_Monday, March 25._--The enemy fought fiercely yesterday to gain a
crossing over the Somme south of Péronne. He flung across a pontoon
bridge and rafts, and his men tried to cross, but the British field
artillery, firing at short range, smashed up many of these bridges and
killed his engineers and infantry. Gallant counterattacks by some of the
British flung him back across the river at several points, but elsewhere
he held his crossing long enough to put over some of his forces.
All the fighting in this part of the country since March 21 has been a
continuous battle, in which the British divisions holding the front line
below Gouzeaucourt to Maissemy have shown magnificent powers of
endurance, as indeed have all the others engaged, and have only yielded
ground under pressure of overwhelming numbers and great gunfire.
There was a bloody struggle in some old chalk quarries, where many
German dead now lie, and after the enemy had come some way forward ten
British tanks drove into him and shattered some of his battalions with
their machine-gun fire, dispersing groups of his advancing units. The
tanks manoeuvred about, firing continually on each flank and causing
terror among the enemy's foremost assault troops. The British fought a
number of rearguard actions and made many counterattacks in the
neighborhood of Roisel, and fell back to the line of the Somme only when
new masses of Germans passed through those battalions which they had met
and beaten.