take
twelve officers, the remaining two each twenty other ranks, left
Ytres at an early hour each morning for Achiet-le-Grand. Thence the
party went by train to Amiens, being met again by the lorries at
Achiet in the evening. The trips allowed of six hours or more being
spent in the city. Beer was provided in great quantities to replace
the supplies of the lost _estaminets_. In September the Division was
buying from brewers of Amiens no less than two railway truck-loads
of forty-five barrels a day. A soda-water factory was established on
the Canal bank at Manancourt. Soda-water, labelled "Boyne Water," a
fancy which appealed to the troops, was sold at a penny a bottle,
and various other aerated concoctions at twopence. The Divisional
Canteens, always of the greatest benefit to the troops, became then
of incalculable importance. Added to their usual "lines"--tobacco,
biscuits, chocolate, tinned foods, books, candles--were now sold in
great quantities fruit and vegetables, eggs, bread and cake, and,
when procurable, fresh fish and even oysters; while special orders
for anything required in Amiens by officers or men were taken, the
goods being procured by the following evening, and sold to the
buyer at cost price. The Division had long had a cinema, a concert
party--"The Merry Mauves"--and an excellent band. These passed up
and down the front, all units taking turns in the pleasures of their
performances. Football and boxing competitions reappeared. There
was one very exciting race meeting and horse show, with numerous
classes for transport turn-outs. For animals at least the area was a
paradise, there being unlimited grazing and great fields of clover.
Some agriculture was attempted, over a hundred acres being ploughed
and sown. A few headquarters purchased cows, and many units pigs and
chickens.
To those who cared to ponder such things, the wonders of the great,
creaking, rather clumsy machine, in which it took a thousand men
to form the tiniest cog, never ceased to appeal. The British
organization for war was assuredly by now amazingly thorough. Was
there required some new-fangled and complicated Lewis-gun-mounting
for trench warfare; a message and a tracing to some workshop behind
brought a hundred in a week. Copies innumerable of an enlarged
aeroplane photograph wanted in a hurry for a raid could be printed
off at Albert in twenty-four hours. The little press of the IV.
Corps, the Intelligence Branch of which officers of the 36th Division
will remember with gratitude, seemed to pour forth up-to-date maps.
If there was the slightest hitch about rations, it was the topic of
conversation for a week. The post-office was an unceasing marvel.
In Flanders, Divisional Headquarters had had their newspapers the
day they were published, and the rest of the troops next morning.
The letters for men in the saps reached them in two or at most three
days. A letter to Hermies would probably take longer now.
But, there was no doubt about the matter, the organization was
expensive in man-power, and man-power at that moment was a problem
that engaged G.H.Q. almost as much as did the enemy. The writer
of this book can well remember being sent, in Flanders, when the
Division was very weak, to investigate the number of men a certain
battalion had in the trenches. The "paper strength" of that battalion
was just six hundred men. It had in the line, exclusive of its
headquarters, one hundred and seven men. He went through the state
with the adjutant. That revealed, indeed, a remarkably strong
battalion headquarters, and an undue number at the transport lines,
but no other leakages which the adjutant had power to stop. There
was a number of men at Divisional Headquarters, clerks, draughtsmen,
orderlies, a cook, five attached to the Signal Company; and about
three times as many at Brigade Headquarters. The rest followed varied
avocations. Five were on traffic control, a number attached to a
Tunnelling Company. There were clerks to town majors, camp wardens,
guardians of coal, straw, and ration dumps; cooks and servants at
the Rest Camp. There were about forty on leave, and twenty sick not
evacuated.
There were also twenty at various schools. Schools were a vital
necessity; but who at this period can doubt that they were
ludicrously overdone? Every formation had its schools--G.H.Q., the
Army, the Corps, the Division, the Brigade. There were infantry
schools, artillery schools, and trench-mortar schools; machine-gun
schools, Lewis-gun schools, bombing schools, gas schools; schools
which taught horse-mastership, shoe-making, brick-laying, carpentry,
sanitation, butchery, cooking. For a weak Division, schools became a
nightmare. Divisional commanders had to protest that they had either
to man their trenches inadequately, or refuse vacancies allotted.
And vacancies refused raised a vast to-do, because they threatened
the existence of the school, and the school naturally appealed to
the formation of which it was the _protégé_. Up to the Division
headquarters this did not so largely matter. The Division may have
been inconsiderate at times, but it did know precisely how its line
was held, how strong its posts, how far separated. But above the
Division the situation was not always so quickly grasped. The Corps
was an impersonal affair, encamped, sometimes for years, upon the
same front, changing its Divisions week by week. And when a Corps
headquarters, as happened before Cambrai, resting out of the line,
sent out appeals for students to attend _its_ schools, so that they
might not be idle, the most long-suffering were inclined to protest
and to feel that, after all, for the idle, there was a certain work
which might have been accomplished somewhat further forward. The
jests of most humorists are based upon exaggeration, but there is
just a kernel of truth in them, or they are not good jests. Of such
nature is the dictum of M. André Maurois,[42] the French interpreter
who loves the British so well and pokes such clever fun at them--that
a school "is a plot of ground traversed by imitation trenches, where
officers who have never been near the line teach war-worn veterans
their business."
The swarm of writers which, under the influence of the reaction from
war, has so bitterly criticised the higher staff officers for the
waste of man-power, has been hopelessly astray in its estimation of
the reason. It was not inefficiency or carelessness. It was rather
the Englishman's passion for organization, for orderliness and
smoothness. That passion for perfecting the machine put too many cogs
and fly-wheels upon it, made it over-complicated, clumsy. Ever eager
to expand their business, these directors put into it too much of the
one form of capital which they could not afford--man-power.
In October began preparations for a great new offensive, a surprise
offensive, which was to depend entirely upon the use of tanks. The
scheme and the plans for the Battle of Cambrai must be left for
discussion till the next chapter. Here will be detailed only some of
the preliminary moves. The part of the 36th Division in the first
day's attack was to be confined to the capture of the German trenches
bounded by the Bapaume-Cambrai Road and the Canal du Nord. This was
the task of one Brigade only, and the other two were to be withdrawn
from the Trescault and Havrincourt sectors, each being replaced
by a Division. These Divisions, the 51st (Highland) and the 62nd
(West Riding), were to be kept in rear as long as possible. It fell,
therefore, to the 36th to do much of the work of preparation in
their areas; the repairing of forward roads, the excavating of new
dug-outs, the construction of bridges over trenches. The C.R.E.'s of
these Divisions, with their Pioneer battalions and some Engineers,
moved forward early in November to work under the general control of
the C.R.E., 36th Division. Havrincourt Wood was crammed with little
wooden hutments, which its trees and scrub rendered invisible to
the enemy. One of the most important tasks was the metalling of the
roads, and the dumping of metal beside them in parts where it was
impossible to lay it, in order that work might commence with the
assault. The surface of the roads was good, but only because the
Division had been holding a front so wide, which made the traffic
upon them relatively light. It was quite obvious that a single day of
traffic such as an offensive entails would cut them to pieces. It was
front-line roadmaking upon which the C.R.E., Colonel Campbell, was
required to exercise his ingenuity. Work upon tracks in Havrincourt
Wood was easy; silence was all that was necessary. But work upon what
was to be the most important communication of the IV. Corps in the
offensive, the road from Metz to Ribécourt, was of great difficulty.
In Trescault, half-way between these villages and almost in our front
line, there were, to begin with, two enormous craters blown by the
enemy before his retirement. These had to be filled in by night, and
it took chalk by the ton to do it. Road-metal also was stacked by
night almost up to the front line, and covered with camouflage before
dawn. Wooden bridges were prepared for all the trenches crossing the
roads which would be required, and most of these for British trenches
set in position. The problem of gun positions on the northern part
of the front was difficult. Cover there was none reasonably far
forward, save among the ruins of Hermies and Demicourt. Among these
the positions were prepared, and by night seven hundred rounds per
18-pounder borne up to them.
During the first sixteen days of November, the 36th Division had
also to provide parties of from two to six hundred men daily for
unloading trains at Ytres station, for the Heavy Artillery ammunition
dump at Bus, and for the Field Artillery dump in Vallulart Wood.
Trains frequently did not arrive within six hours of the advertised
time, and the men had to sit about and wait for them, frequently
half through the night--as ill a preparation for troops on the eve
of an offensive as could well be imagined. Amid much confusion
and unnecessary hardship, one officer earned the gratitude of the
infantrymen by his foresight and consideration, the Staff Captain of
the IV. Corps Heavy Artillery. He required parties up to seventy-five
men, and always at short notice. He kept three of his lorries always
standing by at his headquarters, telephoned when he wanted men,
and fetched them from Ytres, Neuville, Ruyalcourt, or Bertincourt,
as detailed by the General Staff of the Division. Better still, he
generally gave them tea before sending them home, to supplement their
haversack rations.
The weather favoured the British arrangements amazingly. It was fine,
but morning after morning dawned with a thick ground mist which
hung about all day. Foden lorries carrying stone and light steam
rollers to lay it were enabled, beneath this shelter, to work at a
proximity to the Germans that had otherwise been out of the question.
Night after night the tanks, upon which all hinged, moved up into
Havrincourt Wood. Here again the mist was a godsend, for the track of
a tank across country is plain enough on an aeroplane photograph, and
not hard to distinguish with a glass. Contrary to the general belief
of those who have not heard them on the move, the tank is not very
noisy. It was the artillery tractors, dragging up the big howitzers,
which frightened everyone by their clatter.
The relief of the 107th and 108th Brigades took place on the nights
of the 17th and 18th of November. To deceive the enemy as to the
great concentration in front of him, a screen of the troops of these
Brigades remained to hold the outpost line. These men knew only that
a raid on a large scale was intended. In the early hours of the
18th, the Germans, evidently somewhat suspicious, raided a sap held
by the 1st Irish Fusiliers behind a heavy "box" barrage, and took six
prisoners. From the evidence of German prisoners taken subsequently,
it appeared that the most the enemy gathered from the examination
of his captives was that an attempt to capture Havrincourt might be
expected. This aroused in the German command no great uneasiness. On
the 16th, the 14th Rifles had taken over the whole front of the 109th
Brigade to permit the other battalions to train for their task, This
training was carried out by General Ricardo over trenches laid out to
scale with the plough, upon a front of four thousand yards.
Accommodation was so limited that much marching and counter-marching
was necessary to provide billets for the 51st and 62nd Divisions
moving up. In its course the 108th Brigade moved back as far as
Barastre, upwards of eight miles from the front line. By the
night of the 19th, however, the eve of the attack, the infantry
was concentrated well forward. The whole of the 109th Brigade was
in assembly positions, the 108th Brigade in Vélu Wood, and the
107th Brigade in the area Ytres-Lechelle. The 16th Rifles were in
Havrincourt Wood.
These details have been here given in order that the next chapter
may proceed with the scheme of the Battle of Cambrai, without
interruption to explain the moves which preceded it. It is in itself
one of the most interesting actions in which the 36th Division took
part during its combatant career, and, at the same time, measuring
final result by the standard of early achievement, one of the most
disappointing. The material results that it produced were small, but
it opened a new era in the history of war. No adequate conception of
the victories of 1918, first of the Germans, then of the Allies, can
be reached without a close study of its lessons.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] The expression "front Hindenburg Line" was applied loosely
either to the front-line trench of the first system, or to the whole
of that system. The word "system" will be used in this and succeeding
chapters to avoid misunderstanding.
[42] Author of two classic books on the humours of war: _The Silence
of Colonel Bramble_ and _General Bramble_.