Chapter XVIII

THE GREAT ADVANCE: FROM BUCQUOY TO BAPAUME.

I.

I can now take up again my own thread in the story and follow it through to the end.

In the first week of July I returned from Le Tréport to Enguinegatte, where, as I have said, I found all the company but a few headquarters’ details already gone back to our old camp and billets at Bouvigny. I followed the next day. Our tanks had trekked across country to Central Workshops at Erin to be handed in. B and C Companies, in Noulette Wood, were waiting to entrain for the same purpose; and then the whole personnel of the battalion was going to Merlimont for Hotchkiss and driving courses preparatory to drawing its quota of Mark V.’s. The 11th Battalion was already there, and the 12th, which was to follow, was to become a light battalion with Whippets. Such, at least, were the arrangements. In practice, however, things fell out very differently.

On 18th July I came home on leave. Returning on 1st August, I caught the influenza and a particularly unpleasant bombing raid at Boulogne, and from there proceeded to Merlimont, where I expected to find the battalion. I found however, only A Company. B and C had drawn their old tanks again, and returned to Noulette Wood, where they were engaged in some mysterious business which turned out to be part of a scheme to delude the enemy into the expectation of an attack on the Lens front. At Merlimont I went straight to bed in a hut where I was deluged with sand every time the door opened, and remaining there three days saw little or nothing of the place--in which I do not think I lost much. The day after I began to totter about again in that gentle melancholy which influenza induces, there came the usual twenty-four hours’ notice to move. All our hopes, it appeared, had come to nothing. Owing to Labour troubles at home--the old story--and in view of the certain need of heavy replacements after the battle of Amiens (then just beginning), the supply of Mark V.’s and Whippets was insufficient to equip the whole Tank Corps. In our brigade, therefore, while the 11th Battalion was to draw its forty-two machines of the new type and be rushed forthwith to the Somme on the fruitless errand I have mentioned, the 12th Battalion and ourselves were to be re-equipped with our old Mark IV.’s before leaving for some unknown destination. The 12th, which had been training as a Whippet battalion, was particularly annoyed. In our case, I think we came in the end to regard this misfortune as at least a compliment. If any battalion could make the Mark IV. capable in the field of rivalling its more powerful and handy successor it was “G”; and in the end, both the 12th and ourselves, I think, not only rivalled but excelled the performances of most of the Mark V. battalions. The amount of work we got out of our obsolete machines was astonishing. Some of them, almost falling to pieces for want of repair, were still pressing on with the 4th Army, at the especial request of the Guards and other infantry, until just before the Armistice, when they had covered, including battles and all the gambits involved by treks and approach-marches during the greatest advance since 1914, well upwards of 100 miles.

We left Merlimont for the Bermicourt area by lorry on 7th August, and were billeted in Blangy, next door to Erin, on the Ternoise. The officers of the company occupied a couple of dormitories in the most depressing institution imaginable--a huge dilapidated religious hostel for the feeble-minded. Very mercifully there were only a few of these unfortunates left at the time, mostly old men and women, with two or three nuns who looked after the establishment; but I know of no place more chilling and uncomfortable as a residence. We were here for a week. While the Tank commanders and crews were away at Erin every day, receiving their Mark IV.’s and equipment, there was little for me to do. I took a few runners in map-reading classes, drew from the M.T. workshops at Auchy a new combination Douglas and side-car to replace my old one, which somebody had smashed up in my absence, and paid the usual visits to Hesdin, a charming little town temporarily spoilt by the British Army in general and the Tank Corps in particular. I also visited once or twice the field of Agincourt, which lies on the hills above the Ternoise. The country has changed very little, so far as one can judge, since Henry V.’s insignificant army crossed the river near Erin, climbed the steep ridge beyond, and stood at bay on the tiny battlefield. The villages of Azincourt (as it is spelt) and Tramecourt, between which the French knights were killed in thousands, and that of Maisoncelles, where Henry established his headquarters on the night before the battle, still lie invisible in their trees just as they were hidden 500 years ago. The few fields which separate them are tilled now as they were tilled then; and only a road, some iron palings, and a signpost need to be obliterated to re-endue that fragment of landscape with the air and spirit of the fifteenth century. It was an odd contrast (if one may acknowledge such obvious reflections) to the vast tormented battlefields to which we were returning.

The workshops at Erin (which would have startled Henry V.) were now working full blast in consequence of the Somme battle. Stray crews of almost every unit in the Tank Corps were there, drawing new or repaired machines. A party of the 15th Battalion, just blooded at Proyart and Framerville, and slightly above themselves in consequence, descended upon our effete heads in the madhouse one evening. Our own orders to move, couched in the usual cryptic form reminiscent of a dime novel, reached us on the afternoon of 14th August. The message began in words like these--“14 crows entrain Birmingham 2 P.M. 15th detrain Dublin 10 P.M. ...” Decoded into sense, this meant that the company would leave Erin next day for Saulty Station, on the Arras-Doullens road. I had to find the 1st Brigade advanced headquarters at Sarton, near Doullens, and learn there the destination of the tanks. Having seen the latter on their trucks at Erin, I pushed off on my bicycle on the afternoon of the 15th with Lishman, the company equipment officer, in the side-car. We ran the brigade to earth in a dilapidated house at Sarton about five o’clock, discovered that the tanks were to lie that night in Bazèque Wood, two miles from Saulty, and went on immediately to survey the route between the two places. We found the wood full of dug-outs, which promised some shelter for the night, and found also a branch of the invaluable 6th Corps Club in marquees at Bavincourt, near by, where I ordered dinner. Owing to various accidents, however, we were not free to attend this very necessary function until 9.30, and with the tank train due in at ten we did not dare to leave the station for so long. The train, of course, chose to be abominably late. We sat and dozed and hungered in the R.T.O.’s office until long after midnight; and it was daylight before we had all the tanks camouflaged in the wood and could begin to think of sleep.

B and C Companies had already arrived at similar hiding-places in the neighbourhood. The following night, that of the 16th, the whole battalion, with 42 tanks, moved on to Bienvillers-au-Bois, where there was a company of the 3rd Battalion’s Whippets. Battalion headquarters joined us next day and took over our most comfortable billets--which were very primitive at the best. Bienvillers was a half-ruined and wholly deserted village about four miles from our front line at Bucquoy, with which place it was connected by a direct road through Hannescamps and Essarts. It was surrounded by orchards in full leaf, in which the tanks were hidden, and where there were also a number of 60-pounder guns installed for the coming offensive. The country to the eastward was good, rolling, chalk land, forming a series of low ridges between Bienvillers and Bapaume. Before the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in the spring of 1917, the front trenches had run between Hannescamps and Essarts, both of which were entirely ruined. The present front line, so far as it concerned us, now ran from north to south as follows: east of Ayette, west of Ablainzevelle, through Bucquoy, east of Puisieux-au-Mont, and so to Miraumont on the Ancre, the enemy having just abandoned (on 15th August) the small salient he had held in front of Puisieux and Serre. Viewed from the high ground at Essarts, the landscape before us was divided with a curious exactness into two kinds. North of a line drawn between Bucquoy and Puisieux, although wasted, desert, and seamed with trenches, it still bore some resemblance to a state of nature. Fragmentary houses were erect in the villages, and the trees which invariably surround the latter in north-east France seemed at a distance to be in fair preservation. But south of the line the track of a hurricane--the first battle of the Somme--had sheared everything away. Trees, houses, the very sites of villages and farms, had vanished in a wholesale annihilation; and the country westward to Bapaume and southward to the Somme was one vast nondescript expanse of ruin, broken only by a few stumps or a cloud of dust. This obliterated area determined, so far as tanks were concerned, the front of the new attack, interposing a wide gap between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Tank Brigades, working with the 3rd Army to the north, and the 4th and 5th Brigades which were to come into action again with the 4th Army a day or two later. The time was past when tanks were thrust in, willy-nilly, over any kind of _terrain_.

The 3rd Army’s attack, to be launched on 21st August, was to extend from Moyenneville to the Ancre--a frontage of 17,000 yards. The first objective was the line of the Arras-Albert railway, which ran from Moyenneville through Achiet-le-Grand to Miraumont. On the 22nd the left of the 4th Army was to come into line between the Ancre and the Somme, while on the 23rd, south of the latter, the Australians would renew their advance, so that the offensive would become continuous from Boyelles to the Amiens-St Quentin road. The battle of Bapaume, as it is convenient to call the northern part of the combined operation, was of particular interest in that it brought us against a new system of defence adopted by the Germans--or rather an old system, tried with success at Ypres, now revived in greatly altered circumstances. The idea was defence in depth, the enemy’s front positions as far back as the Arras-Albert railway being held very thinly, chiefly by machine-gunners with a number of scattered and camouflaged field-guns for anti-tank purposes. Behind the railway were his battery positions and his main line of resistance. The main object of this arrangement was to hamper the tank attack, the first phase of which would be delivered as it were in the air, while the German batteries, instead of being overrun at the start, as happened on the 8th August, would be waiting 5000 yards in rear to deal with the second phase, which must always be less coherent owing to loss of tanks, accidents to infantry, and the general confusion that ensues once a battle has begun. On 21st August this defence in depth caused us undoubtedly a good deal of anxiety and loss; but such a method can never be popular with that minority of the defending troops which has to be sacrificed as a matter of course in the advanced positions, and this disadvantage in the end outweighed its merits. It was found before long that the German soldier, whose _moral_ was deteriorating week by week, surrendered so freely when left without artillery support far in front of the main defence line that the whole purpose of the scheme was vitiated.

The Tank Brigades had been thoroughly reshuffled before the battle. The 2nd Brigade, on the left of the 3rd Army, consisted now of the 12th and 15th Heavy Battalions and the 6th Light Battalion (Whippets). The 3rd Brigade, in reserve, had the 9th, 11th, and 14th Heavy Battalions. The 1st Brigade in the centre was made up of the 7th and 10th Heavy Battalions, the 3rd Light Battalion, and the 17th Armoured Car Battalion. “In consequence of the enemy’s new system of defence and the varying powers of the three marks of machines used by the 1st and 2nd Tank Brigades, tanks were disposed in echelons as follows:--

1. Two battalions of Mark IV. tanks (7th and 12th) to operate as
far as the second objective.

2. One battalion of Mark V. and one of Mark V. Star machines
(10th and 15th) to operate against the second objective and
proceed as far as the Albert-Arras railways.

3. Two battalions of Whippets and one of armoured cars to operate
beyond the railway.”[38]

As no such advance as that of 8th August was contemplated, the railway being the final objective for the first day, this employment of the Whippets and armoured cars seems to have been a mistake. There was little point in their disorganising the enemy’s forces in an area over which we had no intention of advancing until the 23rd; and, on the other hand, their appearance, unsupported, beyond the railway, would put them at the mercy of the German batteries, by that time fully prepared. And, in fact, a company of the 3rd Battalion lost most of its tanks around Achiet-le-Petit (together with a number of armoured cars) before even the railway was reached.

There was very little time for reconnaissance before the attack. It was, of course, to be another surprise, based on tanks, but the battalion commanders of the latter were only informed of the details on the 18th. The 6th Corps on the left, with the 2nd Tank Brigade, was to capture Moyenneville and Courcelles and the line of the railway beyond. The 4th Corps, in the centre, with the 1st Tank Brigade, had to carry first the villages of Ablainzevelle and Bucquoy, then Logeast Wood and the German second line to Achiet-le-Petit, and thirdly, Achiet-le-Grand and the railway. The 5th Corps, on the right, was advancing without tanks along the edge of the obliterated area against the Dove Cot at Beauregard and the village of Beaucourt. The 7th Battalion was primarily interested in Bucquoy and Ablainzevelle. B and C Companies were to capture the former, A Company the latter, after which one section from each company was to push on with the Mark V.’s of the 10th Battalion as far as Logeast Wood and Achiet-le-Petit. Bucquoy was a large village shaped like a badly drawn cross, one stroke of which ran up the Ayette road, parallel to our front, while the other crossed it at right angles along the road from Bienvillers and Hannescamps to Achiet-le-Petit. The opposing outposts were both in the village. Ablainzevelle, a more compact and much smaller place, lay 1000 yards to the north-east, just beyond the Ayette road. The infantry with whom we were co-operating in this first phase were two brigades of the 37th Division, in which I had served in the ranks in the early days of the war. By a coincidence, my old unit, the 10th Royal Fusiliers, which I had not seen since June 1915, was to take Ablainzevelle with A Company’s tanks. In spite of the fact that the new German tactics of defence in depth presupposed the holding of both these villages very lightly, the infantry were extremely nervous about them. The 111th Brigade would have it that Ablainzevelle was a warren of dug-outs and tunnels and full of men. Personally, I do not believe there were fifty Germans in the place. In case, however, it proved to be a second Flesquières, six tanks (all we could get into it comfortably) were to rush it from three sides, the other eight machines of the company devoting themselves to the trenches and alleged strong-points to the north and south. I spent a part of the 18th and 19th reconnoitring Ablainzevelle from our forward lines along the Ayette road, and on the first day the Major and I, having passed in front of our outposts by mistake, found ourselves in the ditch beside the road which led into the village from Bucquoy, and within 100 yards of the nearest house. We could see straight up the road into the middle of the village, which appeared to be as deserted and peaceful as any one could wish. There were Germans hidden somewhere in the ruins, but I am sure that if it had been desirable our people could have walked over any time after dark and taken the place with very little trouble. The same applied to Bucquoy and all similar advanced posts under the new German scheme of defence.

During the days before the attack the weather held gloriously fine with hot sunny days and moonlit nights, and the front was very quiet indeed. On the evening of the 19th, about dusk, we began to get the tanks of A Company out of their orchard. By midnight all were well on their way to the lying-up points we had selected. These were in the shallow valley which runs north and south between Bucquoy and the high ground about Essarts, and on the average were less than 2000 yards behind the front line. Wright’s section, the farthest forward of all, was to lie up in a sunken road which ran into the northern end of Bucquoy, M’Chlery’s behind a bank alongside the road from Essarts to Ayette, and Custance’s under a row of trees near Quesnoy Farm, behind M’Chlery. Except for Custance’s row of trees there was no real cover whatever in this neighbourhood beyond a few banks and sunken roads. From Essarts to Bucquoy the ground was a trough of grass-land where once fields had been. Besides our company, B and C were also to collect in the valley, so that forty-two tanks would be lying in the open a mile from the German outposts throughout Y-day. Behind us, over the Essarts Ridge, was the 10th Battalion, whose Mark V.’s would move up at zero. The 12th and 15th Battalions on our left had the extensive shade of Adinfer Wood for concealment. Tanks, however, if hidden from direct observation and properly camouflaged, are as safe, or safer, in the open than in some conspicuous mass of timber. They are invisible from the air and extraordinarily difficult to locate even from close quarters on the ground, as was proved when the brigade Intelligence Officer, who knew the approximate positions of all our sections, could only find eight tanks out of the forty-two. By 2 A.M. our three sections were disposed of in their hiding-places without any disturbance from the enemy or trouble from the tanks. Having seen them camouflaged and the crews preparing to turn in for the rest of the night, the Major and I walked back to his car, which was waiting behind Essarts, and returned to Bienvillers for our own few hours’ sleep. The rest of that day, the 20th, we were busy about many things. We went out to the tanks again after breakfast, and found everything well and the German artillery as quiet as before. The section and tank commanders were going out for a final reconnaissance that afternoon. I spent it in studying maps and photographs in the R.O.’s office at Bienvillers, drawing up operation orders with the Major, and making a few preparations for my personal comfort during the battle. After an early dinner we set off again about 7.30 for Essarts. As darkness fell, the whole countryside, which had been so empty of life the night before, became filled with quiet noises--the tramp of hoofs, the rattle of wheels, the voices of men passing orders or warnings. Dozens of field batteries were moving forward to take up their positions in front of Hannescamps for the opening barrage, and the assaulting infantry were on the way to their assembly trenches. The moon, which was almost full, rose intensely bright--too bright for my liking.

Zero was at 4.55 A.M., and before midnight all the tanks of the battalion were uncamouflaged and ready to move. The three sections of A Company were to be formed up in line beyond our front trench--Very Trench--at 4.40. To be on the safe side the route of each section was to be taped to this point, a task which normally falls to the Reconnaissance Officer; but as I could not be in three places at once, it was decided that the taping should be left to the section commanders and to Jukes, my assistant R.O., who had taken Maelor Jones’s place. I wandered round with the Major, visiting each section in turn. One startling incident disturbed these preliminaries. We were with Wright’s section in the sunken road about midnight. He had no more than 1500 yards to cover, and there was no point in his starting at that hour; but some limbers appeared in the road with ammunition which had to be taken farther forward, and as the tanks blocked the way we started to get them up the bank to one side. The first tank reached the top, with some difficulty, for there was no room to swing in the road, and the bank was 12 feet high and very steep. The moon was now blazing like an arc-light upon everything, and the tank was silhouetted on a rise half a mile from Bucquoy, the trees of which village, as well as those along the Ayette road, were clearly visible. Everything was so brilliant, in fact, that we ordered men to hold up the canvas horn covers to hide the flashing of the tracks in the moonlight as the machine moved along above the cutting. I was down the road again watching the second tank endeavouring to climb out, when there came the whistle of a shell, and the leading one on top was hidden in smoke. Several more shells followed, all of which burst round the tank, and the crew came flying out and down into the road. The shooting was so extraordinarily close that we felt certain that the tank had been seen. Yet, after about a dozen rounds, none of which actually hit her, the gun or guns stopped firing. Apparently the shelling was meant for the road, which the Germans must have known to be used for transport at night, for after this a machine-gun opened on it at long range, and bullets came zip-zipping into the grass of the bank. With this epilogue, however, the incident closed, and the night resumed its normal quietude. We backed the leading tank behind the crest, and got the rest out of the way of the limbers by reversing them to the end of the sunken road. We were taking no more risks in full view. As it happened, a mist began to rise soon after and thickened so fast that all fear of our being seen was at an end. Before morning it was a veritable fog, which, lasting until ten o’clock, was to hamper seriously the first phase of the attack. I spent an hour on an errand to C Company later on, and as I was returning saw the Mark V.’s of the 10th Battalion drawn up in the valley our tanks had just left. The mist was very dense when I rejoined the Major at the 111th Brigade headquarters in a dug-out in Top Trench, the support line. I remember getting some sleep here. Shortly before zero runners came in from all three sections to report the tanks lined up in No Man’s Land. We climbed up into the trench, to find we could not see a hundred yards in front of us; and a few minutes later the massed batteries behind broke the silence with an appalling crash of sound, a torrent of shells whined overhead, and the attack had begun.

II.

For all we could see, we might have remained in the dug-out. The fiendish uproar of the guns seemed to increase, if that were possible--a modern barrage is one continuous throbbing blast of noise beyond description--but, looking back, there was not even a flicker of light to be seen from all those smoking muzzles. Dawn had broken, and we could see one another, but that was all. Even Misty Trench (appropriately named), only two or three hundred yards in front, was invisible. No hostile shells seemed to be coming our way, but it was true they might have been bursting quite near without our knowing it. I cannot recall anything outside a London fog as dense as that capricious mist which covered the whole battlefield during the early morning of the 21st. The road in which Wright’s tanks had been concealed cut through Top Trench close to where we were standing, and presently the last section of C Company, detailed for the second objective, came rolling along it out of the gloom. It was now full day, and we could see perhaps a quarter of a mile at the most. Bucquoy was still entirely hidden. A brigade staff of the 63rd Naval Division, which was to pass through the 37th to attack the railway, had come up to the neighbourhood of Top Trench, and its members were standing about flapping maps, sending and receiving telephone messages, and cursing the fog. Runners and despatch-riders were coming and going busily in our vague radius of vision. There was a constant bustle about the mouth of the dug-out, where the 111th Brigade was receiving reports every minute by telephone from the headquarters of its battalions; and inquiries here confirmed the impression that the first objectives had been carried with ease, in spite of the mist. The latter was at last thinning as the sun rose, and at length the trees of Bucquoy, 1000 yards away, became faintly visible, like ghostly and tattered scarecrows. It was now, I suppose, about seven o’clock, and the Major and I began to make our way toward Ablainzevelle. A few walking wounded were straggling rearwards, and the endless torrent of shells was wailing overhead; but there was nothing else to be seen or heard of the battle. The northern end of Bucquoy, through which we passed, reeked of gases and corruption, but the one or two dead bodies visible had only too palpably been lying there for days. The Ayette road was more forlorn than ever, and littered with a new layer of bricks and branches. The appearance behind us of some cavalry, who rode into the village with a great clatter and parade, indicated that the attack so far had progressed satisfactorily. A little way up the Ablainzevelle road we met the first tank returning, followed by several more. As I had suspected would be the case, there had been little or no fighting in the village. The fog had caused far more trouble than the Germans, of whom hardly any had been seen. One machine-gun had kept firing from a ruined house until a tank drove over it, one or two others had loosed a few bursts before their crews fled, and then proceedings had degenerated into a hunt for souvenirs. There were plenty of these, for the attack had come as a complete surprise.

We returned with these tanks to the rallying-point near Durham Trench, behind the northern gardens of Bucquoy. All the machines detailed for Ablainzevelle were accounted for. One had broken a track near the village, and its commander, slightly wounded in an unromantic part of his person by a stray bullet, was the only casualty to date. During the morning all the remaining tanks rolled in except the three of Wright’s section, which had pushed on to Achiet-le-Petit. No one, so far, had met with any serious opposition, but all had difficulties on account of the mist. One tank commander, at the request of the Naval Division, had entered Logeast Wood and demolished some machine-gun posts there.

There was a little shelling of our neighbourhood, and of Bucquoy in general, toward midday, and Jukes and I very nearly had our promising careers cut short by a large projectile which landed in a road along which we were walking in search of news or food--I forget which. Jukes’s water-bottle was the only victim. After a scrappy lunch, having learnt that Wright’s section had returned from Achiet-le-Petit and rallied in a small copse between that place and Bucquoy, I set out to find Battalion headquarters, which was to have established itself by this hour in a trench east of the latter village. The mist had now cleared, at an awkward moment as it turned out, for the 10th Battalion and the Whippets. The day was brilliantly fine and even uncomfortably hot, and as I reached the far side of Bucquoy, I could see very plainly the battle in progress along the line of the railway. Achiet-le-Petit, hidden in trees, had been taken by tanks and was firmly held, but to the left smoke was billowing in clouds about Achiet-le-Grand and the eastern end of Logeast Wood. I found the Colonel, Henriquez, and Smith, the Adjutant, sheltering from the sun under some corrugated iron at the appointed spot, where their trench--which was in fact the German front line, there having been only advanced posts in Bucquoy--was cut by the road from that village to Achiet-le-Petit. I got a little news from them. B and C Companies, it appeared, had taken Bucquoy as easily as we had taken Ablainzevelle; but the second German line, and in particular Logeast Wood and Achiet-le-Petit, had given more trouble. The Mark V.’s and Whippets, passing through our tanks, had been caught bunched together near the railway as the fog lifted at ten o’clock, and had been knocked about badly by the German guns. The Naval Division, losing its direction, had wandered too far to the right, even across the Achiet-le-Petit road, with the result that Achiet-le-Grand, which it should have carried, was still holding out. Apart from this accident, everything so far had gone well. I was told now to bring A Company’s tanks through Bucquoy to some point east of the village. One of our old camps of Nissen huts, mostly in ruins, lay immediately in front, and having noted this as a suitable place to camouflage the machines, I returned to lead them to it.

Before three o’clock we had the two sections hidden in the huts, which we knocked down and then built up again over the tanks. We established ourselves in the trench behind. The accompanying photograph, taken five days before the attack, shows very clearly this region behind Bucquoy. Our trench ran from the five-sided enclosure on the left to the first elbow in the main road, where the trees are. Beyond are the Nissen huts. Beyond them again is a small copse, beside the road, where Wright’s section had rallied after taking Achiet-le-Petit. The latter village is seen at the end of the road, having on its left the line of trees along the road to Achiet-le-Grand. In the foreground is Bucquoy, the distance between the two villages being about a mile and a half. C Company had concentrated their tanks in the five-sided enclosure on our left, while those of B Company were under some trees at the south end of the village.

We were left here in peace during the rest of the day, only a few heavy shells whining overhead at intervals into Bucquoy. Battalion headquarters had returned to Bienvillers. It was blazing hot, and we were plagued by innumerable flies. Our only protection from the sun was a few small shelters in the trench wall--the dug-outs, of which there were a good number, being filled to suffocation by the infantry of the 37th Division, now holding this line as a support to the general advance. When we were not trying to sleep, our chief occupation was watching the struggle still raging in front of Achiet-le-Grand. We looked straight up a shallow depression to Achiet Junction, which stood on rising ground, so that, although it was two miles distant, we witnessed the whole attack like spectators at a play. The infantry had carried the line of the railway to north and south, but the Germans still held out tenaciously in a little salient that jutted out westward around the station, the brickworks, and a number of huts erected there. Throughout the afternoon I saw at intervals with my glasses lines of minute figures pressing forward up the slope into the smoke-clouds that rose and eddied over Achiet; but they always came back, and in smaller numbers. The station was still uncaptured at nightfall.

It was extremely cold that night for August. Jukes and I were huddled together in a bay of the trench when the Major roused us at 3 A.M. He had become anxious about Wright’s forward section in the copse beside the road, and wished Jukes to walk across and bring the tanks in to the Nissen huts, with the others, before dawn. As I was too cold to sleep, I accompanied Jukes across to the copse. It was brilliant moonlight again, with none of the mist of the previous night. There was very little artillery fire in progress, and only the occasional mutter of a machine-gun along the railway. The copse, when we got to it, proved to be no more than a triangle of tattered hedge enclosing half a dozen small trees. There were now in it six tanks: three of A Company’s (Wadeson’s, Clegg’s, and another), one each from B and C, and a supply tender. We found B and C’s machines already under orders to withdraw, and in the act of uncamouflaging; and having woken up our own people, we hurried them on with the same business, for the eastern sky was brightening, and it takes some time to uncamouflage a tank, stow everything away, and start up a cold engine. The crews were sleepy and chilled, and half an hour had passed before the first tank was under way. This was C Company’s machine. Then two of ours, Clegg’s, and one commanded by an N.C.O., went off with Jukes, followed by Borrisow of B Company. The tender was remaining behind, and our last tank (Wadeson’s) refused at first to start up. While I was standing beside it, looking toward the railway, where the trees along the road between the two Achiets were now visible in the rapidly growing light of a clear morning, a close line of black shell-bursts sprang up about 500 yards away--apparently a very well-spaced barrage along what had been the German second line. The tank was just moving, to my sincere gratification; but before even it was clear of the copse the barrage had jumped forward and was falling all round us. The two tanks which Jukes was leading vanished in a cloud of smoke, and I was certain that one at least had been hit. I saw Borrisow crossing the road and making at full speed for the shelter of Bucquoy. I led Wadeson after him, as the shells at the moment were falling only on our side of the highway; but as soon as we were across, with that malignity which so often seems to inspire indirect artillery fire, the infernal things began to fly up in front of us. In the twilight one could see the flash in the heart of each black plume of earth and smoke. One shell cleared the cab of our tank by inches and burst twelve yards ahead of us. Wadeson and I were walking in front to direct the driver, and in the perturbation of the moment it never occurred to either of us to get inside the tank, which we might safely have done, there being enough light for us to pick out our way through the flaps. We swung back presently on to the road, as the ground to the left became obstructed with large craters and other excavations of some sort, which reduced seriously our very moderate rate of progress. The tank, in fact, from some mechanical fault, would only crawl along on second speed. From the copse to our huts was no more than a thousand yards, but this distance seems interminable when one is condemned to walk at about one mile an hour through a heavy deluge of 5.9’s. The shells followed us with the same uncanny accuracy, and were crashing among the huts when we reached the latter. As we turned in from the road I met Wright, the section commander, stumbling about, half-blinded by blood from a wound in his head. I took his arm and ran him down the road to the trench, and judged from the brisk way he stepped out that he was not very badly hurt. Hurrying back, I called in the crews. It was not the moment to keep them out in the open camouflaging the tanks, which could be done later. As it was, I was too late. Poor Clegg, having after all come safely through the journey, was the first in, and was standing behind his tank helping his crew to cover it with corrugated iron from a hut, when a shell burst at his feet and killed him instantly.

The whole thing was a striking example of bad luck. The tanks could not have been seen in that half-light, and the bombardment was a mere speculation, aimed, I imagine, at the trenches we occupied east of Bucquoy. It cost the 7th Battalion a heavier casualty list in officers than any action it ever fought. For while in A Company Clegg was killed and Wright wounded, almost at the same time a shell landed among B Company’s tanks in Bucquoy itself, killing a tank commander, M’Lean, and a gunner, and wounding another officer and several men. M’Lean, a Canadian, was one of the best fellows I have ever met, and one who hated war almost as much as I did. Throughout the series of operations which began at Bucquoy and ended beyond Cambrai, the 7th Battalion, always comparatively fortunate in casualties to personnel, had four officers killed, of whom two lost their lives in this brief and purposeless shelling on the morning of 22nd August.

III.

A Company’s trench was not actually hit during the bombardment, but all who were in it were much perturbed by our predicament as well as by their own. As the three returning tanks were hidden entirely for a while by the smoke, most of us were given up for lost. The shelling died down after about half an hour, when parties went out to bring in Clegg’s body and to complete the concealment of the tanks.

The rest of the day passed quietly enough, so far as we were concerned, until the evening. The 3rd Army was pausing, while the 4th Army came into line between the Ancre and the Somme. On our front Achiet-le-Grand was carried in the course of the morning, and the infantry was then established along the whole line of the railway. A little information reached us concerning the previous day’s events on our left. The 12th Tank Battalion in their first battle had done all and more than was asked of them, capturing Moyenneville and pushing on to the railway. The Mark V. Stars of the 15th Battalion, which should have passed through the 12th, lost all direction in the mist, and for the most part wandered aimlessly about north of Logeast Wood without achieving anything. As, however, the battalion (by one of those dispensations peculiar to the Army) collected something like a dozen military crosses for an ineffective performance which did not merit one, it had every reason to be satisfied with its day’s work. It was fortunate, perhaps, in that its tanks did not contrive to get very far forward, for the 10th Battalion, which played the same _rôle_ on the right, passing through our Mark IV.’s to attack the railway about Achiet-le-Grand, met with wholesale disaster. Of the company which went in, every tank except one, I believe, was knocked out on or near the railway by the German batteries beyond, eleven out of twelve officers being killed or wounded. The 3rd Battalion’s Whippets, endeavouring to pass through the Mark V.’s, were caught in line ahead on the Achiet-le-Petit road when the mist lifted suddenly about ten o’clock in the morning, and most of them suffered the same fate. Two got through Achiet-le-Petit and were hit and burnt out beyond. The armoured cars had also paid the penalty of other people’s convictions in the same neighbourhood. An area a mile square around the two Achiets and the curve of railway between them was in fact littered with derelict Mark V.’s, Whippets, and armoured cars; and the result of this, as the 10th Battalion was very short of tanks to begin with, was that the 7th now remained the only heavy unit approximately up to strength in the 1st Brigade.

Some of our machines, however, were in need of an overhaul, and as it was impossible to work on those of A Company in their exposed position east of Bucquoy, we were ordered to withdraw after dark to our original rallying-point near Durham Trench, west of the village. These orders had just come through, at about seven o’clock in the evening of the 22nd, when the enemy chose to repeat his display of the early morning by bombarding our trench with 5.9’s. He was very accurate on this occasion, the first shell landing full in the trench, and all the others being unpleasantly near. As the dug-outs were full of infantrymen, we had to sit hopefully on the trench floor and trust to luck. For a quarter of an hour this shelling was very heavy, and caused a number of casualties among those of the infantry who were crowded out of the dug-outs, and also in C Company in their hedged enclosure to our left. The trench was beaten flat in several places. After a while, as this infliction might herald a counter-attack, the Major and I sprinted vigorously up the trench to a dug-out where a brigade headquarters of the Naval Division was established, hoping to get some news there. We were met on the way by a panic-stricken rabble of signallers and other oddments, who declared, with what little breath they had left, that the Germans were in fact advancing and had recaptured Logeast Wood. This did not sound probable; and on penetrating at length to the brigade headquarters, wrapped in ideal calm and silence twenty feet below the ground, we found the General having dinner amid an assortment of telephones, and every one perfectly happy. Guy and Chaddock, of C Company, were also there on the same errand of inquiry as ourselves. We sat on the dug-out stairs for some time, drinking whiskies and sodas, while telephone reports came through from the battalions in the front line to the effect that everything there was normal; and being thus assured that our tanks would not be needed to repair any disaster, we climbed out again to find the shelling ceased and a blazing moon rising once more above Bucquoy. Something else was blazing also--the unfortunate supply-tank we had left in the copse that morning, which had been hit and set on fire during the bombardment. Without any further delay we got our tanks out of their shells of corrugated iron, and in an hour or two were back near Durham Trench, where we made bivouacs out of tarpaulin sheets for the night. C Company, having received similar orders to withdraw to the west of Bucquoy, were also concentrated at their old rallying-point.

While we were sleeping, the resumption of the general offensive, due for the morning of the 23rd, was initiated by a brilliant night attack made by the 12th Tank Battalion, with the 3rd Division and the Guards, on Gommecourt and Hamelincourt, north of Achiet-le-Grand. The two operations were quite distinct affairs, the villages, which lay 1000 yards beyond the railway, being nearly two miles apart. Both were captured, with a number of prisoners and guns, the tanks doing extraordinarily good work in the darkness. Three Military Crosses, one D.C.M., and three Military Medals were gained by the 12th Battalion in these actions, in which thirteen tanks were actually engaged. With this successful prelude, the whole battle awoke again at dawn along a front of thirty-three miles from Lihons, in the south, to Mercatel, beyond the Cojeul; and while in a sunken road near Durham Trench we shaved and washed in a leisurely manner beside our tanks, the guns were roaring once more, and strings of German prisoners were already passing by on their way to the cages. On this morning, in our sector, the remaining tanks of the 10th Battalion helped the 37th Division to clear Bihucourt, beyond Achiet-le-Grand: the 9th and 11th Battalions of the 3rd Brigade co-operated in a successful attack toward Heninel; and about midday fifteen Whippets of the 6th Battalion were engaged in very severe fighting around Sapignies, Behagnies, and Ervillers on the Arras-Bapaume road. Ervillers was carried, but the two other villages held out until the 25th, when the 7th Battalion assisted at their capture.

About five o’clock in the afternoon orders arrived at Durham Trench for a move by the whole battalion at dusk to the railway embankment east of Achiet-le-Petit. A Company led, C following on behind as we passed again through Bucquoy. B Company took their own route from the south end of the village. Owing to various breakdowns, due to the age and general disrepair of some of our Mark IV.’s, the battalion now mustered little more than thirty tanks. It proceeded along the east side of the Achiet-le-Petit road. The Major and I went on ahead in the car to a conference at the headquarters of a New Zealand Brigade near Achiet, which we reached just before dark. The New Zealanders were attacking Biefvillers, Grévillers, and Loupart Wood the next morning, and wanted two sections of heavy tanks and some Whippets. Custance’s section of A Company, with one from B, were detailed from our battalion, the whole being under the orders of Rossi-Ashton, commanding B Company, for the operation. As there was nothing for the Major and myself to do, we were ordered to return to Bienvillers to get a good night’s rest while we had the chance; and having seen the tanks on their way round the north side of Achiet-le-Petit, we returned to the car and drove away. We passed the Whippets coming up, and, behind Bucquoy, along the road which two days before had been deserted, ran into masses of transport, finally ditching the car in a shell-hole near Hannescamps, so that it was after midnight when we reached Bienvillers.

A night in a camp-bed, followed by a bath and a comfortable breakfast in our tarpaulin-covered mess, worked wonders, and we were on our way back by eleven o’clock next morning. One could see very plainly by day the changes wrought in these back areas by our advance. The Bucquoy road was choked with cars, lorries, ambulances, and horse-transport, moving under a cloud of dust. There was a Y.M.C.A. canteen established in the ruins of Essart, and we saw actually an A.P.M. endeavouring to control the traffic in that place. We were able to take the car through Achiet-le-Petit itself, over indescribable roads, and so down into the valley beyond, where our tanks were lying alongside the railway embankment. Around Achiet were many relics of the tank attack of the 21st, in the shape of burnt-out Whippets, armoured cars, and Mark V.’s. South-east of the village the ground falls very steeply and then rises to the railway, while the embankment over which the latter runs is at this point quite thirty feet high and clothed with bushes; and in the regular gulley thus formed there was now accumulated an astonishing mass of men, animals, and material. Against the bushes of the embankment were camouflaged the thirty-odd tanks of our battalion, a few Mark V.’s from the 10th, and several Whippets. A battery of 4.5 howitzers was firing with an intolerable noise straight over our machines from a distance of twenty yards, while on the slope behind, which rose like a _glacis_ up to Achiet, were three or four field batteries in action. Long lines of limbers and horses filled the lower end of the valley, and the men of an infantry battalion in reserve were lying in the grass higher up beside our tanks. Two infantry brigade headquarters were established in the open here, so that there was a great coming and going of despatch-riders and orderlies. All this activity was crowded into a hollow 1000 yards long by 200 or 300 yards wide--a magnificent opportunity for the German artillery. The day was fine, and a hostile aeroplane could have seen everything from a great height. The possibilities of the place seem, however, to have been overlooked during the earlier part of the day, when the enemy was busy with the level crossing a mile higher up at Achiet-le-Grand, which was violently shelled.

That morning’s attack had been entirely successful--Biefvillers, Grévillers, and Loupart Wood being taken after severe fighting, in which three of our tanks and a Whippet were knocked out. Armoured cars had endeavoured to exploit the success by pushing along the road from Biefvillers into Bapaume, but had found the shell-fire too heavy. Our casualties had been slight, and Custance and most of his people were back again with the company, covered with dirt and glory. The battalion was supplying another three sections (twelve tanks) the following morning--the 25th--for two separate operations. M’Chlery’s section of A Company was to help the 37th Division complete its unfinished task at Sapignies and Behagnies; while two sections of C, with seven Mark V.’s (all that the 10th Battalion had left), were working with the 63rd Division immediately to the south against Favreuil, Avesnes-les-Bapaume, and Ligny-Thilloy. Avesnes was a suburb of Bapaume, and Thilloy was south of that town, on which we were now closing on three sides. M’Chlery’s section came under the orders of C Company for these operations. The battalion being no longer at full strength, sections were borrowed in this way to make up composite companies with the normal number of tanks, and the three company commanders took it in turn to direct successive attacks. A Company having two tanks at Durham Trench which should now be ready again for action, I was sent off after lunch to order them up. My combination Douglas had broken in half during our move from Saulty to Bienvillers--the combined weight of the Major and myself, coupled with the corrugations of a ploughed field which we were crossing, proving too much for a war-time framework; and for this journey I borrowed Henriquez’s 4-h.p. machine, from which the side-car had been detached. Ridden as a solo, it was unfamiliar, powerful, and rather alarming; but after the usual anxious moments in the dense traffic that now, beneath a fog of dust, congested the Achiet-le-Petit road, I reached our old rallying-point behind Bucquoy, delivered my message, and returned. It was shortly after this, there being at the moment nothing for me to do, that I climbed the railway embankment and strolled up to the crest of the hill beyond, and so came to witness a singular little comedy. From the crest one looked down a gradual slope of grass, broken by a few trenches and gun-pits, to Loupart Wood, 1000 yards away, with Grévillers just beyond to the left on a farther ridge which hid Bapaume. The Wood, as I have told, had been captured that morning by B Company and the New Zealanders. Subsequently the Germans counter-attacked and retook the eastern part, whereupon two tanks of C Company had been hurriedly summoned to drive them out again. This was accomplished; but both tanks were then put temporarily _hors de combat_ while still in the Wood--one with a broken track and the other with engine trouble. At the time, about 5 P.M., when I walked up from the railway, these machines were still there, with their crews working on them. Nevertheless, for reasons which I never discovered, the New Zealanders had withdrawn again from the entire Wood, and were calling for yet more tanks to deal with some alleged (and I believe wholly imaginary) German machine-guns re-established there. Standing on the crest of the hill above the railway, I looked down at this juncture upon all the dispositions for a pitched battle--with nobody. Loupart Wood lay dark and quiet on the Grévillers spur, while within it our two tank crews worked on quite peacefully, entirely ignorant of their desertion and of all this pother. In front of the Wood, in extended order on the ground, were some New Zealand infantry and a battalion of the K.O.S.B.’s, borrowed from the 5th Division to help in this crisis. Behind the infantry a field battery had come into position, its limbers in rear, and a squadron of dismounted cavalry were standing by their horses in a hollow close by, while from a crossing over the railway to my left two more tanks of C Company were advancing to the rescue. It was a very pretty and gallant sight, and reminded one, in its formality and completeness, of those mimic battles one used to enjoy at the Military Tournament. Only the stock pontoon bridge was missing. Not a shot was being fired, except by one rifle which cracked occasionally far away to the right of the Wood. This belonged, I heard afterwards, to a solitary German sniper who seems to have represented in his own person the entire enemy against which this force of all arms was arrayed. What made the whole affair even more absurd and unreal was the fact that, 1000 yards to the left, infantry were marching in fours along the road into Grévillers...! As I looked on, in some astonishment, developments ensued along the orthodox lines laid down at Olympia and the Agricultural Hall. A cavalry patrol of about a dozen men, greatly daring, mounted their horses and trotted off toward the Wood. A few hundred yards from it the men dismounted again, left two or three in charge of the animals, and walked forward in extended order. Every other individual present (I hope) held his breath as these gallant fellows disappeared among the trees. Even on my hill-top I seemed to feel the atmosphere of suspense which emanated from that silent battlefield, disturbed only by the single shots of the indefatigable sniper in the distance.... In the Wood, of course, nothing happened, for there was nothing to happen. But I should like to have witnessed the meeting between the anxious patrol, scouting warily among the trees, and our two perspiring and irritable tank crews toiling at their tracks and engines. After a while the infantry, reassured, got upon their feet, and in their turn began cautiously to advance: the Wood was reoccupied; and the bloodless battle was handsomely won.

My study of its concluding phase was disturbed by the appearance of a squadron of German aeroplanes. There were about a dozen of them, and they drove down suddenly from a great height upon the valley behind me, coming so low as they cleared the crest on which I was standing that the nearest machine was not 200 feet overhead. I saw quite clearly its observer stand up in his cockpit and begin to fiddle about with his machine-gun; and realising suddenly that I was a solitary and fairly conspicuous figure on the hill-top, I ran rather hurriedly to a trench close at hand. From here I saw the aeroplanes swoop down across the railway and rise steeply beyond, and heard the rattle of their machine-guns. The bullets, as I heard afterwards, flew all round our tanks, although no one was hit. The Germans must have realised what a magnificent target the crowded little valley offered to their heavy guns, and all of us expected the place to be shelled furiously within half an hour; but nothing of the sort happened, as the enemy’s artillery was already in the act of withdrawing to positions farther back.

While I was in the trench I was joined by a doctor belonging to the 5th Division. The latter was just back from Italy, and the M.O. was very caustic on the subject of the Italian Army. After talking to him for a while I walked down to our valley again by way of the nearer railway crossing, and there overtook the two tanks of C Company on their way home from the 3rd battle of Loupart Wood. Coutts and Chaddock were with them, both very angry at having been called out on such a fool’s errand. It was seven o’clock when I rejoined the company by the embankment, and our servants there were preparing some dinner, the _menu_ including three tinned chickens which I had brought from Bienvillers that morning. I had to eat my share cold, however, on a hunk of bread, for as I arrived the company received orders to move after dark to a point indicated on the map as a German camp and hospital at G 23, b 56; and Jukes and I had to set off at once to investigate the place. It was 3000 yards away, on the high ground near Bihucourt. We found it to consist of a couple of immense sheds, presumably the hospital wards, a neat double row of Nissens, either sunk in the ground or protected by breastworks against aeroplane bombing, and a scattered collection of other huts all round, the whole extending on either side of the Bihucourt-Grévillers road. Immediately to the north of the camp ran the third German trench line, thickly wired; 300 yards beyond that was the railway from Achiet-le-Grand Junction to Bapaume; and across the railway were Bihucourt and Biefvillers, a mile apart, and almost equidistant from the huts. Bapaume itself, less than two miles away, was still hidden by the final ridge, on top of which a derelict Whippet made a conspicuous landmark. The whole of this country was elevated and rolling grass-land, very little shelled, and covered with old camps which we had lost in the March retreat.

As we returned to the valley there were ominous signs of a change in the weather. Clouds were rolling up, and a premature twilight was fading rapidly. We found the tanks pulling out from the embankment, with the exception of M’Chlery’s section, which was moving later with C Company for the attack next morning. Before we were halfway to our new quarters it began to rain heavily, and the night fell as black as pitch. The Major and I had eventually to find a New Zealand Brigade whose whereabouts was very vaguely indicated, there being some talk of a couple more tanks going into action near Bapaume in the morning; and having accompanied our machines as far as the camp, we left them to settle themselves in, and plunged off into the darkness on our own voyage of discovery. I cannot imagine a more appalling night for such an expedition. The blackness was extraordinary, and the rain fell in torrents. We had only the haziest idea of the location of this brigade headquarters, and for nearly two hours we stumbled about in long grass and mud, tripping over invisible wire, dead bodies, and other debris, falling into shell-holes and sunken roads, and getting always more drenched and exasperated. The few people we met were either lost themselves, or else gave us contradictory directions involving the recognition of landmarks which we could not possibly see. After a while a thunderstorm burst, and the lightning afforded occasional eerie visions of a black and sodden world. One of these flashes found us slithering down into a road filled with large dark objects, which turned out to be the guns, men, and horses of a German battery which had evidently been caught by shell or machine-gun fire while limbering up.[39] Over this welter of bodies there came crashing and rocking several of our own field-guns, which nearly rode us down. This incident, brief and startling in the lightning flashes, filled me with a profound respect for our artillery. The guns went rattling by in the pitchy dark over all these grisly obstructions on the road with as much apparent ease and surety as if it had been broad day. Very soon after this, near a cross-roads, we were cheered by the discovery of some lights that seemed to be shining out of the ground, and found that, more by luck than judgment, we had very literally stumbled upon our destination. The brigade headquarters was established in some huts sunk in what appeared to be a quarry, and practically invisible even in daytime until one fell over the edge. Having groped our way into the Brigade Major’s office and introduced ourselves, the Brigadier presently appeared from some subterranean quarters and explained what he wanted us to do. He proposed to capture some huts and railway sidings between Bapaume and Favreuil in the course of the following morning, and wished for two tanks to mop up after his infantry. The time of the operation had not been fixed, but it would take place in daylight, as a subsidiary development of the main attack which the 63rd Division with C Company’s tanks was carrying out at dawn from Favreuil to Thilloy. The scheme did not commend itself to us in the very least. It showed the common misapprehension of the correct use of tanks, and violated all our tactical principles, based on bitter experience. There were only two tanks to be used, which left no margin for accidents; they were to be employed wrongly to mop up after the infantry, instead of preceding the latter; the attack was to begin in broad daylight; and the approach-march necessarily led over the bare and prominent ridge in front of Bapaume, where the machines would certainly be detected before they got into action at all. It was this last consideration which impressed the Brigadier most forcibly. I do not think he cared over much about what happened to the tanks, but he was very anxious that his attack should not be discovered prematurely. In the end, nothing was settled definitely. We agreed to have the two tanks ready to move if required. The brigade headquarters itself was moving forward in the early morning to some dug-outs in the German trenches in front of our huts, and we were to report there at nine o’clock for further orders.

This proposed attack, which came to nothing so far as we were concerned, illustrates one of the difficulties tank units continually met with during this final stage of the war. The infantry naturally wanted tanks whenever they could get them, and brigade and divisional commanders were always demanding two here or three there for use in some wasteful and impracticable manner in minor operations. Apart from the faulty tactics (from the point of view of tank warfare) which these hurried little schemes usually involved, tanks were getting very scarce in France, and such as were available needed to be conserved as much as possible for attacks on a large scale.

Having left things in this nebulous state, the Major and I plunged once more into the darkness and rain, and contrived to find our way back to our new camp, where we settled down in a hut about 2 A.M.