Chapter V: It was a definite feature of the whole plan of battle that

the combined Tank and Infantry tactics which had proved so successful in the Hamel operation, and which have been described in Chapter II., were to be employed and exploited to their utmost. Each Tank became thereby definitely associated with a specified body of Infantry, and acted during the actual battle under the immediate orders of the Commander of that body: the working rule was "one Tank, one Company."

To this was added the second working principle of "one Tank, one task," which rules meant, in their practical application, that no individual Tank was to be relied upon to serve more than one body of Infantry, nor to carry out more than one phase of the battle. Elementary as this may sound, it involved this striking advantage that, in the event of any one Tank becoming disabled, its loss would impair no portion of the battle plan other than that fraction of it to which that Tank had been allotted.

Thus, the whole of the Infantry operating in Phases B and C of the battle had each their own adequate equipment of Tanks, which would be certain to be available to them, even if the whole of the Tanks employed during Phase A had been knocked out. At the same time clear orders were issued, and due arrangements were made, that all Tanks which survived Phase A, and whose crews were not by then too exhausted, were to rally (during the 100 minutes' pause on the green line) in order to co-operate in the succeeding phases of the fight.

There was still another Unit, coming under the jurisdiction of the Tank Corps, which proved of wonderful utility to me, and which deserved quite special mention. This was the 17th Armoured Car Battalion, organized into two companies of eight cars each. Each car carried one forward and one rear Hotchkiss gun. It was heavily armoured, and the crew operating the guns, as also the car driver, were protected from all except direct hits by Artillery. The cars had a speed of 20 miles per hour, either forwards or backwards. The Battalion was under the command of Lieut.-Colonel E. J. Carter, an officer of the British Cavalry. I allotted 12 cars to the use of the 5th Australian Division, under Major-General Hobbs, who would be likely to find specially useful employment for them, in scouring the network of roads beyond his final objective; and retained four cars in Corps reserve for a special reconnaissance enterprise.

Full of promise of usefulness as were the speed and armament of these cars, they suffered from one serious disability. Their top hamper was so heavy compared to their light chassis that they could not be relied upon to travel without premature breakdown across country, or indeed on anything but moderately good roads. Now, such roads were certainly available, as was evident from aeroplane photographs, in the enemy's back country, after a zone for a mile or two immediately behind his front line was passed; but all the subsidiary roads in that zone had been practically obliterated by shell-craters, and even the great main road from Villers-Bretonneux to Saint Quentin, which is a Roman Road and substantially constructed throughout, was known to have been cut up and traversed by numerous trenches both on our side and on the enemy's side of "No Man's Land." There was also every expectation that the few remaining trees which flanked this great road would be felled by our bombardment, and some of them would surely fall across and obstruct the roadway.

That road was, however, the only possible outlet into enemy country for the armoured cars, and I resolved upon a special programme, and the allotment of a special body of troops for its execution. The object was to ensure that the cars could be taken across the impracticable and obstructed stretch of roadway already described, and launched at the enemy at its eastern extremity, at the earliest possible moment of time. Then, before the numerous enemy Corps and Divisional Headquarters and all their rear organization had time to get clear intelligence of what was happening at the front, or to recover from the first shock of surprise, these Armoured Cars would fall upon them, and, travelling hither and thither at great speed, would spread death, destruction and confusion in all directions.

A whole Battalion of Pioneers, and detachments of other technical troops, with an adequate amount of road-repairing material, were got ready, under the direct orders of my Chief Engineer, to carry out this special task. All trenches in that portion of the road lying within our own zone of occupation were bridged or filled in and all obstructions cleared away before the day of the battle. But as to the more distant stretch of the road, still in the hands of the enemy, elaborate preparations were made, by a careful and detailed distribution of tasks to small gangs of men, and by a fully worked-out time-table. The plan was that from the moment of the opening of the battle, this road repair work was to commence, and its advance was to synchronize with the advance of the Artillery barrage and Infantry skirmishing line.

A pilot armoured car was to follow the working gangs in order to test the sufficiency of the repair work, and arrangements were made for sending back signals to the remainder of the cars, lying waiting in readiness in the shelter of Villers-Bretonneux. It was planned that the first two miles of road would, by these means, be cleared and repaired to a sufficient width, within four hours after the opening of the battle.

I am tempted to anticipate the narrative of the battle by saying that the whole plan worked out with complete success to the last detail. The cars got through punctually to time, and the story of their subsequent adventures, as told later, reads like a romance. As indicating the importance which I attached to this little enterprise, which in magnitude was quite a small "side-show," but which in its results had the most far-reaching consequence, I reproduce below the full text (omitting merely formal portions) of one of the several orders issued by me on this subject:

Australian Corps,
7th August, 1918.

1. The detachment of the 17th Armoured Car Battalion held in Corps
Reserve (2 sections each of 2 cars), will be employed on the
special duty of long distance reconnaissance on "Z" day.

2. These sections will be sent forward under the orders of the
C.O., 17th Armoured Car Battalion, passing the green line as soon
as practicable after Zero plus four hours, and proceeding eastward,
following the lifts of our Heavy Artillery bombardment, so as to
pass the blue line at or after Zero plus five hours.

3. The area to be reconnoitred lies in the bend of the Somme, north
of the Villers-Bretonneux--Chaulnes Railway; but the old Somme
battlefield lying N.E. of Chaulnes need not be entered.

4. Information is required as to presence, distribution and
movement of enemy supporting and reserve troops, and his defensive
organizations within this area.

5. While the primary function of this detachment is to reconnoitre
and not to fight, except defensively, advantage should be taken of
every opportunity to damage the enemy's telephonic and telegraphic
communications.

6. The following information as to enemy organizations is thought
to be reliable:

Vauvillers Billets and Detraining point.
Proyart Divisional H.Q. and billets.
Chuignolles Divisional H.Q. and billets.
Framerville Corps H.Q.
Rainecourt Billets.
Cappy Aerodrome and dumps.
Foucaucourt Corps H.Q., dump, billets.
Chaulnes Important railway junction.
Ommiécourt Dumps.
Fontaine Aerodrome, Div. H.Q. and dump.

The Heavy Artillery of the Corps was divided, for this battle as normally, into two distinct groups, of which the one, or Bombardment Group, was to devote its energies to destructive attack, throughout the course of the battle, upon known enemy centres of resistance, suspected Headquarters, and telephone or telegraph exchanges, villages believed to be housing support and reserve troops, railway junctions and the like. The selection of all such targets depended upon a judicious choice of many tempting objectives disclosed by the very comprehensive records of the highly efficient Intelligence Officers belonging to my Heavy Artillery Headquarters. After that selection was made, all that remained was to draw up a time-table for the action of all bombardment guns which would ensure that they would lift off any given target just before our own Infantry would be likely to reach it, and then to apply their fire to a more distant locality.

The second group of Heavy Guns was known as the Counter-battery Group, and was at all times under the direction of a special staff, especially skilled in all the scientific means at our disposal for determining the position and distribution of the enemy's Artillery, and in the methods and artifices for silencing or totally destroying it. Just as it was the special rôle of the Tanks to deal with the enemy machine guns, so it was the special rôle of our Counter-battery Artillery to deal with the enemy's field and heavy guns and howitzers. These--the guns and the machine guns--were the only things that troubled us; because, for the German soldier individually, our Australian infantryman is and always has been more than a match.

Very special care was, therefore, devoted to the whole of the arrangements, first for carefully ascertaining beforehand the actual or probable position of every enemy gun that could be brought to bear on our Infantry, and then for allocating as many heavy guns as could be spared, each with a task appropriate to its range and hitting-power, to the destruction or suppression of the selected target. For it served the immediate purpose of eliminating the causes of molestation to our advancing Infantry equally well, whether the enemy gun was merely silenced by a sustained fire of shrapnel or high explosives which drove off the gun detachment, or by a flood of gas which compelled them to put on their gas masks, or whether it was actually destroyed by a direct hit and rendered permanently useless.

The days before the battle were of supreme interest in this particular aspect. Each day I visited the Counter-battery Staff Officer, in his modest shanty, hidden away in the interior of a leafy wood, where in constant touch, by telephone, with all balloons, observers and sound-ranging stations, and surrounded by an imposing array of maps, studded with pins of many shapes and colours, he made his daily report to me of the enemy gun positions definitely identified or located, or found to have been vacated. And here again there was an opportunity for the display of a modest little stratagem. Having suspected or verified the fact that the enemy had altered the location of any given battery, leaving the empty gun pits as a tempting bait to us, fruitlessly to expend our energies and ammunition upon them--it would have been the worst of folly to prove to him that he had failed to fool us, by engaging his battery in its new position.

On the contrary, we deliberately allowed ourselves to be fooled; and for several days before the great battle we intentionally committed the stupid error of methodically engaging all his empty gun positions. No doubt the German gunners laughed consumedly as they watched, from a safe distance, our wasted efforts; but they did not, doubtless, laugh quite so heartily when at dawn on the great day, the whole weight of our attack from over a hundred of my heaviest Counter-battery guns fells upon them in the new positions, which they believed that we had failed to detect.

The Intelligence Service of the Corps was an extensive and highly organized department, whose jurisdiction extended throughout all the Divisions, Brigades and Battalions. Its routine work comprised the collection and collation of the daily flow of information from a large staff of observers in the forward zone, from the interrogation of prisoners, from the examination of documents and maps, and from neighbouring Corps and Armies. Before and during battle, however, a greatly added burden fell upon the shoulders of the Intelligence Staff.

Closely associated with this branch of the Staff work were two activities of quite special interest. The Australian Corps organized a Topographical Section, manned by expert draftsmen and lithographers, who compiled and printed all the maps required throughout the whole Corps, and it was their business to keep all battle maps, barrage maps and topographical data recorded and corrected up to date. This alone proved a heavy task when pace had to be kept with a rapid advance. At such times the maps prepared on one day became obsolete two or three days later.

The issue of such maps was not confined to Commanders and Staffs. For all important operations, large numbers of handy sectional maps were struck off, so that they could be placed in the hands even of the subordinate officers and non-commissioned officers. These maps not only enabled the most junior leaders to study their objectives and tasks in detail before every battle, but also became a convenient vehicle for sending back reports as to the positions reached or occupied by front-line troops or detached parties. On occasions as many as five thousand of such maps would be struck off for the use of the troops, in a single operation.

There was also a branch of the Intelligence Staff attached to the No. 3 Australian Air Squadron. Its special business was to print and distribute large numbers of photographs, both vertical and oblique, taken from the air over the territory to be captured--showing trenches, wire, roads, hedges and many other features of paramount interest to the troops. Thousands of such photographs were distributed before every battle.

The important considerations, in regard both to maps and photographs, were that on the one hand, they were of priceless value to all who understood how to read and use them, and on the other hand, the event proved that their issue was in no sense labour in vain, for the keen interest taken, even by the private soldiers, in these facilities contributed powerfully to the success and precision with which all battle orders were carried out, and this more than repaid us for the additional trouble involved. It was inspiriting to me to see, on the eve of every great battle, as I made my round of the troops, numerous small groups of men gathered around their sergeant or corporal, eagerly discussing these maps and the photographs and the things they disclosed, the lie of the land, the wire, the trenches, the probable machine-gun posts, the dug-outs and the suspected enemy strong points.

My account of the details prepared for the battle of August 8th is not nearly complete; but the demands of space forbid any more informative reference to numerous other essential ingredients of the plan than a mere recital of some of them. Thus, for example, it was necessary to decide the action of all Machine Guns, both those used collectively under Corps control, and those left to be handled by the Divisions; the employment of Smoke Tactics, by the use of smoke screens created both by mortars from the ground and by phosphorus bombs dropped from the air; the use to be made of all the technical troops (Engineers and Pioneers) in bridging, road and railway repairs and field fortifications; the arrangements for the medical evacuation of the wounded, and for the collection and safe-keeping of the anticipated haul of prisoners, the synchronization of watches throughout the whole command, so that action should occur punctually at a common clock time; and last, but not least, the establishment of the machinery of liaison internally between all the numerous formations of the Australian Corps, and also externally with my flank Corps, the Canadians, under Currie, on my right, and the British Third Corps, under Butler, on my left.

Such, in outline, were my battle plans and my preparations for what I hoped would prove an operation of decisive influence upon the future of the campaign. The immediate results, which could be estimated on the spot and at the time, and the admissions of Ludendorff, which came to light only many months afterwards, combine to show that I was not mistaken.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] This was in Flanders and Belgium.

[12] The secret was, indeed, so well kept, and the "camouflage" stories circulated proved so effective, that the King of the Belgians forwarded a strong protest to Marshal Foch because the Canadians were about to deliver an attack in his country, without his having been consulted or made aware of the plans; and the Canadian Headquarters in London complained to the War Office that the Canadian Forces were being divided, and were being sent by detachments to different parts of the front, instead of being always kept together as the Canadian Government desired. It is said that even Mr. Lloyd George knew nothing of the intention to attack until late on the day before the battle.

[13] The weight of supplies of all kinds exceeded 10,000 tons.

[14] See Chapter XIII.