Fields of Victory Part 3

_The Battle of Havrincourt_ (September 12th-18th) was a struggle for the outer defences of the Hindenburg line, which had to be carried before the line itself could be dealt with. Six days secured the positions wanted for the final attack, and in those six days fifteen British divisions had defeated twenty German divisions, and captured nearly 12,000 prisoners and 100 guns.

That rapid summary has brought me back to the point from which I started. In three months and a half the "mighty conflict," in which, on the British side, something short of 700,000 bayonets were engaged, had rushed on from victory to victory; Foch and Haig working together in an ideal marriage of minds and resources; the attack retaining everywhere by the help of the tanks--of which, in the Battle of Amiens, General Rawlinson had 400 under his command--the elements of surprise and mobility. The hara.s.sed enemy would find himself hard pressed in a particular section, driven to retreat, with heavy losses in ground, guns and prisoners; and then, as soon as he had discovered a line on which to stand and had thrown in his reserves, the attack would be broken off, only to begin again elsewhere, and with the same energy, unexpectedness, and success. British Staff work and British tactics were at their highest point of excellence, and the spirit of the men, fanned by that breeze which Victory and Hope bring with them, were, in the Commander-in-Chief's word, "magnificent."

And so we come to the evening of the 26th of September. Along these hill-sides, where we stand, on the west side of the Ca.n.a.l du Nord, lay Sir Julian Byng and the Third Army. To his right, on the south-east, was General Rawlinson, facing the strongest portion of the Hindenburg line, with two American divisions, led by Major-General Read, under his command; while on his left, and to the north, the First Army, under General Home, held the line along the Ca.n.a.l du Nord, and the marshes of the Sensee.

The most critical moment in the campaign had arrived. For in the a.s.sault on the Hindenburg line heavy risks had to be run. It is clear, I think, from the wording of Marshal Haig's dispatch, that in respect to the attack he took a special responsibility, which was abundantly vindicated by the event. The British War Cabinet was extremely anxious; the French Generalissimo was content to leave it to the British Commander-in-Chief; and Sir Douglas Haig, confident "that the British attack was the essential part of the general scheme, and that the moment was favourable," had the decision to make, and made it as we know. It is evident also from the dispatch that Sir Douglas was quite aware, not only of the military, but of the political risk. "The political effects of an unsuccessful attack upon a position so well known as the Hindenburg line would be large, and would go far to revive the declining _morale_, not only of the German Army, but of the German people." This aspect of the matter must, of course, have been terribly present to the mind of the British War Cabinet.

Moreover, the British Armies had been fighting continuously for nearly two months, and their losses, though small in proportion to what had been gained and to the prisoners taken, were still considerable.

Nevertheless, with all these considerations in mind, "_I decided_,"

says General Haig, "_to proceed with the attack_."[6]

[6] The italics are mine.

There lie before me a Memorandum, by an officer of the General Staff, on the Hindenburg line, drawn up about a month after the capture of the main section of it, and also a German report, made by a German officer in the spring of 1917. The great fortified system, as it subsequently became, was then incomplete. It was begun late in 1916, when, after the battle of the Somme, the German High Command had determined on the retreat which was carried out in February and March of the following year. It was dug by Russian prisoners, and the forced labour of French and Belgian peasants. The best engineering and tactical brains of the German Army went to its planning; and both officers and men believed it to be impregnable. The whole vast system was from four miles to seven miles deep, one interlocked and inter-communicating system of trenches, gun emplacements, machine-gun positions, fortified villages, and the rest, running from north-west to south-east across France, behind the German lines. In front of the British forces, writes an officer of the First Army, before the capture of the Drocourt-Queant portion of the line, ran "line upon line, mile upon mile, of defences such as had never before been imagined; system after complicated system of trenches, protected with machine-gun positions, with trench mortars, manned by a highly-trained infantry, and by machine-gunners unsurpa.s.sed for skill and courage.

The whole was supported by artillery of all calibres. The defences were the result of long-trained thought and of huge work. They had been there unbroken for years; and they had been constantly improved and further organised." And the great ca.n.a.ls--the Ca.n.a.l du Nord and the Scheldt Ca.n.a.l, but especially the latter, were worked into the system with great skill, and strongly fortified. It is evident indeed that the mere existence of this fortified line gave a certain high confidence to the German Army, and that when it was captured, that confidence, already severely shaken, finally crumbled and broke.

Indeed, by the time the British Armies had captured the covering portions of the line, and stood in front of the line itself, the _morale_ of the German Army as a whole was no longer equal to holding it. For our casualties in taking it, though severe, were far less than we had suffered in the battle of the Scarpe; and one detects in some of our reports, when the victory was won, a certain amazement that we had been let off--comparatively--so lightly. Nevertheless, if there had been any failure in attack, or preparation, or leadership, we should have paid dearly for it; and a rally on the Hindenburg line, had we allowed the enemy any chance of it, might have prolonged the war for months. But there was no failure, and there was no rally.

Never had our tried Army leaders, General Horne, General Byng, and General Rawlinson carried out more brilliantly the general scheme of the two supreme Commanders; never was the Staff work better; never were the subordinate services more faultlessly efficient. An American officer who had served with distinction in the British Army before the entry of his own country into the war, spoke to me in Paris with enthusiasm of the British Staff work during this three months'

advance. "It was simply _marvellous!_--People don't understand."

"Everything was ready," writes an eye-witness of the First Army.[7]

The rapidity of our advance completely surprised the enemy, some of whose batteries were captured as they were coming into action. Pontoon and trestle bridges were laid across the ca.n.a.l with lightning speed.

The engineers, coming close behind the firing line, brought up the railways, light and heavy, as though by magic--built bridges, repaired roads. The Intelligence Staff, in the midst of all this rapid movement "gathered and forwarded information of the enemy's forces in front, his divisions, his reserves, his intentions." Telephones and telegraphs were following fast on the advance, connecting every department, whether stationary or still on the move. News was coming in at every moment--of advances, captures, possibilities in new country, casualties, needs. All these were being considered and collated by the Staff, decisions taken and orders sent out.

[7] The following paragraphs are based on the deeply interesting account of the First Army operations of last year, written by Captain W. Inge, Intelligence and Publicity Officer on Sir Henry Home's Staff.

Meanwhile divisions were being relieved, billets arranged for, transport organised along the few practicable roads. Ambulances were coming and going. Petrol must be accessible everywhere; breakdown gangs and repair lorries must be ready always to clear roads, and mend bridges. And the men doing these jobs must be handled, fed, and directed, as well as the fighting line.

Letters came and went. The men were paid. Records of every kind were kept. New maps were made, printed, and sent round--and quickly, since food and supplies depended on them. "One breakdown on a narrow road, one failure of an important message over a telephone wire--and how much may depend on it!"

"Yet thanks to intelligent and devoted work, to experience and resource, how little in these later stages of the war has gone wrong!"

The fighting men, the Staff work, the auxiliary services of the British Army--the long welding of war had indeed brought them by last autumn to a wonderful efficiency. And that efficiency was never so sharply tested as by the exchange of a stationary war for a war of movement. The Army swept on "over new but largely devastated country,"

into unknown land, where all the problems, as compared with the long years of trench war, were new. Yet nothing failed--"except the astounded enemy's power of resistance."

So much from a first-hand record of the First Army's advance. It carries me back as I summarise it to my too brief stay at Valenciennes, and the conversations of the evening with the Army Commander and several members of his Staff. The talk turned largely on this point of training, Staff work, and general efficiency. There was no boasting whatever; but one read the pride of gallant and devoted men in the forces they had commanded. "Then we have not muddled through?" I said, laughing, to the Army Commander. Sir Henry smiled.

"No, indeed, we have _not_ muddled through!"

And the results of this efficiency were soon seen. Take first the attack of the First and Third Armies on this section. North of Moeuvres the Canadians, under General Home, crossing the Ca.n.a.l in the early morning of September 27th, on a narrow front, and spreading out behind the German troops holding the Ca.n.a.l, by a fan-shaped manoeuvre, brilliantly executed, which won reluctant praise from captured German officers, pushed on for Bourlon and Cambrai. The 11th Division, following close behind, turned northward, with our barrage from the heavy guns, far to the west, protecting their left flank, towards the enemy line along the Sensee, taking ground and villages as they went.

Meanwhile the front German line, pinned between our barrage behind them and the Ca.n.a.l, taken in front and rear, and attacked by the 56th Division, had nothing to do but surrender.

"The day's results," says my informant of the First Army, "were the great Hindenburg system (in this northern section) finally broken, the height before Cambrai captured, thousands of prisoners and great quant.i.ties of guns taken, and our line at its furthest point 7,000 yards nearer Germany. A great triumph!"

Meanwhile in the centre--just where I have asked the reader of this paper to stand with me in imagination on the hill-side overlooking the Ca.n.a.l du Nord--General Byng's Third Army, including the Guards'

Division, forced the Ca.n.a.l crossings in face of heavy fire, and moving forward towards Cambrai in the half light of dawn, took trenches and villages from the fighting and retreating enemy. After the forward troops were over, the engineers rushed on, bridging the Ca.n.a.l, under the fire of the German guns, rapidly clearing a way for infantry and supplies. A map issued by the Tank Corps shows that close to this point on the Cambrai-Bapaume road six tanks were operating--among them no doubt that agile fellow, whose tracks still show on the hillside!--while on the whole front of the Third and First Armies sixty-five tanks were in action. By the end of that long day 10,000 prisoners had been taken, and 200 guns, an earnest of what was to follow.

It was on the front of the Fourth Army, however, in the section from St. Quentin to Gouzeaucourt, that the heaviest blow was planned by the Commander-in-Chief. Here the "exceptional strength of the enemy's position made a prolonged bombardment necessary." So while the First and Third Armies were advancing, on the north, with a view to lightening the task of the Fourth Army, for forty-eight hours General Rawlinson maintained a terrible bombardment, which drove the defenders of the famous line underground, and cut them off from food and supplies. And on the morning of the 29th the Fourth Army attacked.

But I have no intention of repeating in any detail the story of that memorable day. The exploit of the 46th Division under General Boyd, in swimming and capturing the southern section of the Ca.n.a.l below Bellenglise, will long rank as one of the most amazing stories of the war. Down the steep banks clambered the men, flung themselves into the water, and with life-belts, and any other aid that came handy, crossed the Ca.n.a.l under fire, and clambered up the opposite bank. And the achievement is all the more welcome to British pride in British pluck, when it is remembered that, according to the German doc.u.ment I have already quoted, it was an impossible one. "The deep ca.n.a.l cutting from the southern end of the ca.n.a.l tunnel ... with its high steep banks const.i.tutes a strong obstacle. _The enemy will hardly attack here._"

So writes the German officer describing the line.

But it was precisely here that "the enemy" did attack!--capturing prisoners (4,000 of them by the end of the day, with 70 guns) and German batteries in action, before the German Command had had time to realise the direction of the attack.

It was not, however, at this point that the severest fighting of the battle occurred. Across the great tunnel to the north of Bellicourt, where the Ca.n.a.l pa.s.ses for nearly two miles underground, ran the main Hindenburg system, carrying it eastwards over the Ca.n.a.l itself, and it was here that the fiercest resistance was put up. The two American divisions had the post of honour and led the advance. It was a heavy task, largely owing to the fact that it had not been possible to master the German outpost line completely before the advance started, and numerous small bodies of the enemy, left behind in machine-gun posts, tunnels, and dug-outs, were able to hara.s.s it seriously for a time. But the "Americans fought like lions"--how often I heard that phrase from our own men in France! The American losses were no doubt higher than would have been the case with more experienced troops, seasoned by long fighting,--so I have understood from officers present at the battle. It was perhaps partly because of "their eagerness to push on" without sufficiently clearing up the ground behind them that they lost so heavily, and that advanced elements of the two divisions were for a time cut off. But nothing daunted these fresh and gallant men. Their sacrifices, as Marshal Haig has recently said, addressing General O'Ryan, who commanded the 27th Division in this fight, were "made with a courage and devotion unsurpa.s.sed in all the dread story of this war. The memory of our great attack on the Hindenburg line on September 29th, 1918, in which the 27th American division, with troops from all parts of the British Empire, took so gallant and glorious a part, will never die, and the service then rendered by American troops will be remembered with grat.i.tude and admiration throughout the British Empire."

That misty September day marks indeed a culminating moment in the history of the Empire and the war. It took six more days of sharp fighting to capture the last remnants of the Hindenburg line, and six more weeks before Germany, beaten and demoralised by sea and land, accepted the Armistice terms imposed by the Allies. But on September 29th, the war was for all practical purposes won. General Gouraud at the time was making his brilliant advance in Champagne. The Americans were pushing forward in the Argonne. Both movements were indispensable; but it was the capture of this great fortified system which really decided the war. "No attack in the history of the world, was ever better carried out," said Marshal Foch to Mr. Ward Price, in Paris, on April 16th last--"than the one made on the Hindenburg line near St. Quentin and Cambrai, by the Fourth, Third and First British Armies, on September 27th-29th. The enemy positions were most formidable. Nothing could stop the British. They swept right over them. It was a glorious day for British arms." It was also the climax of two months' fighting in which French, British, and Americans had all played to the full the part laid down for them by the history of the preceding years, and in which it fell to the British Army to give the final and victorious blow.

_Non n.o.bis, Domine!--non n.o.bis!_

It will, I think, be of use to the non-military reader if I append to the sketch I have just given of the last phase of the British effort, the following paragraphs written last January by an officer of the General Staff, in response to the question indicated in the opening sentence.

"I have been asked to say what in my opinion were the most critical and anxious stages of the series of great successful battles opened on the 8th August, 1918. The question is not easy, for the whole period was one of high tension, calling for continuous and unsparing effort.

"From one point of view, the opening battle east of Amiens was decisive, for it marked the turning point of the campaign on the British front. Its moral effects, both on our own troops and on the enemy, were far-reaching and give the key to the whole of the succeeding struggle. Nothing less than a sweeping success, such as that actually achieved, could have produced this result. The days preceding the attack, therefore, const.i.tuted a most anxious period. On the other hand, from the purely military point of view, our chances of success were exceedingly good. The attack was to be delivered by fresh troops, second to none in the world in fighting qualities, a.s.sisted by an unprecedented concentration of mechanical aids to victory.

Preparations had been long and careful, every contingency had been thought out, and there was every reason to expect that our attack would be a complete surprise.

"Militarily, the more critical period was that which immediately followed the battle when, having reached the line of the old Somme defences of 1916, it was decided to switch the point of attack to the area north of the Somme. On the success of this manoeuvre depended whether the attack of the 8th August was to be a single isolated victory comparable to the battle of Messines in June, 1917, or whether it was to develop into something very much greater. The decision was a grave one, and was in some sense a departure from previous practice.

The enemy was now on the alert, the troops to be employed had already been severely tried in the earlier fighting of the year, and failure would have called down severe criticism upon the wisdom of abandoning so quickly the scene of our first great success.

"It was only after the first days of heavy fighting (in the battle of Bapaume), during which progress was comparatively slow and the situation full of anxiety, that the event proved that the step had been wisely taken.

"Then, when the success of this bold manoeuvre had declared itself, and the enemy had begun the first stages of his great retreat, the next critical period arrived on the 2nd September, when the powerful defences of the Drocourt-Queant line were attacked and broken. The effect of this success was to render the whole of the enemy's positions to the south untenable and to throw him back definitely upon the Hindenburg line.

"Undoubtedly the most critical and anxious period of the whole advance arrived at the end of September. The culminating attacks of the 27th and 29th of that month on the Ca.n.a.l du Nord and Hindenburg line defences shattered the most formidable series of field defences that military science has yet devised and drove the enemy into open country. These attacks, indeed, accomplished far more than this. They definitely broke the power of resistance of the German Armies in the field. In the battles which followed, our troops were able to take greater and greater risks, and on every occasion with complete success.

"Yet again, the risk was great. If the enemy had succeeded in holding the Hindenburg position, he would have been little, if anything, worse off, territorially at any rate, than he had been before he began his great adventure of the spring. It was clearly a time for him to pull himself together and hold on at all costs.

"On the other hand and with all its difficulties, so favourable an opportunity of securing immediate and decisive victory, by pressing our advantage, could scarcely be expected to present itself again. The decision was therefore taken and was justified by success.

"After this battle, our chief anxieties lay rather in the ability of our supply system to keep pace with our Armies than in any resistance that the enemy could offer. In the succeeding battles our troops accomplished with comparative ease feats which earlier in the struggle it would have been madness to attempt; and in the final battle of the war, begun on the 4th November, the crossing of the Sambre and the clearing of the great Mormal Forest furnished a wonderful tribute to the complete ascendency which their earlier victories had enabled our troops to establish over the enemy."

CHAPTER IV

GENERAL GOURAUD AT STRASBOURG

The Maine--Verdun--Champagne--it is in connection with these three names that the French war consciousness shows itself most sensitive and most profound, just as the war consciousness of Great Britain vibrates most deeply when you test it with those other names--Ypres--Arras--the Somme--Cambrai. As is the name of Ypres to the Englishman, so is that of Verdun to the Frenchman, invested even with a more poignant significance, since the countryside where so many sons of France laid down their lives was their own adored mother-land, indivisibly part of themselves, as those grim, water-logged flats north and south of the Menin road could never be to a Lancashire or London boy. And no other French battle-field wears for a Frenchman quite the same aureole that shines for ever on those dark, riven hills of Verdun. But it seemed to me that in the feeling of France, Champagne came next--Champagne, a.s.sociated first of all with Castelnau's victory in the autumn of 1915, then with General Nivelle's tragic check in 1917, with the serious crisis in the French Army in May and June of that year; and finally with General Gouraud's brilliant successes in the summer and autumn of 1918.

Six weeks ago I found myself in Strasbourg, where General Gouraud is in command of the Fourth Army, now stationed in Alsace. Through a long and beautiful day we had driven south from Metz, across the great fortified zone to the south of that town; with its endless trenches and wire-fields, its camouflaged roads, its railway stations packed with guns, its ammunition dumps and battery-emplacements, which Germany had prepared at the outset of the war, and which still awaited the Americans last November, had the Allies' campaign not ended when it did. There was a bright sun on all the wide and lovely landscape, on the shining rivers, the flooded s.p.a.ces and the old towns, and magnificent clouds lay piled above the purple Vosges, to the south and east. We caught up a French division on the march, with long lines of lorries, artillery wagons, guns and field-kitchens, and as our car got tangled up with it in pa.s.sing through the small towns and villages, we had ample time to notice the behaviour of the country-folk, and the reception given to the troops. Nothing, it seemed to me, could have been warmer and more spontaneous, especially as soon as we crossed the boundary of Alsace. The women came running out to their door-steps, the children formed a tumultuous escort, men and women peered smiling out of the covered country carts, and tradesmen left their counters to see the show.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _British Official Photograph_ The wonderful exploit of one Brigade of the 46th Division, consisting of the South Staffords and North Staffords Regts., who crossed the St.

Quentin Ca.n.a.l, which is part of the Hindenburg Line, by swimming in life-belts. They gained their objectives and also captured two bridges which allowed the guns to be taken across. The Brigade is seen on the steep slope of the Ca.n.a.l.]

At Metz I was conscious of a hostile and bitter element in the town, not to be wondered at when one remembers that Metz has a population of 25,000 immigrant Germans out of a population of less than 70,000. But in the country towns of Alsace and in Strasbourg itself, my own impression, for what it is worth, was everywhere an impression of solid and natural rejoicing in the new order of things. That there are a large number of Germans in Strasbourg and Alsace generally is, of course, true. There were some 450,000 before the war, out of a population of rather more than two millions, and there are now at a rough estimate about 300,000, of whom nearly 100,000 are to be found in Metz and Strasbourg. The whole administration of the two provinces, with very few exceptions, was a German administration, imported from Germany, and up to the outbreak of war, the universities and the schools--_i.e._, the whole teaching profession--were German, and many of the higher clergy. The leading finance of the provinces was German.

And so on. But I cannot see any reason to doubt that the real feeling of the native population in the two provinces, whether in town or country, has remained throughout these forty-eight years strongly and pa.s.sionately French. "Since when did you expect the French to come back?" asked M. Mirman, the present Commissioner of the French Republic at Metz, of an old peasant whom he came across not long ago on an official inspection. The old man's eyes kindled--"_Depuis toujours!_" he said--"I knew it would come, but I was afraid it mightn't come till I was dead, so I used to say to my son: 'If I am dead, and the French come back, you will go to the cemetery, you will knock three times on my grave--I shall hear!' And my son promised."

My present concern, however, is not with the Alsace-Lorraine question, but with the brilliant Army Commander who now occupies what used to be the Headquarters of the German Army Corps which held Alsace. My acquaintance with him was due to a piece of audacity on my part. The record of General Gouraud in Champagne, and at the Dardanelles, was well known to me, and I had heard much of his attractive and romantic personality. So, on arriving at our hotel after a long day's motoring, and after consulting with the kind French Lieutenant who was our escort, I ventured a little note to the famous General. I said I had been the guest of the British Army for six days on our front, and was now the guest of the French Army, for a week, and to pa.s.s through Strasbourg without seeing the victor of the "front de Champagne" would be tantalising indeed. Would he spare an Englishwoman, whose love for the French nation had grown with her growth and strengthened with her years, twenty minutes of his time?