of the 14th Welsh crossed the river, wading breast deep through the
flooded stream under heavy fire, holding their rifles and pouches
above their heads, and formed up in the actual process of a German
counter-attack, along the line held by the two companies who had
crossed the previous morning.[33] A day later a part of the 64th
Brigade (New Zealanders) started at 11.30 p.m. on a pitch-dark night,
crossed the valley, and gained and held positions, half surrounded,
until the covering troops arrived. This was on the slope near Miraumont
seen across the valley in Plate 73.
[33] Haig's Despatches, p. 268.
[Illustration: _PLATE LXIX._
ALBERT IN WINTER.
_The ruins of Albert under snow in the early spring of 1919._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXX._
ALBERT CATHEDRAL.
_The great heap of stone and brick rubbish was once the tower on
which stood for a long time a statue of the Madonna at an angle which
appeared to defy gravity. I am afraid that it was our shelling in 1918
which eventually brought it down._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXI._
IN THE ANCRE VALLEY.
_The road along the Ancre Valley, entering Albert from the north._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXII._
AVELUY.
_The swampy, but once well wooded, valley of the Ancre, with the
Thiepval Ridge as its farther bank._]
IX.--THE OISE AND THE AVRE
(PLATES 74 TO 78.)
In the northern outskirts of the Forest of St. Gobain, a couple of
miles from the village of Crépy, and about seven miles east of La Fère
and the Oise, are to be found the remains of the emplacement (Plate 74)
of the "Grosse Bertha," the gun which bombarded Paris from a distance
of about seventy-four miles. On the spot we were told that there had
been three guns, or at any rate three emplacements, but that the other
emplacements were still more completely destroyed than the one which I
have photographed. The guns and gun-carriages were, of course, removed
by the Germans before we could reach them. We know, however, that the
shell was about 8 inches in diameter and was fired from a large naval
gun, probably similar to the gun captured at Chuignes (p. 45), lined up
for the small shell. The stories that some mysterious new ballistics
were involved in the matter were, of course, entirely "buncombe." But
naturally the trajectory of a shell travelling more than seventy miles
was a matter of interest to all artillerymen. It must have reached
a height of something like five-and-twenty miles, and our knowledge
of atmospheric conditions at that height is somewhat limited. The
alignment of the gun, with the allowances for wind and drift, must have
been very accurately calculated and carried out, for even the whole of
Paris is not a large target under such exceptional circumstances.
It will not be forgotten, as a characteristic piece of German
mentality--or brutality--that this gun was used on Good Friday (the
29th of March, 1918), and a shell burst in a Paris church during
service and killed many of the congregation. But the Parisians, after
the first shock, were to be as little scared by Bertha as the Londoners
by the Zepps.
Crossing the Forest of St. Gobain--which had been continuously within
the German lines--by the very worst stretches of road which I found
anywhere, even in Flanders--I came across a German O.P. (Plate 75)
in a tall tree. The forest itself is very fine, quite untouched by
shell-fire, but the group of large, pleasant-looking country houses at
St. Gobain itself have been much injured. Farther south reconstruction
was in rapid progress. At the little manufacturing town of Chauny
(half-way to Noyon) we found the odd condition of affairs that half the
town had been entirely destroyed and the other half--the division was
quite a sharp one--almost untouched.
In the early part of the war--September, 1914--when the French
occupied Péronne, there was hard fighting about Noyon; at that time
the Germans were too strong and the French had to fall back, but they
both recovered and relost it later on. In 1917 they took Noyon once
more during the great German retirement, but again it passed into
German hands during the March advance in 1918, to be abandoned finally
by the enemy on the 29th of August. After changing hands so often it
is not to be wondered at that the town is a good deal damaged. It is
not, however, totally destroyed. The cathedral (Plate 76) is a building
dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with very interesting
architectural features. It has been greatly injured by shell-fire, roof
and vaulting having mostly gone and the towers being much damaged.
Toward the end of their great advance in 1918 the Germans succeeded
(on the 28th of March) in crossing the little River Doms (a southern
tributary of the Avre), on which Montdidier (Plate 77) stands, and this
little town, which was entirely ruined (but by this time is largely
rebuilt), formed the south-western apex of their advance. Farther
north, on the Avre itself, they took Moreuil and Morisel on the 29th of
March, and within the next few days crossed the river and reached--from
there southwards to Montdidier--the higher ground on the west of the
valley, which forms the background in Plate 78. They were here, for
the time, about ten miles south-east of Amiens, just as beyond Villers
Bretonneux they were the same distance west. The photograph shows how
exceedingly thin the coating of soil over the chalk in this district
is, all the shell-holes (they are quite small) showing up like patches
of snow. The little Avre River runs under the line of trees in the
distance at the foot of the higher ground which the Germans had reached.
The main road southwards in the Avre valley lies here for a long
distance between banks which are still riddled with German dugouts and
French defences dating from the fighting of 1918.
Five days after Foch had started the great counter-offensive in July
the German lines here were attacked by French troops, with some British
tanks in aid, and were driven back to the Avre. The attack was in many
ways a notable one, perhaps especially for the tanks, but was only a
preliminary before the great advance of the 8th of August (p. 44),
when at one bound the Avre was passed and the Germans pushed six miles
westward.
Montdidier was surrounded by the French three days later, its garrison
surrendered, and the great advance continued its inexorable progress.
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXIII._
BEAUMONT-HAMEL.
_An official photograph taken from near the cross-roads at
Beaumont-Hamel looking across the Ancre Valley to the northern part of
the Thiepval Ridge, towards Miraumont._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXIV._
THE "BIG BERTHA" EMPLACEMENT.
_All that is left of an emplacement of the "Grosse Bertha," one of the
guns in the St. Gobain Forest between La Fère and Laon, which shelled
Paris from a distance of about seventy-four miles._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXV._
THE ST. GOBAIN FOREST.
_The St. Gobain Forest was in German hands throughout the war; the
photograph shows a German O.P. in a tall tree on high ground which
would command the Oise valley in the direction of Chauny._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXVI._
NOYON.
_The fine twelfth-century Cathedral of Noyon is even more entirely
ruined, throughout much of its length, than the Cathedral of Soissons,
and very much more than Rheims._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXVII._
MONTDIDIER.
_This little town was the farthest south point reached by the Germans
in their Somme advance of 1918. It lies on the Doms, which is
practically a continuation of the Avre._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXVIII._
THE AVRE VALLEY.
_The chalk here, just below Moreuil, is so near the surface that the
shell-holes still looked like snow patches more than a year after they
had been formed. The ground shown is that of the French counter-attack
(with English tanks) a few days before the advance on the Somme in
August, 1918._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXIX._
CAMBRAI PLACE D'ARMES.
_A portion of the Place d'Armes in Cambrai, burnt deliberately by the
Germans in their final evacuation, after there had been time to clear
away the débris with which it had been covered._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXX._
CAMBRAI CATHEDRAL.
_The tower of the modern Cathedral of Notre Dame at Cambrai appears
to stand, in its upper part, in defiance of all theories of stable
construction in masonry._]
X.--CAMBRAI TO ST. QUENTIN
(PLATES 79 TO 87.)
West of Cambrai and south to St. Quentin lay over thirty miles of the
strongest part of the Hindenburg Line, that "granite wall of 24,000
square kilometres." The southern end of the much-talked-of "Switch
Line" at Quéant, ten miles west of Cambrai, had been forced by the
First and Third Armies on the 2nd of September, 1918, but the defence
was still strong, and it was only on the 10th of October that I was
greeted, on arriving at Colonel Gill's quarters, with the welcome
news that Cambrai had just fallen. Two days later I was able to visit
the city. The central part (Plate 79) was still burning, having been
fired by the Germans on their evacuation, but it was possible to get
round by the suburbs; only an occasional shell still reached the
town. (It is hardly necessary to say that the photograph, taken many
months later, shows the Place d'Armes only after it had been cleared
up, and not in the state in which it was when the city was entered.)
The railway-station was destroyed, the windows of most houses had
disappeared, and walls were cracked everywhere. But on the whole the
destruction (obviously largely due to bombing as well as shell-fire)
was not nearly so complete or so irreparable as at Rheims or Ypres or
Lens. The tower of the cathedral (Plate 80), a church rebuilt about
sixty years ago, looks as if it could hardly stand permanently. There
were many houses in the suburbs which, although much damaged, could
be made habitable without very serious difficulty. But it is to be
remembered that the wanton destruction of household property, down
to the very toys of the children, must have caused the returning
inhabitants here and in many other places even more intense feeling
about the invaders than the mere destruction of the houses themselves,
which had come to be recognised as an inevitable consequence of the
state of war, and might, in fact, have been caused by combatants on
either side.
I have before me an airplane plan of Cambrai, which I obtained from the
First Army in 1918 and which is an excellent example of the great skill
and success we had obtained in aerial surveys. As it is printed it is
very nearly a map on a scale of 6 inches to the mile, although it is a
mosaic of prints from eight or nine different negatives, taken, as the
direction of the shadows shows, at at least four different times. But
the joins between the different prints are in many cases invisible,
and the map as a whole only wants the names of the streets to make it
complete.
West of Cambrai, about four miles on the road to Bapaume, and on a
little rising ground, stands the Bourlon Wood, which has for us a
history perhaps even more tragic than that of the woods north of the
Somme. The full story of our attempt to take Cambrai in November,
1917, the first accounts of which induced foolish authorities to
have "joybells" rung (a proceeding which they must have bitterly
regretted afterwards), is given in Haig's Despatches (pp. 153-171).
The large-scale map by which it is accompanied shows how we gained
the wood, and were, in fact, close to Cambrai for a week, but a week
later had lost nearly the whole of our gains. The photograph (Plate
81) is taken from the village at the north-west corner of the wood,
the farthest point which we reached on the 23rd-24th November. It was
in this fighting that a small party of East Surreys were rescued after
having held out, surrounded, for forty-eight hours, while later on a
company of the 13th Essex, entirely surrounded and without hope of
relief, fought to the last man rather than surrender. Bourlon Wood was
only recovered, in our final great advance, on the 27th of September,
1918.
The road from Cambrai to Le Cateau, the scene of so much fighting both
in August, 1914, and in October, 1918 (see p. 78), runs eastwards
from Cambrai. I was able to visit a number of the villages south of
the road in October, 1918 (finding in some houses the hastily left
meals of their late German occupants), while fighting still continued
a few miles farther north, and was surprised to find that they were
very little injured in spite of the indications of heavy barrage over
the face of the ground. The fighting here had gone over the ground too
rapidly to leave behind it the fearful trail of destruction which is
everywhere visible on the land where fighting was continuous for many
weeks, or even months, together.
The south-eastern suburbs of Cambrai and the villages on that side
of the town show no very extensive signs of destruction, but on
the south-west and farther to the south, where the fighting across
the Hindenburg Line was so severe, everything is destroyed. West
of Cambrai, and for many miles to the south, lay the part of the
Hindenburg defences known as the Siegfried Line, the strongest section
of which, and that part deemed by the Germans to be practically
impregnable, included the deep cutting of the canal between Bellicourt
(Riqueval) and Bellenglise. For 6,000 yards before reaching Bellicourt
the canal runs in a tunnel, the southern end of which, and the high
ground above it, as well as the village of Bellicourt, is seen in Plate
82. The Americans had been told off to deal with the country over the
tunnel, and did so quite successfully, but they unfortunately neglected
to clear up behind them, so that the Germans, getting up from the
tunnel by shafts which they had provided for the purpose, attacked them
from the rear with serious consequences, and the Australians, following
on, had a somewhat hard time. We had some talk with a good lady and
her family who lived in a house just above the mouth of the tunnel, in
which a number of German officers had been quartered. It was curious
to notice how, after beginning to speak quite quietly, she and her
daughter became more and more excited as their recital continued, under
the recollection of the nightmare of the German occupation, although in
this case there had happily been no special brutality to bring to mind.
Southwards for a couple of miles from Bellicourt towards Bellenglise
the canal runs in the deep cutting seen in Plate 83, which was taken
from above the tunnel mouth. The banks of the cutting are 60 or 70 feet
high, very steep, and covered with thick vegetation--covered also, in
1918, with barbed wire. On the east side the bank carried, in addition,
many concrete machine-gun emplacements. The water in the canal was
very deep near the tunnel, and did not shallow until it nearly reached
Bellenglise. The attack was carried out by Midland Territorials
(Stafford and Lancashire), and had immediate success. It is specially
mentioned by General Haig, and well described by General Maurice, and
with natural enthusiasm and much detail by Major Priestley.[34] It was
preceded by a barrage, lasting forty-eight hours, from about 1,600
guns of various calibres, and then--for once--the weather favoured
us, for at zero hour, 5.50, on the morning of the attack (the 29th
of September)[35] the whole country was covered with a thick fog,
under which our men advanced, invisible to their enemies, although
with some difficulty to themselves. The 46th Division scrambled down
the cutting (where it will be seen that there was no jumping-off
place on that side), and got across by swimming (with life-belts), by
improvised rafts and collapsible boats, and all the devices which had
been tested on the Somme at Brie (see Plate 66) a few days earlier. It
seems uncertain whether any of the German foot-bridges had been left
undestroyed, but the Riqueval Bridge (Plate 84) had not been knocked
down by our shelling, and still stood as it was when I last saw it,
carrying a notice that it was safe "for infantry in file only." Major
Priestley tells the story of how Captain Charlton, with a small party
of nine men, found his way by compass to the bridge, charged down on
the sentries (one N.C.O. getting four of them just in time), cut the
wires, and threw the blasting charges into the canal. The bridge was
saved and held by 8.30, and naturally proved most useful.
[34] Haig's Despatches, p. 282, "The Last Four Months," p. 161, and
"Crossing the Hindenburg Line," p. 48.
[35] We now know that it was on the 28th of September that Ludendorff
met the Kaiser and insisted on the necessity for an armistice.
Among Major Priestley's stories of this adventure he tells how two
R.A.M.C. privates (Moseley and George) collected prisoners, dressed
the wounded and made the prisoners carry them, and finally arrived at
quarters as the sole escort of twenty stretcher cases and seventy-five
unwounded prisoners.[36]
[36] Priestley, _op. cit._, p. 63.
At Bellenglise (at the bend of the canal two miles south of Bellicourt)
the Germans had made for themselves an extraordinary underground tunnel
shelter, of which Plate 85 shows one of the entrances. We were told by
the villagers that it was a kilometre and a half in length, but did
not verify this. In any case it was certainly fitted up as barracks
and quarters of the most extensive nature, for a thousand prisoners
were taken in it with no resistance. It was also provided with electric
light, and we are told that the captured electricians who were
instructed to start the dynamo for us had to confess the existence of a
booby-trap to blow up the whole affair when the switch was closed, and,
of course, to remove it.
St. Quentin is five miles south of Bellenglise, but the crossing of
the Hindenburg Line at the canal tunnel at St. Tronquoy, a necessary
preliminary to taking the city, proved a task almost as difficult, but
quite as successfully carried out, as the Bellicourt crossing. It was
effected on the 30th of September. St. Quentin itself, which had been
within the German lines ever since 1914, was entered by the French
First Army on the next day. When it became clear to the Germans that
they would have to give up the town, which was but little damaged,
they prepared a characteristic piece of devilment, one which could
not by any exercise of imagination be supposed to have the slightest
military consequence. They cut out large recesses (each of about a
couple of cubic feet) in the walls and columns of the cathedral, with
the intention of using the cavities so made for blasting charges to
wreck the whole building (Plate 86). I did not count the number of
these holes, but it was officially stated to be ninety! Happily the
French got into the town twenty-four hours before their entry had been
expected, so that the church still stands (not, of course, without some
other damage), with the holes and the blocks cut out from them visible
as damning evidence of what otherwise would be no doubt denied. But
very much the same seems to have been done by the same savages at other
places, as far apart even as Péronne and Beersheba.
The region between the Arras-Péronne and the Cambrai-St. Quentin roads
has been fought over both by French and British. Going eastwards from
the crossing of the Somme at Brie the country already showed signs of
renewed cultivation, but some villages, like Mons and Bernes, were
totally destroyed, and others, like Estrées, Vraignes, and Hancourt,
and the little town of Vermand, had been very badly strafed. Near
Cambrai, villages such as Bony and Vendhuille, Gouzeaucourt and
Ribécourt (Plate 87), and of course Bourlon, were quite in ruins. At
Gouzeaucourt very active reconstruction was, however, going on, and
rows of neat brick cottages had already appeared. To mention all the
ruined villages would be to give almost a complete list of them, but
over the whole region active and obviously successful attempts were
being made to carry on cultivation, the surface having been by no means
so badly damaged as farther north.
Southwards from St. Quentin, also, much cultivation is being actively
carried on, although many of the villages, such as Liez and Essigny,
are badly injured; but after La Fère is reached, and beyond the Oise,
cultivation is complete, and the conditions are more or less normal
as far as the Ailette and the Aisne. North of Cambrai also, on the
east of the Cambrai-Douai road, where the country was always in German
occupation, and behind the Hindenburg defence lines, its condition is
also normal.
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXI._
BOURLON WOOD.
_The remains of Bourlon village, in the north-west corner of the wood,
which was fought for, and taken, and lost again in the Cambrai battle
of November, 1917._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXII._
BELLICOURT.
_The south end of the 6,000-yard tunnel on the St. Quentin Canal, seen
from the western bank of the canal cutting. The village of Bellicourt
lies over the tunnel mouth, and the higher ground beyond is that
covered by the Americans in the advance of the 29th of September,
1918._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXIII._
THE ST. QUENTIN CANAL.
_The canal cutting looking down from above the tunnel mouth--an
"absolutely impregnable" portion of the Hindenburg Line defences._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXIV._
THE RIQUEVAL BRIDGE.
_The only bridge over the St. Quentin Canal which was not destroyed
by the Germans before our attack on their "impregnable" position in
September, 1918. A small party of the Midland Territorials, under
Captain Charlton, reached it in the fog just in time to deal with the
sentries, throw the charges into the water, and so save the bridge._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXV._
BELLENGLISE.
_One of the entrances to the immense underground workings constructed
by the Germans as a part of the Hindenburg defences at the St. Quentin
Canal. The elaborate workings were finally only a trap for the
thousand Germans who were secured there as prisoners._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXVI._
ST. QUENTIN CATHEDRAL.
_The Germans cut ninety recesses in the columns and walls of the
Cathedral (two are seen in the photograph) for the purpose of placing
mine charges in them and destroying the whole building when they
evacuated the town. The unexpected arrival of the French frustrated
this diabolical plan, but the holes and the blocks cut from them
remain as witnesses._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXVII._
RIBÉCOURT.
_This was one of the villages which were taken in the Cambrai battle,
and retained in the possession of the Allies. They are all equally
destroyed, but some are already half rebuilt._]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXVIII._
RHEIMS.
_This bit of Rheims--tidied up--is a fair example of the condition to
which perhaps 10,000 out of its 14,000 houses have been reduced._]
XI.--RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS
(PLATES 88 TO 97.)