TANKS AND THE HINDENBURG LINE
We left Valenciennes on the morning of January 12th. By great luck, an
officer from the First Army, who knew every inch of the ground to be
traversed, was with us, in addition to the officer from G.H.Q., who,
as is always the case with Army visitors, accompanied us most
courteously and efficiently throughout. Captain X took us by a by-road
through the district south of Valenciennes, where in October last year
our troops were fighting a war of movement, in open country, on two
fronts--to the north and to the east. There were no trenches in the
desolate fields we passed through, but many shell-holes, and the banks
of every road were honeycombed with shelters, dug-outs and
gun-emplacements, rough defences that as the German Army retreated our
men had taken over and altered to their own needs; while to the west
lay the valley of the Sensée with its marshes, the scene of some of
the most critical fighting of the war.
From the wrecked centre of Cambrai a short run over field roads takes
you to the high ground north-west of the city which witnessed some of
the fiercest fighting of last autumn. I still see the jagged ruins of
the little village of Abancourt--totally destroyed in two days'
bombardment--standing sharp against the sky, on a ridge which looks
over the Sensée valley; the shell-broken road in which the car--most
complaisant of cars and most skilful of drivers!--finally stuck; and
those hastily dug shelters on the road-side in one of which I suddenly
noticed a soldier's coat and water-bottle lying just as they had been
left two months before. There were no terrible sights now in these
lonely fields as there were then, but occasionally, as with this coat,
the refuse of battle took one back to the living presences that once
filled these roads--the _men_, to whom Marshal Haig expresses the
gratitude of a great Commander in many a simple yet moving passage of
his last dispatch.
And every step beyond Cambrai, desolate as it is, is thronged with
these invisible legions. There to our right rises the long line of
Bourlon Wood--here are the sand-pits at its foot--and there are the
ruined fragments of Fontaine-notre-Dame. There rushes over one again
the exultation and the bitter recoil of those London days in November,
1917, when the news of the Cambrai battle came in; the glorious
surprise of the tanks; the triumphant progress of Sir Julian Byng; the
evening papers with their telegrams, and those tragic joy-bells that
began to ring; and then the flowing back of the German wave; the
British withdrawal from that high wood yonder which had cost so much
to win, and from much else; the bewilderment and disappointment at
home. A tired Army, and an attack pushed too far?--is that the summing
up of the first battle of Cambrai? A sudden gleam had shone on that
dark autumn which had seen the bitter victory and the appalling losses
of Passchendaele, and then the gleam vanished, and the winter closed
in, and there was nothing for the British Army but to turn its steady
mind to the Russian break-down and to the ever-growing certainty of a
German attack, fiercer and more formidable than had ever yet broken on
the Allies.
Bourlon Wood--famous name!--fades behind us. A few rubbish heaps
beside the road tell of former farms and factories. The car descends a
long slope, and then, suddenly, before us runs the great dry trough of
the Canal du Nord; in front, a ruined bridge, with a temporary one
beside it, a ruined lock on the left, and rising ground beyond. We
cross the bridge, mount a short way on the western slope, then in the
darkening afternoon we walk along the front trench of the Hindenburg
line, north and south of the road--a superb trench, the finest I have
yet seen, dug right down into the rock, with concrete headquarters,
dressing and signal stations, machine-gun emplacements and observation
posts; and, in front of it, great fields of wire, through which wide
lanes have been flattened down. Now we have turned eastward, and we
stand and gaze towards Cambrai, over the road we have come. The huge
trench is before us, the waterless canal with its steep banks lies
beyond, and on the further hill-side, trench beyond trench, as far as
the eye can see, the lines still fairly clear, though in some places
broken up and confused by bombardment. The officer beside me draws my
attention to some marks on the ground near me--the track marks of two
tanks as plain almost as when they were made. One of them, after
flattening a wide passage through the wire fields for the advance of
the infantry, had clambered across the trench. At our feet were the
grooved marks of the descent, and we could follow them through the
incredible rise on the further side; after which the protected
monster--of much lighter build, however, than his predecessors on the
Somme--seemed to have run north and south along the trench, silencing
the deadly patter of the machine guns; while its fellow on the west
side, according to its tracks at least, had also turned south, for the
same purpose.
The Hindenburg line!--and the two tanks! The combination, indeed,
suggests the whole story of that final campaign in which the British
Army, as the leading unit in a combination of armies brilliantly led
by a French Generalissimo whom all trusted, brought down the military
power of Germany. There were some six weeks of fighting after the
capture of the Hindenburg line; but it was that capture--"the essential
part" of the whole campaign, to use Marshal Haig's words--to which
everything else was subordinate, which, in truth, decided the struggle.
And the tanks are the symbol at once of the general strategy and the
new tactics, by which Marshal Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, working
together as only great men can, brought about this result, bettered all
that they had learned from Germany, and proved themselves the master
minds of the war. For the tanks mean _surprise_--_mobility_--the power
to break off any action when it has done its part, and rapidly to
transfer the attack somewhere else. Behind them, indeed, stood all the
immense resources of the British artillery--guns of all calibres, so
numerous that in many a great attack they stood wheel to wheel in a
continuous arc of fire. But it was the tanks which cleared the way,
which flattened the wire, and beat down the skill and courage of the
German machine gunners, who have taken such deadly toll of British life
during the war. And behind the tanks, protected also by that creeping
barrage of the great guns, which was the actual invention of that
famous Army Commander with whom I had spent an evening at Valenciennes,
came the infantry lines, those now seasoned and victorious troops, for
whose "stubborn greatness in defence," no less than their "persistent
vigour" and "relentless determination" in attack, General Haig finds
words that every now and then, though very rarely, betray the emotion
of the great leader who knows that he has been well and loyally served.
There is even a certain jealousy of the tanks, I notice, among the men
who form the High Command of the Army, lest they should in any way
detract from the credit of the men. "Oh, the tanks--yes--very useful,
of course--but the _men_!--it was the quality of the infantry did it."
All the same, the tanks--or rather these tell-tale marks beside this
front trench of the Hindenburg line, together with that labyrinth of
trenches, cut by the Canal du Nord, which fills the whole eastern
scene to the horizon--remain in my mind as somehow representative of
the two main facts which, according to all one can read and all one
can gather from the living voices of those who know, dominated the
last stage of the war.
For what are those facts?
First, the combination in battle after battle, on the British front,
of the strategical genius, at once subtle and simple, of Marshal Foch,
with the supreme tactical skill of the British Commander-in-Chief.
Secondly, the decisive importance to the ultimate issue, of this great
fortified zone of country lying before my eyes in the winter twilight;
which stretches, as my map tells me, right across Northern France,
from the Ypres salient, in front of Lille and Douai, through this
point south-west of Cambrai where I am standing, and again over those
distant slopes to the south-west over which the shades are gathering,
to St. Quentin and St. Gobain. These miles of half-effaced and
abandoned trenches, with all those scores of other miles to the
north-west and the south-east which the horizon covers, represent, as
I have said, the culminating effort of the war; the last effective
stand of the German brought to bay; the last moment when Ares,
according to Greek imagination, "the money changer of war," who weighs
in his vast balance the lives of men, still held the balance of this
mighty struggle in some degree uncertain. But the fortress fell; the
balance came down on the side of the Allies, and from that moment,
though there was much fighting still to do, the war was won.
As to the actual meaning in detail of the "Hindenburg" or "Siegfried"
line, let me, for the benefit of those who have never seen even a yard
of it, come back to the subject presently, helped by a captured German
document, and by a particularly graphic description of it, written by
an officer of the First Army.
But first, with the scene still before me--the broken bridge, the
ruined lock, the splendid trench at my feet, and those innumerable
white lines on the far hill-side--let me recall the great story of the
six months which preéceded the attack of Sir Julian Byng's Third Army
on this bank of the Canal du Nord.
It was on Monday, March 25th, that at Doullens, a small manufacturing
town, lying in a wooded and stream-fed hollow not far from Amiens,
there took place the historic meeting of the leading politicians and
generals of the war, which ended in the appointment of Marshal Foch to
the supreme military command of the Allied forces in France. I
remember passing Doullens in 1917, dipping down into the hollow,
climbing out of it again on to the wide upland leading to Amiens, and
idly noticing the picturesqueness of the place. But there must be a
house and a room in Doullens, which ought already to be marked as
national property, and will certainly be an object of travel in years
to come for both English and French; no less than that factory to the
west of Verdun where Castelnau and Pétain conferred at the sharpest
crisis of the immortal siege. For there--so it is generally
believed--the practical sense and generous temper of the British
Commander brought about that change in the whole condition of the war
which we know as the "unity of command." Sunday, March 24th, had been
a particularly bad day in that vast defensive battle which, in General
Haig's phrase, "strained the resources of the Allies to the
uttermost." There had been difficulties and misunderstandings
also--perfectly natural in the circumstances--with the French Army on
the right of the British line. Yet never was a perfect co-ordination
of the whole Allied effort in face of the German attack so absolutely
essential.
Sir Douglas Haig took the lead. A year before this date he had refused
in other circumstances, as one supremely responsible for the British
Army, to agree to a unified command under a French general, and the
events had justified him. But now the hour had arrived, and the man.
The proposal that General Foch should take the supreme control of the
four Allied armies now fighting or gathering in France was made and
pressed by Sir Douglas Haig. There was anxious debate, some opposition
in unexpected quarters, and finally a unanimous decision. General
Foch, waiting in an adjoining room, was called in and accepted the
task with the simplicity of the great soldier who is also a man of
religious faith. For Foch, the devout Catholic and pupil of the
Jesuits, and Haig the Presbyterian, are alike in this: there rules in
both of them the conviction that this world is not an aimless scene of
chance, and that man has an Unseen Helper.
Such, at least, is the story as it runs; and, at any rate, from that
meeting at Doullens dates the transformation of the war. For five
weeks afterwards the German attack beat against the British front,
bending and denting but never breaking it. Then at the end of April the
attack died down, brought up against the British and French reserves
which Ludendorff had immensely underrated, and--strategically--it had
failed.
A month later came the "violent surprise attack" on the Aisne, which,
as we all know, carried the enemy to the Marne and across it, and on
the 7th of June the French were again attacked between Noyon and
Montdidier. The strain was great. But Foch was making his plans; the
British Army was being steadily reorganised; the drafts from England
were being absorbed and trained under a Commander-in-Chief who, by the
consent of all his subordinates, is a supreme manipulator and trainer
of fighting men, while never forgetting the human reality which is the
foundation of it all. Soon the number of effective infantry divisions
on the British front had risen from forty-five to fifty-two. And
meanwhile American energy was pouring men across the Atlantic, and
everywhere along the Allied front and in the Allied countries, but
especially in ravaged, war-weary France, the news of the weekly
arrivals, 80,000, 100,000, 70,000 men, was exactly the stimulus that
the older armies needed.
It was a race between the German Army and the growing strength of the
Allies--and it was presently a duel between Ludendorff and Foch.
"Attack! attack!" was the German military cry, "or it will be too
late!" And on July 15th Ludendorff struck again to the east and
south-west of Rheims. General Gouraud, who was in command of the
Fourth French Army to the east of Rheims, told me at Strasbourg the
dramatic story of that attack and of its brilliant and overwhelming
repulse. I will return to it in a later letter. Meanwhile the German
Command in the Marne salient plunged blindly on, deepening the pocket
in which his forces were engaged--striking for Montmirail, Meaux, and
Paris.
But Foch's hour had come, and on July 18th he launched that
ever-famous counter-offensive on the Soissons-Château-Thierry front,
which, in Sir Douglas Haig's quiet words, "effected a complete change
in the whole military situation."
After a moment of bewilderment, attacked on both flanks by
irresistible forces of French, British, and Americans, von Boehm
turned to escape from the hounds on his track. He fought, as we all
know, a skilful retreat to the Vesle, leaving prisoners and guns all
the way, and on the Vesle he stood. But the last German offensive was
done, and Foch was already thinking of other prey.
On the 23rd of July there was another conference of the military
leaders, held under other omens, and in a different atmosphere from
that of March 25th. At that conference Foch disclosed his plans and
gave each army its task. The French and American Armies--the American
Army now in all men's mouths because of its gallant and distinguished
share in the June and July fighting on the Marne--were to attack
towards Mézières and Metz, while the British Armies struck towards St.
Quentin and Cambrai--in other words, looked onward to the final
grapple with the "great fortified zone known as the Hindenburg line."
So long as Germany held that she was undefeated. With that gone she
was at the mercy of the Allies.
But much had to be done before the Hindenburg line could be attacked.
Foch and Haig, with Debeney, Mangin, Gouraud, and Pershing in support,
played a great _arpeggio_--it is Mr. Buchan's word, and a most graphic
one--on the linked line of the Allies. On the British front four great
battles, involving the capture of more than 100,000 prisoners and
hundreds of guns, had to be fought before the Hindenburg line was
reached. They followed each other in quick succession, brilliantly
intercalated or supported by advances on the French and American
fronts, Mangin on the Aisne, Gouraud in Champagne, Pershing at St.
Mihiel.
_The Battle of Amiens_ (August 8th-13th), fought by the Fourth British
Army under General Rawlinson, and the First French Army under General
Debeney, who had been placed by Marshal Foch under the British
command, carried the line of the Allies twelve miles forward in a
vital sector, liberated Amiens and the Paris-Amiens railway, and
resulted in the capture of 22,000 prisoners and 400 guns, together
with the hurried retreat of the enemy from wide districts to the
south, where the French were on his heels. These were great days for
the Canadian and Australian troops. Four Canadian divisions under Sir
Arthur Currie, on the right of an eleven-mile front, four Australian
divisions under Sir John Monash in the centre, with the Third British
Corps under General Butler on the left, led the splendid advance. The
Field Marshal in his dispatch speaks of the "brilliant and
predominating part" played by the two Dominion Corps--the "skill and
determination of the infantry," the "fine performance" of the cavalry.
By this victory the British Army recovered the initiative it had
temporarily lost. All was changed. And even more striking than the
actual gains in ground, prisoners, and guns, was the effect upon the
_morale_ of both German and British troops. The Germans could hardly
believe their defeat; the British exultantly knew that their hour had
come.
In _the Battle of Bapaume_ (August 21st-September 1st) the Third and
Fourth British Armies, twenty-three divisions against thirty-five
German divisions, drove the enemy from one side of the old Somme
battle-field to the other, recovered all the ground lost in the
spring, and took 34,000 prisoners and 270 guns. The enemy's _morale_
was now failing; surrenders became frequent, and there were many signs
of the exhaustion of the German reserves. And again, by the turning of
his line, large tracts of territory were recovered almost without
fighting. By September 6th, five months after we had stood "with our
backs to the wall" in defence of the Channel ports, the Lys salient
had disappeared, and the old Ypres line was almost restored.
In _the Battle of the Scarpe_ (August 26th-September 3rd) General
Horne's First Army, with the Canadian Corps and the Highlanders in its
ranks, drove eastwards, north and south of the Scarpe, till they had
come within striking distance of the Drocourt-Quéant line. In twelve
hours, on the 2nd of September, the Canadian Corps, with forty tanks,
Canadian cavalry and armoured cars, had captured "the whole of the
elaborate system of wire, trenches, and strong points," which runs
north-west from the Hindenburg line proper to the Lens defences at
Drocourt; while the 17th Corps attacked the triangle of fortifications
marking the junction of the Drocourt-Quéant line with the Hindenburg
line proper, and cleared it magnificently, the 52nd (Lowland) Division
especially distinguishing itself. There was "stern fighting" further
south that day, right down to the neighbourhood of Peronne; but during
the night the enemy "struck his tents," and began a hasty retreat to
the line of the Canal du Nord. Sixteen thousand prisoners and 200 guns
had been the spoil of the battle.
_The Battle of Havrincourt_ (September 12th-18th) was a struggle for
the outer defences of the Hindenburg line, which had to be carried
before the line itself could be dealt with. Six days secured the
positions wanted for the final attack, and in those six days fifteen
British divisions had defeated twenty German divisions, and captured
nearly 12,000 prisoners and 100 guns.
That rapid summary has brought me back to the point from which I
started. In three months and a half the "mighty conflict," in which,
on the British side, something short of 700,000 bayonets were engaged,
had rushed on from victory to victory; Foch and Haig working together
in an ideal marriage of minds and resources; the attack retaining
everywhere by the help of the tanks--of which, in the Battle of
Amiens, General Rawlinson had 400 under his command--the elements of
surprise and mobility. The harassed enemy would find himself hard
pressed in a particular section, driven to retreat, with heavy losses
in ground, guns and prisoners; and then, as soon as he had discovered
a line on which to stand and had thrown in his reserves, the attack
would be broken off, only to begin again elsewhere, and with the same
energy, unexpectedness, and success. British Staff work and British
tactics were at their highest point of excellence, and the spirit of
the men, fanned by that breeze which Victory and Hope bring with them,
were, in the Commander-in-Chief's word, "magnificent."
And so we come to the evening of the 26th of September. Along these
hill-sides, where we stand, on the west side of the Canal du Nord, lay
Sir Julian Byng and the Third Army. To his right, on the south-east,
was General Rawlinson, facing the strongest portion of the Hindenburg
line, with two American divisions, led by Major-General Read, under
his command; while on his left, and to the north, the First Army,
under General Home, held the line along the Canal du Nord, and the
marshes of the Sensée.
The most critical moment in the campaign had arrived. For in the
assault on the Hindenburg line heavy risks had to be run. It is clear,
I think, from the wording of Marshal Haig's dispatch, that in respect
to the attack he took a special responsibility, which was abundantly
vindicated by the event. The British War Cabinet was extremely
anxious; the French Generalissimo was content to leave it to the
British Commander-in-Chief; and Sir Douglas Haig, confident "that the
British attack was the essential part of the general scheme, and that
the moment was favourable," had the decision to make, and made it as
we know. It is evident also from the dispatch that Sir Douglas was
quite aware, not only of the military, but of the political risk. "The
political effects of an unsuccessful attack upon a position so well
known as the Hindenburg line would be large, and would go far to
revive the declining _morale_, not only of the German Army, but of the
German people." This aspect of the matter must, of course, have been
terribly present to the mind of the British War Cabinet.
Moreover, the British Armies had been fighting continuously for nearly
two months, and their losses, though small in proportion to what had
been gained and to the prisoners taken, were still considerable.
Nevertheless, with all these considerations in mind, "_I decided_,"
says General Haig, "_to proceed with the attack_."[6]
[6] The italics are mine.
There lie before me a Memorandum, by an officer of the General Staff,
on the Hindenburg line, drawn up about a month after the capture of
the main section of it, and also a German report, made by a German
officer in the spring of 1917. The great fortified system, as it
subsequently became, was then incomplete. It was begun late in 1916,
when, after the battle of the Somme, the German High Command had
determined on the retreat which was carried out in February and March
of the following year. It was dug by Russian prisoners, and the forced
labour of French and Belgian peasants. The best engineering and
tactical brains of the German Army went to its planning; and both
officers and men believed it to be impregnable. The whole vast system
was from four miles to seven miles deep, one interlocked and
inter-communicating system of trenches, gun emplacements, machine-gun
positions, fortified villages, and the rest, running from north-west
to south-east across France, behind the German lines. In front of the
British forces, writes an officer of the First Army, before the
capture of the Drocourt-Quéant portion of the line, ran "line upon
line, mile upon mile, of defences such as had never before been
imagined; system after complicated system of trenches, protected with
machine-gun positions, with trench mortars, manned by a highly-trained
infantry, and by machine-gunners unsurpassed for skill and courage.
The whole was supported by artillery of all calibres. The defences
were the result of long-trained thought and of huge work. They had
been there unbroken for years; and they had been constantly improved
and further organised." And the great canals--the Canal du Nord and
the Scheldt Canal, but especially the latter, were worked into the
system with great skill, and strongly fortified. It is evident indeed
that the mere existence of this fortified line gave a certain high
confidence to the German Army, and that when it was captured, that
confidence, already severely shaken, finally crumbled and broke.
Indeed, by the time the British Armies had captured the covering
portions of the line, and stood in front of the line itself, the
_morale_ of the German Army as a whole was no longer equal to holding
it. For our casualties in taking it, though severe, were far less than
we had suffered in the battle of the Scarpe; and one detects in some
of our reports, when the victory was won, a certain amazement that we
had been let off--comparatively--so lightly. Nevertheless, if there
had been any failure in attack, or preparation, or leadership, we
should have paid dearly for it; and a rally on the Hindenburg line,
had we allowed the enemy any chance of it, might have prolonged the
war for months. But there was no failure, and there was no rally.
Never had our tried Army leaders, General Horne, General Byng, and
General Rawlinson carried out more brilliantly the general scheme of
the two supreme Commanders; never was the Staff work better; never
were the subordinate services more faultlessly efficient. An American
officer who had served with distinction in the British Army before the
entry of his own country into the war, spoke to me in Paris with
enthusiasm of the British Staff work during this three months'
advance. "It was simply _marvellous!_--People don't understand."
"Everything was ready," writes an eye-witness of the First Army.[7]
The rapidity of our advance completely surprised the enemy, some of
whose batteries were captured as they were coming into action. Pontoon
and trestle bridges were laid across the canal with lightning speed.
The engineers, coming close behind the firing line, brought up the
railways, light and heavy, as though by magic--built bridges, repaired
roads. The Intelligence Staff, in the midst of all this rapid movement
"gathered and forwarded information of the enemy's forces in front,
his divisions, his reserves, his intentions." Telephones and
telegraphs were following fast on the advance, connecting every
department, whether stationary or still on the move. News was coming
in at every moment--of advances, captures, possibilities in new
country, casualties, needs. All these were being considered and
collated by the Staff, decisions taken and orders sent out.
[7] The following paragraphs are based on the deeply interesting
account of the First Army operations of last year, written by
Captain W. Inge, Intelligence and Publicity Officer on Sir Henry
Home's Staff.
Meanwhile divisions were being relieved, billets arranged for,
transport organised along the few practicable roads. Ambulances were
coming and going. Petrol must be accessible everywhere; breakdown
gangs and repair lorries must be ready always to clear roads, and mend
bridges. And the men doing these jobs must be handled, fed, and
directed, as well as the fighting line.
Letters came and went. The men were paid. Records of every kind were
kept. New maps were made, printed, and sent round--and quickly, since
food and supplies depended on them. "One breakdown on a narrow road,
one failure of an important message over a telephone wire--and how
much may depend on it!"
"Yet thanks to intelligent and devoted work, to experience and
resource, how little in these later stages of the war has gone wrong!"
The fighting men, the Staff work, the auxiliary services of the
British Army--the long welding of war had indeed brought them by last
autumn to a wonderful efficiency. And that efficiency was never so
sharply tested as by the exchange of a stationary war for a war of
movement. The Army swept on "over new but largely devastated country,"
into unknown land, where all the problems, as compared with the long
years of trench war, were new. Yet nothing failed--"except the
astounded enemy's power of resistance."
So much from a first-hand record of the First Army's advance. It
carries me back as I summarise it to my too brief stay at
Valenciennes, and the conversations of the evening with the Army
Commander and several members of his Staff. The talk turned largely on
this point of training, Staff work, and general efficiency. There was
no boasting whatever; but one read the pride of gallant and devoted
men in the forces they had commanded. "Then we have not muddled
through?" I said, laughing, to the Army Commander. Sir Henry smiled.
"No, indeed, we have _not_ muddled through!"
And the results of this efficiency were soon seen. Take first the
attack of the First and Third Armies on this section. North of
Moeuvres the Canadians, under General Home, crossing the Canal in the
early morning of September 27th, on a narrow front, and spreading out
behind the German troops holding the Canal, by a fan-shaped manoeuvre,
brilliantly executed, which won reluctant praise from captured German
officers, pushed on for Bourlon and Cambrai. The 11th Division,
following close behind, turned northward, with our barrage from the
heavy guns, far to the west, protecting their left flank, towards the
enemy line along the Sensée, taking ground and villages as they went.
Meanwhile the front German line, pinned between our barrage behind
them and the Canal, taken in front and rear, and attacked by the 56th
Division, had nothing to do but surrender.
"The day's results," says my informant of the First Army, "were the
great Hindenburg system (in this northern section) finally broken, the
height before Cambrai captured, thousands of prisoners and great
quantities of guns taken, and our line at its furthest point 7,000
yards nearer Germany. A great triumph!"
Meanwhile in the centre--just where I have asked the reader of this
paper to stand with me in imagination on the hill-side overlooking the
Canal du Nord--General Byng's Third Army, including the Guards'
Division, forced the Canal crossings in face of heavy fire, and moving
forward towards Cambrai in the half light of dawn, took trenches and
villages from the fighting and retreating enemy. After the forward
troops were over, the engineers rushed on, bridging the Canal, under
the fire of the German guns, rapidly clearing a way for infantry and
supplies. A map issued by the Tank Corps shows that close to this
point on the Cambrai-Bapaume road six tanks were operating--among them
no doubt that agile fellow, whose tracks still show on the
hillside!--while on the whole front of the Third and First Armies
sixty-five tanks were in action. By the end of that long day 10,000
prisoners had been taken, and 200 guns, an earnest of what was to
follow.
It was on the front of the Fourth Army, however, in the section from
St. Quentin to Gouzeaucourt, that the heaviest blow was planned by the
Commander-in-Chief. Here the "exceptional strength of the enemy's
position made a prolonged bombardment necessary." So while the First
and Third Armies were advancing, on the north, with a view to
lightening the task of the Fourth Army, for forty-eight hours General
Rawlinson maintained a terrible bombardment, which drove the defenders
of the famous line underground, and cut them off from food and
supplies. And on the morning of the 29th the Fourth Army attacked.
But I have no intention of repeating in any detail the story of that
memorable day. The exploit of the 46th Division under General Boyd, in
swimming and capturing the southern section of the Canal below
Bellenglise, will long rank as one of the most amazing stories of the
war. Down the steep banks clambered the men, flung themselves into the
water, and with life-belts, and any other aid that came handy, crossed
the Canal under fire, and clambered up the opposite bank. And the
achievement is all the more welcome to British pride in British pluck,
when it is remembered that, according to the German document I have
already quoted, it was an impossible one. "The deep canal cutting from
the southern end of the canal tunnel ... with its high steep banks
constitutes a strong obstacle. _The enemy will hardly attack here._"
So writes the German officer describing the line.
But it was precisely here that "the enemy" did attack!--capturing
prisoners (4,000 of them by the end of the day, with 70 guns) and
German batteries in action, before the German Command had had time to
realise the direction of the attack.
It was not, however, at this point that the severest fighting of the
battle occurred. Across the great tunnel to the north of Bellicourt,
where the Canal passes for nearly two miles underground, ran the main
Hindenburg system, carrying it eastwards over the Canal itself, and it
was here that the fiercest resistance was put up. The two American
divisions had the post of honour and led the advance. It was a heavy
task, largely owing to the fact that it had not been possible to
master the German outpost line completely before the advance started,
and numerous small bodies of the enemy, left behind in machine-gun
posts, tunnels, and dug-outs, were able to harass it seriously for a
time. But the "Americans fought like lions"--how often I heard that
phrase from our own men in France! The American losses were no doubt
higher than would have been the case with more experienced troops,
seasoned by long fighting,--so I have understood from officers present
at the battle. It was perhaps partly because of "their eagerness to
push on" without sufficiently clearing up the ground behind them that
they lost so heavily, and that advanced elements of the two divisions
were for a time cut off. But nothing daunted these fresh and gallant
men. Their sacrifices, as Marshal Haig has recently said, addressing
General O'Ryan, who commanded the 27th Division in this fight, were
"made with a courage and devotion unsurpassed in all the dread story
of this war. The memory of our great attack on the Hindenburg line on
September 29th, 1918, in which the 27th American division, with troops
from all parts of the British Empire, took so gallant and glorious a
part, will never die, and the service then rendered by American troops
will be remembered with gratitude and admiration throughout the
British Empire."
That misty September day marks indeed a culminating moment in the
history of the Empire and the war. It took six more days of sharp
fighting to capture the last remnants of the Hindenburg line, and six
more weeks before Germany, beaten and demoralised by sea and land,
accepted the Armistice terms imposed by the Allies. But on September
29th, the war was for all practical purposes won. General Gouraud at
the time was making his brilliant advance in Champagne. The Americans
were pushing forward in the Argonne. Both movements were
indispensable; but it was the capture of this great fortified system
which really decided the war. "No attack in the history of the world,
was ever better carried out," said Marshal Foch to Mr. Ward Price, in
Paris, on April 16th last--"than the one made on the Hindenburg line
near St. Quentin and Cambrai, by the Fourth, Third and First British
Armies, on September 27th-29th. The enemy positions were most
formidable. Nothing could stop the British. They swept right over
them. It was a glorious day for British arms." It was also the climax
of two months' fighting in which French, British, and Americans had
all played to the full the part laid down for them by the history of
the preceding years, and in which it fell to the British Army to give
the final and victorious blow.
_Non nobis, Domine!--non nobis!_
It will, I think, be of use to the non-military reader if I append to
the sketch I have just given of the last phase of the British effort,
the following paragraphs written last January by an officer of the
General Staff, in response to the question indicated in the opening
sentence.
"I have been asked to say what in my opinion were the most critical
and anxious stages of the series of great successful battles opened on
the 8th August, 1918. The question is not easy, for the whole period
was one of high tension, calling for continuous and unsparing effort.
"From one point of view, the opening battle east of Amiens was
decisive, for it marked the turning point of the campaign on the
British front. Its moral effects, both on our own troops and on the
enemy, were far-reaching and give the key to the whole of the
succeeding struggle. Nothing less than a sweeping success, such as
that actually achieved, could have produced this result. The days
preceding the attack, therefore, constituted a most anxious period. On
the other hand, from the purely military point of view, our chances of
success were exceedingly good. The attack was to be delivered by fresh
troops, second to none in the world in fighting qualities, assisted by
an unprecedented concentration of mechanical aids to victory.
Preparations had been long and careful, every contingency had been
thought out, and there was every reason to expect that our attack
would be a complete surprise.
"Militarily, the more critical period was that which immediately
followed the battle when, having reached the line of the old Somme
defences of 1916, it was decided to switch the point of attack to the
area north of the Somme. On the success of this manoeuvre depended
whether the attack of the 8th August was to be a single isolated
victory comparable to the battle of Messines in June, 1917, or whether
it was to develop into something very much greater. The decision was a
grave one, and was in some sense a departure from previous practice.
The enemy was now on the alert, the troops to be employed had already
been severely tried in the earlier fighting of the year, and failure
would have called down severe criticism upon the wisdom of abandoning
so quickly the scene of our first great success.
"It was only after the first days of heavy fighting (in the battle of
Bapaume), during which progress was comparatively slow and the
situation full of anxiety, that the event proved that the step had
been wisely taken.
"Then, when the success of this bold manoeuvre had declared itself,
and the enemy had begun the first stages of his great retreat, the
next critical period arrived on the 2nd September, when the powerful
defences of the Drocourt-Quéant line were attacked and broken. The
effect of this success was to render the whole of the enemy's
positions to the south untenable and to throw him back definitely upon
the Hindenburg line.
"Undoubtedly the most critical and anxious period of the whole advance
arrived at the end of September. The culminating attacks of the 27th
and 29th of that month on the Canal du Nord and Hindenburg line
defences shattered the most formidable series of field defences that
military science has yet devised and drove the enemy into open
country. These attacks, indeed, accomplished far more than this. They
definitely broke the power of resistance of the German Armies in the
field. In the battles which followed, our troops were able to take
greater and greater risks, and on every occasion with complete
success.
"Yet again, the risk was great. If the enemy had succeeded in holding
the Hindenburg position, he would have been little, if anything, worse
off, territorially at any rate, than he had been before he began his
great adventure of the spring. It was clearly a time for him to pull
himself together and hold on at all costs.
"On the other hand and with all its difficulties, so favourable an
opportunity of securing immediate and decisive victory, by pressing
our advantage, could scarcely be expected to present itself again. The
decision was therefore taken and was justified by success.
"After this battle, our chief anxieties lay rather in the ability of
our supply system to keep pace with our Armies than in any resistance
that the enemy could offer. In the succeeding battles our troops
accomplished with comparative ease feats which earlier in the struggle
it would have been madness to attempt; and in the final battle of the
war, begun on the 4th November, the crossing of the Sambre and the
clearing of the great Mormal Forest furnished a wonderful tribute to
the complete ascendency which their earlier victories had enabled our
troops to establish over the enemy."