The St. Quentin Canal which was crossed by the 46th in life-belts.
British Official PhotographThe St. Quentin Canal which was crossed by the 46th in life-belts.
Meanwhile, the strategic insight of Marshal Foch, who assumed complete control of the Allied Armies in France and Belgium on March 26th, combined with the experienced and cool-headed leadership of the British Commander-in-Chief, refused to dissipate the French reserves, so important to the future course of the war, in any small or piecemeal reinforcement of the British lines. The risks of the great moment had to be taken, and both the French and British Commanders had complete faith in the capacity of the British Army to meet them. And when all is said, when our grave losses in casualties, prisoners, and guns are fully admitted, what was the general result? The Germans had failed to gain either of their real objectives:—either the Channel ports, or the division of the British Armies from the French. They wore themselves out against a line which recoiled indeed but never broke, and was all the time filling up and strengthening from behind. The losses inflicted on their immense reserves reacted on all the subsequent fighting of the year, both on the Aisne and the Marne. And when the British Armies had brought the huge attack to a standstill—which for the centre and south of our line had been already attained ten days after the storm broke—and knew the worst that had happened or could happen to them; when the Australians had recaptured Villers-Bretonneux; when the weeks passed and the offensive ceased; when all gaps in our ranks were filled by the rush of reinforcements from home, and the American Army poured steadily across the Atlantic, the tension and peril of the spring passed steadily into the confident strength and—expectation of the summer. The British Army had held against an attack which could never be repeated, and the future was with the Allies.
Let us remember that at no time in our fighting withdrawal, either on the Somme or on the Lys, was there "anything approaching a break-down of command, or a failure in morale." So the Field Marshal. On the other hand, all over the vast battle-field—in every part of the hard "waiting game" which for a time the British Armies were called to play, men did the most impossible and heroic things. Gun detachments held their posts till every man was killed or wounded; infantry who had neither rest nor sleep for days together, fought "back to back in the trenches, shooting both to front and rear." Occasional confusion, even local panic, occasional loss of communication and misunderstanding of orders, occasional incompetence and stupidity there must be in such a vast backward sweep of battle, but skill, purpose, superb bravery were never lacking in any portion of the field; and the Germancommuniquésexultantly announcing the "total defeat of the British Armies" may be compared,mutatis mutandis, with the reports from German Headquarters just before the first battle of the Marne.
"The defeat of the English is complete," said the German High Command in the latter days of August, 1914. "The English Army is retreating in the most complete disorder.... The British have been completely defeated to the north of St. Quentin"—and so on. And yet a week later, as General Maurice, with much fresh evidence, has lately shown, the Army thus disposed of on paper had rejoicingly turned upon von Kluck, and was playing a vital part in the great victory of the Marne. So last spring, the losses and withdrawals of a vaster defensive action, coupled with the stubborn and tenacious hold of the British Army, last March and April, were the inevitable and heroic prelude to the victorious recoil of August, and the final battles of the war. Inevitable, because no forethought or exertion on the British side could have averted the German onslaught, determined as it was by the breakdown of the whole Eastern front of the war, and the letting loose upon the Western front of immense forces previously held by the Russian armies. These forces, after the Russiandébâcle, were released against us, week by week, till in March the balance of numbers, which was almost even in January, had risen on the German side to a superiority of 150,000 bayonets! The dispatch of divisions to Italy; the recall of men to the shipyards and the mines to meet the submarine danger; the heavy fighting in the Salient and at Cambrai in the latter half of 1917; the lack of time for training new levies, owing to our depleted line and reserves:—all these causes contributed to sharpen the peril in which England stood.[5]But it is in such straits as these that our race shows its quality.
And in this fighting, for the first time in British history, and in the history of Europe, Americans stood side by side in battle with British and French. "In the battle of March and April," says Sir Douglas Haig, "American and British troops have fought shoulder to shoulder in the same trenches, and have shared together in the satisfaction of beating off German attacks. All ranks of the British Army look forward to the day when the rapidly growing strength of the American Army will allow American and British soldiersto co-operate in offensive action."
That day came without much delay. It carried the British Army to Mons, and the young American Army to Sedan.
Looking out from the Vimy Ridge six weeks ago, and driving thence through Arras across the Drocourt-Quéant line to Douai and Valenciennes, I was in the very heart of that triumphant stand of the Third and First Armies round Arras which really determined the fate of the German attack.
The Vimy Ridge from the west is a stiffish climb. On the east also it drops steeply above Petit Vimy and Vimy, while on the south and south-east it rises so imperceptibly from the Arras road that the legend which describes the Commander-in-Chief, approaching it from that side, as asking of the officers assembled to meet him after the victory—"And where is this ridge that you say you have taken?" seems almost a reasonable tale. But to east and west there is no doubt about it. One climbs up the side overlooking Ablain St. Nazaire through shell-holes and blurred trenches, over snags of wire, and round the edges of craters, till on the top one takes breath on the wide plateau where stands the Canadian monument to those who fell in the glorious fight of April 9th, 1917, and whence the eye sweeps that wide northern and eastern plain, towards Lille on the one side and Douai on the other, which to our war-beaten and weary soldiers, looking out upon it when the ridge at last was theirs, was almost as new and strange a world as the Pacific was to its first European beholders.
Westwards across the valley whence our troops stormed the hill, rises the Bouvigny Wood, and the long, blood-stained ridge of Notre Dame de Lorette, where I stood just before the battle, in 1917. To the north we are looking through the horizon shadows to La Bassée, Bailleul, and the Salient. Immediately below the hill, in the same direction, lie the ruin heaps of Lens, and of the mining towns surrounding it; while behind us the ground slopes south and south-east to Arras and the Scarpe.
It is a tremendous position. That even the merest outsider can see. In old days the hill must have been a pleasant rambling ground for the tired workers of the coal-mining districts. Then the war-blast at its fiercest passed over it. To-day in its renewed solitude, its sacred peace, it represents one of the master points of the war, bought and held by a sacrifice of life and youth, the thought of which holds one's heart in grip, as one stands there, trying to gather in the meaning of the scene. Not one short year ago it was in the very centre of the struggle. If Arras and Vimy had not held, things would have been grave indeed. Had they been captured, says the official report of the Third Army, "our main lateral communications—Amiens—Doullens—St. Pol—St. Omer—would have been seriously threatened if not cut." The Germans were determined to have them, and they fought for them with a desperate courage. Three assault divisions were to have carried the Vimy Ridge, while other divisions were to have captured Arras and the line of the Scarpe. The attack was carried out with the greatest fierceness, men marching shoulder to shoulder into the furnace of battle. But this time there was no fog to shield them, or to blind the British guns. The enemy losses were appalling, and after one day's fighting, in spite of the more northerly attacks on our line still to come, the German hopes ofvictorywere in the dust, and—as we now know—for ever.
That is what Vimy means—what Arras means—in the fighting of last year. We ponder it as we drive through the wrecked beauty of Arras and out on to the Douai road on our way to Valenciennes. We passed slowly along the road to the east of Arras, honeycombed still with dug-outs, and gun emplacements, and past trenches and wire fields, till suddenly a mere sign-board, nothing more—"Gavrelle!"—shows us that we are approaching the famous Drocourt-Quéant switch of the Hindenburg line, which the Canadians and the 17th British Corps, under Sir Henry Horne, stormed and took in September of last year. Presently, on either side of the road as we drive slowly eastward, a wilderness of trenches runs north and south. With what confident hope the Germans dug and fortified and elaborated them years ago!—with what contempt of death and danger our men carried them not six months since! And now not a sign of life anywhere—nothing but groups of white crosses here and there, emerging from the falling dusk, and thedébrisof battle along the road.
A weary way to Douai, over the worst road we have struck yet, and a weary way beyond it to Denain and Valenciennes. Darkness falls and hides the monotonous scene of ruin, which indeed begins to change as we approach Valenciennes, the Headquarters of the First Army. And at last, a bright fire in an old room piled with books and papers, a kind welcoming from the officer reigning over it, and the pleasant careworn face of an elderly lady with whom we are billeted.
Best of all, a message from the Army Commander, Sir Henry Horne, with whom we had made friends in 1917, just before the capture of the Vimy Ridge, in which the First Army played so brilliant a part.
We hastily change our travel gear, a car comes for us, and soon we find ourselves at the General's table in the midst of an easy flow of pleasant talk.
What is it that makes the special charm of the distinguished soldier, as compared with other distinguished men?
Simplicity, I suppose, and truth. The realities of war leave small room for any kind of pose. A high degree, also, of personal stoicism easily felt but not obtruded; and towards weak and small things—women and children—a natural softness and tenderness of feeling, as though a man who has upon him such stern responsibilities of life and death must needs grasp at their opposites, when and how he can; keen intelligence,bien entendu, modesty, courtesy; a habit of brevity; a boy's love of fun: with some such list of characteristics I find myself trying to answer my own question. They are at least conspicuous in many leaders of the Allied Armies.
"Why don't youboomyour Generals?" said an American diplomatist to me some eight months ago. "Your public at home knows far too little about them individually. But the personal popularity of the military leader in such a national war as this is a military asset."
I believe I entirely agree with the speaker! But it is not the British military way, and the unwritten laws of the Service stand firm. So let me only remind you that General Horne led the artillery at Mons; that he has commanded the First Army since September, 1916; that, in conjunction with Sir Julian Byng, he carried the Vimy Ridge in 1917, and held the left at Arras in 1918; and, finally, that he was the northernmost of the three Army Commanders who stormed the Hindenburg line last September.
It was in his study and listening to the explanations he gave me, so clearly and kindly, of the Staff maps that lay before us, that I first realised with anything like sufficient sharpness the meaning of those words we have all repeated so often without understanding them—"the capture of the Hindenburg line."
What was the Hindenburg line?
CHAPTER IIITANKS 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—themen, 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 meansurprise—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 themen!—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 greatarpeggio—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 themoraleof both German and British troops. The Germans could hardly believe their defeat; the British exultantly knew that their hour had come.
Inthe 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'smoralewas 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.
Inthe 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 decliningmorale, 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]
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, themoraleof 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 simplymarvellous!—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.
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 havenotmuddled 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."