Chapter XXI: The Fighting Round Cambrai: Sancourt

I.

When the 1st and 3rd Armies attacked on 27th September, the general bombardment was extended southward to the extremity of the British Line, although only preliminary operations were undertaken by the 4th Army on that day and the next. The 28th was notable for two simultaneous blows delivered upwards of 100 miles apart--by the 2nd British and 3rd French Armies and the Belgians from the coast to Ypres, and by the 5th and 10th French Armies on the Aisne. On the 29th, after two days’ continuous shelling, the 4th Army and the right wing of the 3rd took up the attack against the last and strongest remnant of the enemy’s final organised position in the West, the Canal de L’Escaut and the Siegfried Line from Marcoing to Bellenglise. This reversion to something like the old type of offensive, with a preliminary bombardment, was necessitated by the obstacle of the Canal de St Quentin (a continuation of the Canal de L’Escaut), which could be crossed by tanks only at the gap, 6000 yards wide, where it passed under the famous tunnel between Vendhuile and Bellicourt. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th Tank Brigades with about 170 machines took part on the first day of this decisive battle, and had some desperate fighting, losing a great number of tanks and men. The 301st Americans in their first action met with tragic disaster, apparently through no fault of their own. Moving forward from Ronsoy, they ran into a mine-field which we had laid down before the March retreat. It consisted of rows of buried trench-mortar bombs, each loaded with 50 lb. of ammonal. In a few minutes ten tanks were blown up, their bottoms being torn out and most of their crews killed by the terrific explosions. The remainder of the battalion, shaken though it must have been by this appalling stroke of misfortune, got into action and suffered heavily there, only 11 tanks rallying out of 34. On subsequent days units of all three brigades were helping to widen the initial penetration of the Siegfried trenches at various points, as many as 40 tanks going in on 3rd October, when we broke through the northern part of the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line five miles beyond the canal tunnel, and saw in front of us at last open and cultivated country. These events led up to the final phase of the battle, which began on 8th October.

In the meantime, the Canadians, with the 22nd and 17th Corps respectively on their left and right, had a week of very severe and costly fighting around Cambrai, in the course of which the 7th Tank Battalion fought its last action. After the surprise and collapse on 27th September, the German resistance stiffened appreciably every day as it had stiffened a month earlier at Bapaume; and Sancourt, Abancourt, and other villages played the same _rôle_ which had fallen before to Ecoust and Beugny. Our advance was still hampered by the obstacle of the Sensée Marshes and the floods to the north of them. This vast area of water cut across our front at right angles, with the result that as we penetrated eastward toward Cambrai we developed a long flank facing due north; and the German guns south of Douai, enfilading this salient, caused much annoyance. The re-formed and very weak 5th Army facing Lens and Douai was unable to help actively until the operations on its flanks were further advanced.

The morning of 29th September found the three Companies of the 7th Tank Battalion disposed as follows: A Company, as we have seen, was at Bourlon. C Company had moved overnight from its rallying-point near Tadpole Copse to the top of Bourlon Ridge north of the village, where its tanks were camouflaged in the open in a shallow basin of ground. B Company, after its fighting in Raillencourt and St Olle, had rallied at the former village and still remained there, its machines hidden under the trees of the Arras-Cambrai road within 3000 yards of the front line. Early in the morning a despatch-rider reached us at Bourlon with orders for the company to join C on the ridge; and after breakfast we backed the tanks out of the château garden through the holes in the wall and trekked northward round the village. We made a considerable gambit to avoid appearing on the crest, where a few shells were falling as we approached, and climbed eventually to our destination under a bridge, still intact, which carried the railway from Cambrai to Sauchy-Lestrée. We camouflaged our tanks in the open a few hundred yards from those of C Company, one of whose officers had just been wounded by the shelling. We were screened here from direct observation by the final rise, the ground ascending very gradually from our basin to the Arras-Cambrai road, only 500 yards away. The double line of trees along the road ran obliquely across our front and dropped down the ridge behind us to Marquion and the Agache flats. Standing on the highway, one saw straight ahead the cluster of villages on the spurs which fell to the Sensée north and north-west of Cambrai--Haynecourt and Epinoy, west of the Douai road, and now in our possession, and, beyond, the trees about Sancourt, Blécourt, Abancourt, and others still held by the Germans. To the north extended the long hostile flank beyond the Sensée, with such places as Bugnicourt and Fressain easily distinguishable. The morning being misty, although brilliantly fine, visibility was limited, but it was easy to see how vitally important was this ridge, and how on a clear day one could have overlooked Douai and all the enemy’s communications across the plain. Cambrai, three miles to the south-east, and lying low, was hidden from this point by the trees of Raillencourt and Sailly. The shallow depression in which we lay, like all the rest of the country around, was bare grass-land, crossed by a multitude of dusty tracks, a lane leading from Bourlon to the main road, and a line or two of half-finished trench. There was a big dug-out, an old German headquarters of some kind, close to the railway bridge at our back. To our right stood a solitary half-ruined building called Pilgrim’s Rest, which poked a blackened gable above some shrubs; and a few small copses beyond led the eye up to Bourlon Wood, towering above a sudden little hill which was superimposed, as it were, on top of the ridge itself. It was this steep acclivity which caused the wood to be visible from so great a distance (from the towers of Mont St Eloi, behind Arras, for example), and to dominate so effectively all the valleys leading toward it from the west. During our reconnaissances before the 27th this sinister mass of trees seemed to overlook every movement. But now its ladders and its lofty observation platforms had had their final day, and curious wanderers were peering and poking among the glades and thickets bleached with gas and scarred by shells, where some of its later victims still lay rotting in the undergrowth, and where there rested, smashed and stripped and rust-eaten, the shells of tanks we had lost there nearly a year before. Two-faced, like Janus, the wood had now turned a menacing visage eastward, and lowered over Cambrai. A new activity flowed beneath its shadow. Khaki had replaced field-grey in the dismembered village; and over the dusty plain to the canal, along the reverse slope of the ridge, and even in the little hollow by Pilgrim’s Rest, were scattered infantry bivouacs and endless horse lines and the massed limbers of ammunition trains. The countryside was alive with movement, and near Bourlon a Canadian band was playing, its instruments glittering in the sun....

When we had camouflaged the tanks in pairs, we set about finding some shelter for company headquarters, and the few other officers we had with us. A half-finished trench ran across the basin, and over a part of this we rigged up a tarpaulin roof. C Company, the first in the field, had found a large excavation in a bank near the railway, where they made themselves moderately comfortable. It was always well to take these precautions, for one might be stranded in such a place for a week. As it happened, this little gutter of ours was in use as a base for several days. Close to us here, curiously enough, were some odd by-products of the tank idea, a number of open lorries carrying Vickers guns and Stokes mortars, part of a singular unit which included motor machine-guns and armoured cars, and was known as Brutinel’s Brigade. It had been organised by the Canadians for the battle on 8th August, with a view to rapid exploitation in company with our Whippets and cars along the Amiens-Roye road. I believe it met with a certain measure of success on that exceptional occasion, but its subsequent opportunities were few. All Canadian operation orders at this time ended with an optimistic paragraph asserting that “Brutinel’s Brigade will seize every opening for a vigorous exploitation and pursuit of the enemy,” and the heterogeneous medley of vehicles did its best to find such openings; but with the Germans very wide awake, and fighting for every inch of ground, nothing on wheels had any prospect of penetrating far. The brigade was badly cut up more than once, and the armed lorries, in particular, were described by their unfortunate crews as death-traps.

After lunch Wadeson and I walked to the high ground by Bourlon Wood, where there were a number of abandoned German guns and many dead of both armies, and looked down upon the roofs and spires of Cambrai. The canal and all the approaches to the town were hidden in trees, and there was nothing to be seen but an ambulance or two passing below us into St Olle. It was more interesting to turn our glasses to the south-west and follow the immaculate line of the Le Cateau road, its double row of trees in full leaf rising and dipping over a succession of ridges increasing in height as they receded, and topped by villages and small towns untouched by actual hostilities since the first month of the war--Awoingt, just outside Cambrai, Beauvois, Caudry, Bethencourt, and yet another Inchy. I had no suspicion then that I was to know all these places well enough a few weeks later. Le Cateau itself, lying in a deep valley, was hidden from us; but we could follow many of the roads leading eastward from the main highway, and these were black with German transport pouring to the rear before the blast of the 4th Army’s attack along the Canal de St Quentin that morning. Another cheering portent was the fact that the enemy’s line of observation balloons was withdrawn well to the east of the Le Cateau road. It was while we were standing here that one of our balloons, run up an hour before by the side of Bourlon Wood, was shot down by a German aeroplane which escaped with the usual ease. Neither at this time nor before nor after during the whole advance did I see a German balloon brought down.

A very disgusting feature of this neighbourhood was the number of ghoulish pilferers of the dead who infested it. These noxious creatures are common enough in the wake of any battle: indeed the ordinary decent soldier is callous to a degree in the way he will handle some mangled body in his search for what he calls souvenirs; but the Colonial troops always supplied an excessive proportion of the deliberate looters. A case which filled me with peculiar horror, because I had known and liked the man whose corpse was so mercilessly stripped and rifled, had occurred in the Canadian Corps a short time before this. An officer in our battalion who joined it as a Captain in the Salient, and afterwards shared a cubicle with me at Meaulte, went to the 11th Battalion as a company commander. He was killed by a shell during an approach-march in the course of the attack on the Drocourt-Quéant Line. His body was left for a quarter of an hour while two men ran to a dressing station close at hand for a stretcher. When they returned they found that the Canadians, in this short interval, had stripped the body of everything worth taking--tunic, belt, glasses, and even field-boots. I do not know if I am peculiar, but this practice, which was reduced to a science, filled me with loathing. And around Bourlon Wood, where in places the dead lay thickly, there were a number of men prowling furtively about, turning over bodies, peering into holes and trenches, carrying out systematically their search for money or such pitiful small valuables as a man will carry even into action. These scoundrels sheered off when any officer approached, and if summoned and interrogated, explained of course that they were looking for the body of a friend....

II.

At five o’clock that evening (the 29th) the usual harbinger of evil arrived at our trench in the shape of a despatch-rider, with an urgent message to the Major to report at once to the headquarters of the 12th Canadian Infantry Brigade. This headquarters was quite near us, in some dug-outs just off the Arras-Bapaume road, by a building called Lilac Farm. I accompanied the Major in his car, which we took to save time. As we arrived on the highroad several heavy shells crashed about Lilac Farm, and we left it for the dug-outs with some haste. We had a brief interview with the Canadian Brigadier, in which he propounded a rather ambitious scheme for the next morning, and asked for three tanks. C Company was working on our right with another brigade. The situation on the front of the 12th Brigade was as follows:--

Beyond the Arras-Cambrai road was the road to Douai, which trended a little to the west of north toward Aubencheul-au-Bac, where it crossed the Sensée. On a line drawn north-east from the Pilgrim’s Rest these roads were about 4000 yards apart, and midway between them was the village of Haynecourt. Beyond the Douai road, again, was the main Cambrai-Douai railway. Road and railway ran side by side out of Cambrai for two miles, when the line curved eastward before returning to a parallel crossing at Aubencheul-au-Bac. Where it turned away from the road it passed between the villages of Sancourt and Blécourt, the former being half a mile east of the road and a few hundred yards short of the railway, on which at this point there was a _halte_ or small station. A road from Sancourt crossed the railway in a north-easterly direction, and descended a narrow and steepish valley called the _Ravin de Bantigny_, through Blécourt and Bantigny itself, 800 and 2500 yards respectively from the level crossing. A mile and a half south of Blécourt, just beyond the railway, was Tilloy.

The Canadian line, as given to us, ran almost due north from the Arras road at St Olle, crossed the Douai road 3000 yards out of Cambrai, and continued just to the west of the railway, passing between Sancourt and the _halte_. The railway was a serious obstacle, and already had held up the advance for two days. It ran alternately over embankments and through deep cuttings, which were lined thickly with machine-guns; and the Germans were fighting desperately to retain it, and so prevent Cambrai being outflanked from the north. There is no need to go at length into the plan of attack proposed by the Canadians for the 30th, because half of it was a signal failure. It will be enough to say that one brigade on the right, with three tanks of C Company, was to carry the railway west of Tilloy and then seize that village, while the 12th Brigade, with our three tanks, on the left, was to cross the line on either side of the Sancourt _halte_, capture the high ground enclosing the _Ravin de Bantigny_, and then perform a complicated swing to the left, which was intended to cut off the German forces holding the curve of the railway northward. Our tanks, having assisted to clear and consolidate the railway at Sancourt, were to move along to north and south of the _Ravin_, avoiding Blécourt and Bantigny in its depths, as these villages were to be smothered and isolated by artillery fire and occupied at leisure.

The General explained this plan of attack in a dashing and confident sort of manner, which seemed to take a good deal for granted. It took more for granted than we guessed at the time; but one could not help reflecting even then upon the speculative qualities of the scheme. The Canadians had been fighting now for three days, during the last two of which they had battered their heads against the Douai road and railway, and had lost very heavily in the process, without making any material advance. The task set for the 12th Brigade was highly ambitious, in face of the very obstinate resistance which the enemy, as usual reacting strongly against the consequences of his initial defeat, was offering along the whole Cambrai front. Fresh divisions had come into the German line, fresh batteries had accumulated behind it, and machine-guns were sown everywhere like dragon’s teeth. The situation was similar to that which had developed around Bapaume at the end of August, with the additional incentive to the enemy that he was now fighting in his last organised position; and Sancourt, as it turned out, was to prove for A Company a second and more tragic Beugny. The Major and I came away from the brigade headquarters feeling already rather dubious about the whole affair. We did not suspect, however, after our recent experience of the usual efficiency of Canadian methods, that the attack was to be doomed to failure before it began through inexcusable blunders by the brigade staff. Zero hour had not been fixed at this conference. We were to return later for detailed orders. The General had stated, however, that he wished our tanks to be lined up before dawn in a sunken road which ran southward from Haynecourt, where he proposed also to establish his headquarters for the action. By this time we had only four machines out of our six fit for action at short notice. C Company was even worse off. It could supply only two tanks, and borrowed our fourth to make up the deficiency. It was about six o’clock when we returned to Pilgrim’s Rest, and already growing dusk, as the sky had clouded over. While the tanks were uncamouflaged and overhauled, I studied the map and took compass-bearings to help us in the approach-march. Toward seven, the Major and I started off to walk over this route, and on our way called at the brigade headquarters for our further orders; but there were none forthcoming. Zero, we were told, probably would be at 10 A.M. The General and his staff would be at the sunken road at five, when everything was to be arranged and the belated orders issued to us. In the meantime we were to get our tanks there. We set off accordingly on our walk, feeling more dubious than ever. The daylight attack alone was against all our instincts and precepts, and was the more puzzling because Jack Brown had told me that the zero hour for C Company and its infantry was six o’clock, just after dawn. There might be method, however, in this apparent madness: attacks were sometimes carried out in this fashion, in echelon, at different hours. In any case, we were definitely under the orders of the 12th Brigade, and had to do as we were told. The trouble was that so far we had been told so little.

We found the sunken road without much difficulty, although it was now very dark indeed. A perfect maze of light railways, radiating out from Cambrai and linking up a number of big dumps with the original German positions behind the Canal du Nord, covered all this country, and being marked on our excellent maps, were invaluable guides at night. The road, midway between the diverging Arras and Douai highways, connected Haynecourt with the outskirts of Raillencourt and St Olle to the south. It ran parallel to the Douai road at an average distance of 1200 yards. Toward its northern end at Haynecourt its banks were 10 to 12 feet high, forming perfect cover for the tanks, and we selected a hiding-place for the latter 1000 yards from the village, near where the road was crossed by one of the light railways which would lead us directly to it. In the western bank were the black shafts of several dug-outs in which the brigade headquarters was to take up its abode. A few dead lay in the roadway, and infantry in support were moving about in the shelter of the banks. The front was very quiet at this time, but Very lights were rising and flaring from the outpost line. It struck me at once that they were much nearer to us than they should have been if that line coincided with the one given us by the brigade staff. They seemed to rise from the Douai road itself, whose mangled avenue of trees was visible intermittently in the cold illumination. According to the brigade (whose information I had set down at the time on a map that lies before me now) our line at Sancourt, toward which we were looking, took in the village and ran close to the railway, nearly 1000 yards beyond the road. It was impossible to decide this point either way with certainty, and some infantrymen whom I questioned were characteristically vague. An outpost line in semi-open warfare is always nebulous and variable, but if appearances were correct and our information wrong, it might make a serious difference, as it would mean that Sancourt was not, as stated, in our possession. I never understood the real facts of the case. As late as eight o’clock next morning Sancourt undoubtedly was full of German machine-guns, but whether this was due to a temporary fluctuation of the line, or whether we had never really held it, I do not know. Our original information proved in all respects so erroneous that I incline to the latter opinion. The Canadians gained it definitely in the course of this attack, but, as we shall see, this was all they were able to accomplish on the 12th Brigade front.

The Major and I were a little careless on our return journey, and overrunning the particular branch of the light railway which we should have followed, wandered for some time around Haynecourt. It was nearly midnight when we reached the Arras road again, both of us rather leg-weary, as we had been stumbling about in the dark for five hours; but there was no rest for us yet. We found the three tanks, with Wadeson, who was in command, waiting at the side of the road by a farm called Mont Neuve, westward from Lilac Farm. All three were commanded by N.C.O.’s, among them Sergeant Duddridge, whom we have met at Beugny, and who was to be one of the victims of the deplorable muddle the 12th Canadian Brigade made of this attack. We started off again at once, leading the tanks past Mont Neuve to the little railway line which led straight to our sunken road. The distance, following this railway, was just two miles, but we had ample time, and took it very slowly. Soon after we started I saw C Company’s tanks, three black shapes outlined momentarily against a distant glare, crawling away to our right. The journey was accomplished without incident, except that toward the end I became seriously alarmed by the noises proceeding from our worn-out machines. They were on their last legs, or, to be literally accurate, their last rollers. These had not been replaced since we drew the tanks from Erin two months before, and now, ground down and misshapen by overwork, they began suddenly to complain only too audibly. It seemed impossible at times that this shrill squeaking should not be heard by the enemy, especially if his outposts were as near as the pistol lights still indicated that they were. We struck our road at a point where the banks had fallen away to nothing, so that only a level field stretched before us to the trees along the Douai highway. The occasional flares which soared and died above them silhouetted every branch, and once a yellow glow appeared at the ground-level and grew swiftly to a bright tall flame which seemed to lick the trunks before it dwindled and expired. A few shells whined and burst far to our right, but apparently no one heard the noise of the tanks, for nothing more urgent happened to disturb us. By 2.30 we had the three machines under cover of the bank and the crews busy with the camouflage nets. I felt the usual intense relief that comes after the strain of conducting any approach-march, however short or simple. The responsibility (which I loathe in any form) and the sense of being tied to the tanks if anything went wrong or if we were discovered, always made these journeys my especial bugbear. Time could not stale nor custom wither their infinite anxiety. Or so I always found it. To go into action in a tank was, in a way, a lesser evil.

Having seen the machines camouflaged and the crews settled down for as long a rest as Providence, the Germans, or the Canadian Corps permitted, I accompanied the Major and Wadeson to the Brigade dug-out, a couple of hundred yards up the road. We found there, representing for the moment the staff, the brigade Intelligence Officer. He appeared to be the reverse of intelligent, and had no orders for us and no news. He had heard nothing about tanks until we arrived. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible among the feet of the innumerable orderlies, signallers, and other vagrants of no apparent occupation who always infest headquarter dug-outs, and endeavoured to sleep. It was very cold outside, and the warmth below, if a trifle poisonous, was comforting. Wadeson found it excessive after a while, and climbed upstairs again. The Major and I dozed off during the intervals when no one was treading on us. I was aroused finally by a great deal of trampling and excitement, and heard at once, muffled by twenty feet of earth, the unmistakable throbbing of concentrated gun-fire overhead. It was six o’clock; and although I thought for a moment that this might be merely covering-fire for the attack on the right, we soon discovered that our own infantry had gone forward--or attempted to do so. There were no orders for us, and no signs of the General and his staff, who should have arrived an hour before. The Intelligence Officer remained the sole representative of the brigade headquarters. He was hanging on to the telephone, receiving messages from the battalions in the line, and seemed very harassed by his responsibilities; and he could give us no satisfactory advice. Our position was extraordinary and very unpleasant. We had been told by the Brigadier himself that zero would be at ten o’clock or thereabout, and that we should receive our orders from him on the spot. Beyond this, and an incomplete outline of the proposed attack, we had been given no instructions, verbal or otherwise. The attack had now started _four hours before the specified time_. Our tanks, camouflaged and unready for immediate action, were still in the sunken road, some 1500 yards behind the original front; and the infantry, if successful, must already be on the railway or beyond. The Major and I scrambled up the stairs of the dug-out, now packed to suffocation with earnest helpers who very naturally preferred life below ground to life above at this juncture; and when we had fought our way through them and emerged again in the road, we found a dreary dawn just breaking. Close behind us massed batteries of 18-pounders were bellowing. The Germans were replying with vigour and with heavier metal. The inevitable 5.9’s were bursting freely on both sides of the road, in which there was now a crowd of infantry, all packed against the farther bank, digging themselves holes in it with entrenching tools. Wadeson and his crews were standing by their tanks, as perplexed as ourselves by the situation arisen out of this precipitate muddle. It was still too dark to see much when we climbed the bank and looked over the top. The mournful trees along the Douai road stood up like spectres out of the smoke and mist, the dark shape of the little wood at Sancourt was just visible beyond, and here and there in the level foreground the heavy shell-bursts sprayed upward their fountains of black soil. One shell missed our tanks by a few feet and exploded in the opposite bank of the road.

We got the machines uncamouflaged as a preliminary measure, and, after waiting by them for a little while, descended again to the dug-out to attempt to communicate with the Brigadier by telephone. Nothing came of this: the cable, I believe, was cut. Telegraphic messages, however, were still coming through from the headquarters of the battalions in front, and these provided another inexplicable instance of that morning’s confusion. I was standing by the instrument with the Major and the Intelligence Officer, and I followed on the map the apparent progress of the attack as the signaller at the board decoded the irregular bursts of Morse. The hostile machine-gun fire was very heavy.... Colonel So-and-so had been killed ... Major So-and-so was wounded ... Many casualties ... Advance held up in places, but elsewhere progressing. And then came a quite definite statement from one of the battalions. Our infantry had reached the road in Square S 9 c. Now S 9 c was on the high ground south of Blécourt, and the road indicated was 1000 yards beyond the Sancourt _halte_. This meant good progress. Some little time had passed while we had been listening to these messages, but it was not yet seven; and after a further fruitless attempt to get in touch with the brigade, the Major decided to send the tanks forward. They might have to cover anything from one to two miles before they overtook the infantry, assuming this recent information to be correct; but there was a chance of their being useful, if only for mopping-up purposes. It was about 7.15 when they climbed the bank and headed across the level field toward Sancourt. Wadeson walked with them, intending to see them as far as the Douai road. The morning was dull, and beyond the trees of Sancourt itself one could see nothing for smoke. Shells were still crashing fast on both sides of the sunken road, but it was never actually hit--a fortunate circumstance, as by now it was crowded with the best part of a battalion of infantry, the R.A.M.C. personnel of two dressing stations, a number of walking wounded and a few stretcher cases, and an assortment of machine-gunners, engineers, and other people. A shell or two square between the banks would have made a fearful shambles of it. At its northern end, in a lane which ran across to the Douai road from Haynecourt, I saw some of the armed lorries of Brutinel’s Brigade waiting “to seize an opening for vigorous exploitation.” They did not wait long. A German aeroplane came over, flying low, circled above the batteries behind us, machine-gunning them, and discovered the lorries. Soon afterwards the Haynecourt lane was plastered with shells, and Brutinel’s Brigade withdrew in a hurry. Of our own aeroplanes, two squadrons of which (the 8th and 73rd) were supposed to be co-operating in the attack, I did not see a single one throughout the morning. They may have been somewhere on the scene doing good by stealth; or, as is quite probable, the breakdown of the Canadian staff work may have affected their movements as it affected ours.

We waited for nearly two hours before any news of our tanks reached us. In our ignorance we pictured them striving to overtake the advancing infantry. Wadeson came back, having seen them across the Douai road, which he found covered with fallen trees and dead Canadians, and we divided our time between the dug-out and the surface, watching the shells fall above and trying occasionally to get a little rest below. It was at nine o’clock that I came up into the road after an attempt at sleep and saw two tanks returning. It was a very fragmentary story that we got from their crews, but one at absolute variance with everything we had been led to believe. They had encountered machine-gun fire from Sancourt itself, at the very start, when they had supposed themselves still to be a long way behind the infantry. (They should have been at least a mile behind, according to the telegraphic message we had heard.) Crossing the railway at the _halte_, where a road led down through a gap in the walls of a cutting, they had been simply plastered with bullets. So fierce was the fire that they had to close all flaps and resort to periscopes. There was not a sign of our infantry, and indeed this reception made it clear that if the latter had ever crossed the railway at all, they had gone back very soon. The tank commanders, however, decided to carry out their orders, at least in part, and headed north-east toward Blécourt, always under intense machine-gun fire. Two of the machines reached the neighbourhood of the village. One was pulling so badly that it would not take some small obstacle in the front, and the N.C.O. in charge had no choice but to enter Blécourt and risk the bombardment which that place was supposed to be undergoing. This bombardment proved to be another myth: hardly a shell was falling in the village, which was, however, full of Germans. As it was now manifest that the infantry attack had failed, the half-crippled tank started to return, still pelted with bullets. Near the railway it was met by Sergeant Duddridge, who was in command of the third tank. This, it appeared, had fallen on its side in a large pit just east of the _halte_, neither the sergeant nor his driver being able to see the obstacle through their periscopes. Duddridge, having scrambled out of the only sponson door which could be used, found himself under machine-gun fire at close range, and dropped into the pit for shelter. Two men who tried to follow him were shot instantly, and the others remained inside the overturned tank. After crouching in the pit beside it for a while, Duddridge saw the other tank returning from Blécourt, and contrived to crawl on his stomach through a heavy fire until he could hail it, when he was taken on board. He wished to divert this tank to the rescue of his crew, but it was in no condition for any extra work, being in fact on the verge of a complete breakdown, and only induced to move by continued hand-feeding with petrol. Every man inside was injured about the face and hands by splinters and bullet-splash. It contrived to crawl back across the railway to the sunken road, pursued by the hail of bullets to the last. Duddridge’s crew was left imprisoned in the pit. In the meantime, the second of the surviving tanks had pushed up on to the ridge south of Blécourt, meeting everywhere the same terrific fire; and having established the fact that there were no Canadians east of the railway, still less in Square S 9 c, where they had reported themselves to be an hour before, it turned back also and arrived at the sunken road close behind the others. The N.C.O. and several of the crew were injured by bullet-splash. Both tanks were simply coated in places with a deposit of lead as a memento of the ordeal they had been through.

The urgent need remaining was to rescue the men imprisoned in the overturned tank, if it were possible. Duddridge, who was desperately concerned for them, begged to be allowed to go back himself to see what he could do. But we had still one tank capable of moving, and its crew, wounded and exhausted as they were, at once volunteered to return in it to the _halte_. It seemed possible that by now the infantry would at least have got a hold on the railway, from where they could command the level ground around the pit (which was only 300 yards farther on), and, by keeping down the hostile machine-gun fire, facilitate the rescue. Our remaining tank, accordingly, was sent forward again, accompanied by Wadeson, Duddridge, and a runner, Hilton. The little expedition disappeared among the smoke of shells bursting between us and the Douai road, and we settled ourselves to wait.

It was not long, however, before the tank returned, at a crawl. It had developed engine trouble almost at once, and Wadeson had sent it back. He had gone on himself with Duddridge and Hilton to try to reach the capsized tank on foot. The story of this conspicuously gallant attempt makes a tragic footnote to the chronicle of that morning’s misfortunes.

It was, I suppose, nearly an hour later, and the Major and I were below in the dug-out, when Wadeson reappeared, the only survivor of the little party. He looked frightfully ill, and was in fact hysterical and on the verge of a collapse, having been badly gassed. Afterwards, while I was trying to get him to rest near one of the dressing stations in the road, where a Canadian doctor had attended to him, I heard his account of the forlorn hope.

Having sent back the tank, the three rescuers crossed the Douai road and cautiously approached the railway. They passed the level crossing without incident, although they could see nothing of our infantry and had no idea of where the front line ran. Having come so far in safety, they assumed that it must now be beyond the railway. Creeping forward, they were allowed to reach the tank. It lay completely on its side (I saw it a few days later) in the end one of a row of four or five large pits, each about 30 feet by 12 and 5 feet deep. One track had slipped over the edge, and the machine (a female) had then fallen on its left sponson, filling the pit. Whatever these excavations were, they were not deliberate tank traps, as alleged. Some had steps cut in the walls, and probably they were dug out to accommodate sunk huts in connection with a large engineers’ dump of timber, wire, &c., which was formed at the _halte_. The rescuers found Lewis guns lying outside the tank, and its right sponson doors wide open to the sky. They had just looked inside, and realised that the crew was gone, when a number of machine-guns opened on them at close range. Except for the pit itself, in which they would merely have been trapped, the nearest sort of cover was a small mound of earth fifty yards away toward the railway, the ground everywhere else in this neighbourhood being absolutely flat. They ran for the mound, pursued by converging streams of bullets. Hilton was killed almost at once. Duddridge was shot, apparently through the body, within a few yards of the exiguous shelter. Wadeson alone reached the latter unhurt and flung himself down behind it. He made repeated attempts to crawl out again to Duddridge, who was dying before his eyes and almost within reach, but every time he showed his head the bullets whipped up the earth all round it. He must have lain here for some time. At length, seeing that poor Duddridge was dead, he began the hazardous task of creeping back to the railway. He accomplished this successfully, although under heavy fire; but on the way a gas-shell burst immediately in front of him, and he inhaled the fumes before he realised what had happened.

III.

So ended, as far as the 7th Tank Battalion was concerned, not only this miserable and inexcusable fiasco at Sancourt, but also all direct participation in the war. The battalion was not again employed in action, although we sent a few tanks to Escadœuvres a week later; for, excepting one or two in B Company, it no longer had any machines fit to fight. While we had been suffering for other people’s blunders on the morning of the 30th, C Company had met with better fortune, but had lost two-thirds of their little section. The tank borrowed from us broke its tracks while crossing the railway between Sancourt and Tilloy. The crew of a second machine had a positively miraculous escape. A 5.9 came through the roof and burst inside, and yet no one was touched except the tank commander, Collins, who sustained a scratched finger. The third tank reached Tilloy, helped the Canadians to establish themselves there, and then rallied.

I have said enough, perhaps, about the staff work of the 12th Canadian Brigade. As, however, the Canadian Corps took up the cudgels on behalf of their unit, and complained of our alleged misdeeds, I will recapitulate the evidence. Apart from the circumstances that we received no definite operation orders whatever, verbal or written, and that zero was fixed (and put forward four hours) without any notification being sent to us, the Brigadier, having told us to meet him in the sunken road at 5 A.M., did not in fact arrive there until 11. Nor did any responsible member of his staff: during this period, with the action already in progress, the only brigade representative at advanced headquarters was the Intelligence Officer, a subaltern, who did not even know that tanks were co-operating. The initial error about the position of the front line (which was never more than a few yards beyond the Douai road, and almost certainly did not include Sancourt) may have been excusable in the uncertain conditions of semi-open warfare; but the fables which came through on the field-telegraph after the action had begun are more than I can explain. Bad map-reading may have had something to do with them. Even the artillery was afflicted by the general malady, to judge from the fact that Blécourt was found by our tank to be almost untouched, at a time when it was supposed to be smothered by concentrated shell-fire. This accumulation of blunders convicts the 12th Brigade of mismanagement, not, unfortunately, too uncommon in our huge army as a whole, but quite exceptional in the Canadian Corps. Before this date tanks had often suffered, from other quarters, in a similar manner. The attack on Monchy-le-Preux, on 11th April 1917, is a case in point.

The general situation at the end of the morning, in so far as it was susceptible of definition, appears to have been that the 12th Brigade had at length a permanent grip of Sancourt and a more uncertain one of the railway beyond. Nothing more had been accomplished. The ambitious plan of exploitation on the left never, of course, got so far as a beginning. The brigade suffered very heavy casualties. The other brigade on the right seems to have made adequate arrangements, and in consequence carried most of its objectives, including Tilloy, an important outwork of Cambrai, although only a single tank was in at the finish. Before Cambrai itself fell, however, the Canadians were to have several hard days of fighting in front of them.

In this, our final action, one officer (Wadeson) and twenty-five N.C.O.’s and men of A Company were engaged. Of this little total, two at least were killed, seven were captured, of whom two were known to be seriously wounded, and twelve were slightly injured in various ways--twenty-one in all. On the following day we received notification of the award of a D.C.M. to poor Duddridge for his exploit at Beugny. For his two attempts to rescue his crew at Sancourt a recommendation for a posthumous V.C. was sent in, but I do not think anything more was heard of it. Wadeson received the Military Cross.

IV.

The affair at Sancourt, besides closing the active career of the 7th Tank Battalion, happens to provide also an appropriate peg on which to hang a few general remarks which I have been storing up against such an opportunity. They may not appear to be essential to the subject of this book, but they will be all the better for an airing.

Local operations of the Sancourt type, recurring daily, naturally attracted little attention amid the larger features of the general offensive. They were insignificant episodes in the whole, even when they employed as many troops and cost as many lives as ever fought and died at Talavera or Inkerman. On the other hand, a modern battle, after the set programme of the first day, becomes merely a series of these episodes. They react upon one another, and by their success or failure influence in a varying degree the main strategy. They form, in short, the greater part of an offensive, which the public conceives only as a succession of spectacular, full-dress attacks on well-defined positions. And to those who take part in them they assume inevitably a dimension out of all ratio to their true scale. The modern army commander sits in a house many miles behind the line, and is able to take a detached view of all that happens: perhaps he goes fishing, like Kuroki or the General of the story in the ‘Green Curve’; but the platoon or company commander who sees his men slaughtered in front of some trench or village, and can yet reflect philosophically that they are only inconsiderable atoms in a huge and complex mechanism, will never, happily for mankind, be discovered. It is partly for this reason that contemporary newspaper accounts of battles are now so diluted as scarcely to make even sense, all individual impressions of the fighting, if unfavourable in tone, being suppressed. For these impressions, while perfectly honest, may together give a totally false idea of the situation as a whole. A case in point is that of the informants who supplied the data for the famous Sunday telegram describing the retreat from Mons. They told the truth so far as they knew it, and an unscrupulous or very gullible journalist, feeling himself a second Russell, did the rest. In any case, there is no excuse for the opposite extreme of ignorant optimism and buffoonery to which our newspapers became wedded, and in which, presumably, they were encouraged. The point I am approaching laboriously in this digression, however, is that a similar state of things seems to obtain, with no justification whatever, now that we are getting professedly sober and accurate histories of the war. Instead of a faithful picture, made up like all things of good and bad, we find the details keyed up to a universal and artificial tone, and so altered beyond recognition, to suit the blazing colours of the general design. All is for the best in the best of all possible armies. Unmerited misfortune occasionally intrudes, but it is never admitted that any one has made a mistake. All Generals are infallible and all soldiers heroic. I am not speaking, of course, of that class of history which deals only with large strategical and tactical features, and from which the personal equation and the small undercurrents of battle, pulling this way and that, necessarily are omitted. Histories of this kind usually are written by soldiers, and the general public does not read them: it likes stronger and simpler fare; and we have in consequence volumes which attempt to give a detailed picture of events as they affected units and even individuals. These, apparently, are to be written by novelists. The ordinary novelist is at his worst when he tries to keep to facts. He mistakes a profuse harvest of names and numbers for an accurate statement. He depends for the most part on official documents which are sure to be more or less unconscious perversions of the truth. And so it is that we are threatened with elaborate histories which are not histories at all, books in which an appearance of almost pedantic veracity is built up out of a mass of inaccurate and misleading details.

I have been provoked especially to this discursion by an accident. While I was writing my account of the action at Sancourt, as I saw it, I found in a library the final volume of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘British Campaigns in France and Flanders.’ With some difficulty, owing to the peculiar arrangement of the narrative, I discovered his brief reference to the fiasco on 30th September. It is a typical example of the facile journalistic style which conceals while it affects candour. “By 9.45 in the morning,” he writes, “the 12th Canadian Brigade had taken Sancourt and had entered Blécourt, where some fierce bludgeon work was going on.... For a moment the 12th Canadian Brigade was staggered by a heavy counter which broke upon it, but the ranks soon rallied and the ground was regained.” There appears to be no particular point here to which one can take exception, apart from that characteristic touch about “bludgeon work” at Blécourt; and yet the general impression deliberately given to the reader is entirely opposed to the facts. There lies the mischief of this ill-informed type of narrative, especially when it is inspired by a determination to find no fault with any one. Even as a statement of events, the account is typically vague. Ground, we are told, “was regained.” What ground? No place is specified. The reader very wisely is left in doubt as to what happened in Blécourt after the “bludgeon work,” but he is at liberty to assume, on his own responsibility, that it was that village which was “regained.” Nothing, of course, is said about any breakdown in the arrangements, because Sir Arthur, having depended upon official Canadian sources of information, probably was quite ignorant that such a breakdown ever occurred. These incidents are not mentioned in official documents. He seems to realise, however, that everything had not gone according to plan, and, true to his brief, conceals the suspicion in vague phraseology. It must never be admitted that things go wrong if it can possibly be avoided. My chief contention is that in the circumstances it would have been far better if he had left the matter (and the book) altogether alone.

This will seem an impertinent fuss about nothing, and in any case an unfair method of criticism. An isolated and trivial instance of inaccuracy is no proof that the disease is chronic. But, unfortunately, we have a multitude of proofs that it is. I could quote a dozen or a score of similar instances, within my own experience, out of this one volume, to say nothing of the earlier ones which I have read and forgotten. Now this book probably has a very large circulation. It was trumpeted everywhere as the first authentic history of our share in the war. Yet, as a history, while desperately conscientious in its own way, it is thoroughly bad. Some unhappy person or persons must have spent months, which might have been far better employed, in collecting and verifying the names of battalions and individuals which clog its pages. Not only is it impossible to see the wood for the trees; one cannot see even the trees because of the undergrowth. Verisimilitude, which is infinitely more important than literal accuracy, is not to be obtained by reciting a string of nouns and numerals, still less by concealing every fact which does not agree with the thesis of perfection conquering adversity. There is no attempt at any broad treatment of events, nor any comprehensible explanation of the sudden reversal of fortune which ensued after the three great German offensives had shot their bolt in 1918. The most revolutionary feature of the war (to reintroduce our King Charles’s head) is hardly noticed. The author seems to be unaware of the complete change of tactics initiated at Cambrai and determining every subsequent operation we undertook; or, at least, if he is aware of it, he has not troubled to convey it intelligibly to his readers. It is enough to point out that in a volume dealing with the whole of our final offensive, from Hamel and the great tank victory on 8th August up to the Armistice, and professing especially to deal with the fortunes of every division, brigade, and battalion, the word “tank” does not even appear in the index! From the few cursory references to tanks in the text, the reader might imagine that these machines controlled themselves, rather indifferently and in a comic manner, and fired automatically their own guns. He is left to discover, by the light of nature, that there existed such an organisation as the Tank Corps, with six brigades, vast workshops, a numerous personnel distributed in eighteen battalions, novel tactics and problems of its own, and a predominant influence upon the fate of the war. We read of “dour” Yorkshiremen, of “hatchet-faced” Colonials, of the inevitable “grim, determined” faces of every one, of “iron” divisions, and even of infantry who go “blithely” into battle (which no sane creature ever did); but in this last volume I can remember only one perfunctory reference to the men who fought and stifled and were burnt alive in tanks while leading these others to the ultimate victory....

It is a great pity (if one may say so without further offence) that the creator of Sherlock Holmes did not stick to his very excellent last, instead of creating a bad precedent. One devil does not make a hell; but the trouble of it is, we shall get more of these books, more tactful omissions, more _clichés_ and claptrap and crown octavo journalese. The average Englishman would far sooner read a history of the war by, let us say, Mr Hall Caine or Miss Ethel M. Dell, especially if published in cheap parts with cheaper illustrations, than one by a competent authority. He is built that way, unfortunately, and he will get what he wants and deserves. There is no statute of limitations for literature; and, what is at the heart of the mischief, there seems to be no longer such a thing as a literary or artistic conscience, call it which you will.