Chapter XVI: THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE (continued)

ANNEQUIN: AND THE TANK CORPS IN RETREAT.

I.

Having left Fouquières for Hesdigneul, where our tanks were parked up against the wall of the churchyard, A Company headquarters now occupied part of an immense farm--a great quadrangle of barns, stables, and living-rooms, with an attractive garden and one of the most magnificent kitchens I have ever seen. Two old ladies, with their niece (who had been educated in England), managed the establishment, the men of the family being as a matter of course in the Army. One of them, in fact, had been killed. They were cousins of the people who owned our battalion headquarters at Boyeffles; and the niece was provoked to one of her rare speeches when some one, in the usual English manner, referred to her relatives’ house as a “château.” “Ce n’est pas un château!” she said indignantly. “C’est une maison seulement ...!” Before we came these kind people had suffered the infliction of an R.A.F. mess, whose members as usual got drunk every night and broke the furniture; and it took us some days to persuade them that there were Englishmen who knew how to behave. After that we were very good friends.

During our stay here, which lasted for about three weeks, a variety of nebulous schemes ran through their brief careers. One, due to a sudden panic, involved the defence of Béthune against some expected onslaught. The tanks were to take up positions on the canal quay, guarding the precious bridges. Our enthusiasm for this was a little damped by the discovery one day that our proposed lying-up point, a parade-ground on the outskirts of the town, had been uprooted by a deluge of 8-inch shells. Behind these projects, like some tiresome genie, there hung always the egregious “Delta” operation, in one or another of its endless shapes. And then, of all things, came a fresh scare about the distant sector south of Arras, more than twenty miles away; and I spent three days with Henriquez, Beale, and Jack Brown on motor-bicycles or in a box-car, hunting for tank routes between our old Bouvigny area and such remote places as Bailleulmont and Pas, beyond the Arras-Doullens road. On one of these happy jaunts Henriquez led us inadvertently in the Ford car to within a few hundred yards of Hébuterne, where the front line then ran. The road was pitted with large shell-holes, but I have never seen any one perform such miracles with a Ford, or any other car, as did our driver when he discovered our mistake. We rushed into Monchy-au-Bois at about thirty miles an hour, and having climbed out there to adjust our dislocated limbs, were welcomed by a sudden deluge of high-velocity shells. There were a number of French troops in this neighbourhood, and also the remains of the 2nd Tank Brigade, whose few surviving machines were still scattered thinly behind the left of the 3rd Army, in accordance with the “Savage Rabbit” policy. Practically speaking, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Brigades were now organised as Lewis-gun units, with a small backing of Whippets and worn-out Mark IV.’s, for 200 of the latter had been lost in the retreat. It was because the 1st Brigade, alone unaffected by the disaster, and mustering nearly 100 tanks, was the only striking force left to the Tanks Corps, that our reconnaissances covered at this period an area extending from La Bassée to Auchonvillers, near the Ancre. We might be needed anywhere at any moment.

The first phase of the German offensive, however, had come virtually to an end. The battle of movement below Arras was solidifying, as it were, in front of Amiens. The third phase, about to open upon the _Chemin des Dames_, would affect the mass of the British forces only indirectly. But the second phase, begun on the Lys as a distraction and since exploited with vigour, was not (to our knowledge) definitely finished. It had extended northward to the Salient, where we had lost all the ground won at such a terrible cost in the previous autumn; the Germans were on Kemmel Hill, in the ruins of Bailleul, and along the outskirts of the great wood of Nieppe; and now developments were expected immediately south of the La Bassée Canal. At this time--about the middle of May--when the 7th Tank Battalion had been for five weeks extended from Aire to Béthune, the 12th Battalion was still in the neighbourhood of Simencourt, and the 11th, so far as I remember, in its old quarters at Roclincourt and Mont St Eloi. ‘Weekly Tank Notes,’ which erroneously places the 7th at Molinghem, makes out the 11th to have been between Busnes and Robecq, but I think only the Reconnaissance Officers, working on the “Delta” scheme, came up to this area.

The final stage of the Amiens battle had brought German tanks into the field for the first time. There were only three of them, but they did so much damage before they were driven off that a thorough tank scare ran through the Army, and imaginary machines were detected in scores at every point of danger. It was now believed that the Germans intended to use them in an attack along the La Bassée road with the idea of reaching Béthune by turning the obstinate point of Givenchy from the south. An increased shelling of our back areas seemed to indicate that something was in the air; and the 7th Battalion, already in the neighbourhood, was ordered suddenly to concentrate farther east, between Cambrin and Vermelles, in readiness to repel any attempt.

The day before these orders reached A Company at Hesdigneul, the German artillery provided us with a new sensation. The village had not been shelled since our arrival; but it housed, in its enormous château, the 1st Corps Headquarters, and this, I think, must have been the attraction for the appropriately colossal gun which suddenly disturbed our rustic peace. We were having tea in the farm when the whole place was shaken by a shattering crash from outside. No one paid much attention at first, as it sounded like the detonation of one of our own heavy guns, of which there were two or three on railway mountings in the neighbourhood; but the excitement in the village soon brought us out to see what had happened. It was then apparent that we were being shelled, and by something of uncommon size. A great pall of black smoke was drifting away from a field close at hand, where an observation balloon had its quarters, and I found immediately afterwards a steel splinter, some eight inches long, in our courtyard. Several more of these alarming explosions followed during that evening, and the discovery of the complete base of a shell proved the offending weapon to be of 17-inch calibre--the heaviest long-range gun then in use by any army.

The following morning there came the orders for our move. We were to proceed that night to Sailly-Labourse, on the Béthune-Lens road, near Annequin. I hurried off on the bicycle, over the very worst cobbles I have ever encountered, to find the 3rd Infantry Brigade Headquarters at the Château des Prés, outside the village. This journey was notable for two incidents: the roads were so atrocious that my engine shook loose, causing the chain to fall off; and, as a consolation, I discovered some tins of Sullivan’s cigarettes in a Church Army canteen in Verquigneul--corn in Egypt, indeed, with a vengeance. The brigade staff in the Château des Prés had heard nothing about any tanks, but this was only to be expected. There was a wide dry moat round the château garden, where the machines could be hidden during the night, and on my way there and back I mapped out the latter half of the approach route, which Maelor Jones was reconnoitring from the Hesdigneul end. Before sunset the tanks were backing out from the churchyard wall, and having seen them started I pushed off once more for the château, to meet there some lorry loads of petrol and other stores. Rather than face again the medieval cobbles of the more direct route, I went round by Béthune and so through Beuvry on the Lens road. Béthune in those days was always rather eerie, with its deserted streets and ruinous shuttered houses and shops: it called to mind the empty town of Semur in that charming story of Mrs. Oliphant’s, ‘A Beleaguered City’; and there were times--during a bombardment, for example--when it was worse than eerie. It was being bombarded spasmodically that evening, and I did not linger to sentimentalise. At the Château des Prés I found that the brigade had at length been formally notified of our coming. This château, until the month before, had been one of the most eligible headquarters, for its advanced position, in all France. It was never shelled, it had all its furniture, and even all its window glass. But now this Utopian age was no more; the grounds were pitted with shell-holes, the trees were lopped and splintered, and all the windows were broken. The cellars had been sand-bagged, and every other preparation made for an enforced reversion to underground life. And that evening I received an unpleasant reminder of these altered circumstances, for as I walked down the terrace steps about eight o’clock on my way to meet the tanks, a shell came whistling over the roof and burst half a dozen yards in front of me on the gravel path. Very fortunately for me it burst forward and away from me, scoring a sort of fan of smoking grooves in the grass border. It was, in fact, an incendiary shell, presumably intended for the village, for a second burst some distance away, and the third fell among the houses. As I ran for shelter out of the smoke of the first explosion, heads appeared at the château windows, and a voice inquired inevitably, “Where did that one go to?”

This interruption was short-lived; and after a precautionary wait I walked off through Sailly-Labourse to find the tanks. They were fairly well up to time, but to get the twelve of them into the château moat was a tedious process. The moat was lined thickly with trees and bushes, which gave admirable cover in the daytime, but added to the difficulties of introducing tanks on a dark night. No lights, of course, could be used. It was after one o’clock before everything was settled satisfactorily, and Maelor Jones and I could accompany the Major to the comparatively luxurious shelter of a cellar in the château lodge.

After five or six hours’ sleep we were washing and shaving, with the usual inadequate resources, when the Colonel’s car drew up outside. At the same time there arrived, in an evil hour for himself, poor fellow, a Reconnaissance Officer named Saul from the 12th Battalion. Having been familiar with the Annequin area as a private in the infantry, he had been sent to put his knowledge at our disposal. While I finished my perfunctory toilet in the lodge, Saul and Maelor Jones strolled on together to the garden at the back of the house, where the servants we had brought with us were preparing some sort of breakfast. As I followed a couple of minutes later, a shell burst in the garden, which was full of brigade details and our own people. We all ran like hares for cover, and I remember seeing a dozen pairs of heels flashing upwards as their owners, including the Colonel and other dignitaries, leaped into the moat. I was in time to slide down after them, on top of a kettle and a primus stove, just as the second shell arrived somewhere in the neglected flower-beds behind me. This visitation, like that of the previous evening, was intended for Sailly-Labourse, to which it passed on as soon as the German gunners had corrected their range; but the initial miscalculation cost us both Maelor Jones and Saul, who were wounded by the first shell--the former in the hand, and the latter more seriously in the leg and arm. Poor Saul had not been in the place five minutes. Fortunately, as a brigade headquarters, the château contained a telephone and a doctor; and in a quarter of an hour the two victims were in an ambulance on their way to the nearest dressing station.

Sailly-Labourse was a little over three miles from the front line. A mile nearer to the latter, across an open stretch of untended fields, was Annequin village and fosse, the former a straggling collection of houses joining on to Cambrin on the La Bassée road. Annequin Fosse, beneath which the Major and I were to live like troglodytes for the next three weeks, resembled nothing so much as a chessboard and a disproportionately large pawn, side by side. The chessboard was a walled square filled with miners’ cottages in symmetrical rows, the streets crossing at right angles. Beside it, on a flat base of slag, was the pawn--one of those pyramidal crassiers I have spoken of, perhaps 150 feet high. It was the nearest one of its type to our front trenches; and from the summit where signallers, flash-spotters, and other details lived in holes dug out of the black slag and reinforced with iron and sandbags, one obtained an admirable bird’s-eye view, not only over the German lines directly in front, but also right across the rear of the new salient north of the canal. This exceptional observation-point, so far forward, must have been invaluable to us and a serious hindrance to the enemy. At the base of the pyramid, practically invulnerable beneath twenty feet of ground, and another twenty of coal refuse, were the dug-outs which housed the brigade holding the line. The latter, for a breadth of two or three miles opposite Annequin, had not changed since it crystallised there at the end of 1914--the only sector of our whole front possessing this distinction; and both Annequin and Cambrin had been inhabited throughout, until the increased shelling before the German offensives drove the people away. As late as the middle of March, when our field-guns were firing (and drawing fire) from behind the wall which enclosed the miners’ cottages, children were playing in the streets a few yards away.

The 1st Division, then holding this sector, had the 2nd Infantry Brigade north of the canal at Givenchy-les-La-Bassée (not to be confused with the Givenchy south of Lens), and the 1st Brigade south of the canal at Cambrin and Annequin. The 3rd Brigade was in support about Sailly-Labourse. Having seen Maelor Jones and Saul despatched in the ambulance from the Château des Prés, the Major and I walked over to the Fosse to arrange with the 1st Brigade Staff the disposition of our tanks, two sections of which were to move to their final points of concealment that night. We found the brigade very sceptical about the suspected German tanks, and quite confident of repelling any ordinary attack. The 2nd Brigade had just dealt in an adequate fashion with a renewed German attempt on Givenchy. It was agreed, however, that one of our sections should be hidden among the houses of Annequin, and the other among those of Cambrin. Two sections remained in reserve at the Château des Prés. On our right B and C Companies, coming by train from Lillers and Aire to the railhead near Fouquières, were to take up positions between the Fosse and Vermelles. The Major and I were invited to live with the Brigade Staff in the dug-out beneath the slag-heap.

That night the two sections moved quietly into their new positions. Of the three tanks in Cambrin, one was screened elaborately with branches in the garden of the house used as the Support Battalion headquarters, while the other two lay up in the yard of the schoolhouse. All were in a position to move out at a moment’s notice and block the La Bassée road, which ran straight through the village. In Annequin, the other three tanks were hidden behind the miners’ cottages. A little later a third section was brought up in front of Annequin, and camouflaged against the embankment of a railway which served the mine.

We remained here for three weeks, until the beginning of June. Our life was very idle, not uncomfortable, and in many ways unusually interesting. Every morning the Major and I used to walk through Annequin to Cambrin to visit the tanks, and with that our duties usually were finished for the day. The brigade mess, in a baby Nissen hut, protected by layers of slag at the base of the crassier, was an uncommonly good one, and its members were charming. In similar huts lived some of the officers, including the Colonel commanding an artillery brigade; the General and the rest of the Staff, with ourselves, having our quarters underground, where the various offices also were situated. The weather turned exceptionally fine, with a blazing sun; and the shadeless neighbourhood of the great slag-heap, which radiated heat like the rocks of Aden, became so intolerable at times that we were driven below to the cramped dug-out, which was always cool. Lack of reading matter was a serious trial, as the nearest inhabited towns, such as Nœux-les-Mines and Barlin, were only squalid mining centres; and as a shopping resort Bruay was little better. The last time I rode into Bruay the Germans were shelling it, the shops were closing down, and harassed A.P.M.’s and military police were endeavouring to expedite the departure of some of the surplus inhabitants.

Our chief diversions at Annequin were climbing the slag-heap (on top of which two old 15-pounder guns had now been hoisted), visiting the tanks and billets of B and C Companies, running over occasionally to Hesdigneul, where we kept up a rear headquarters at the farm, and eating and sleeping a great deal. It was so unusually hot for May that we spent most of our time in shirt sleeves. A less attractive feature was the rather persistent shelling to which the neighbourhood was subjected. The expected attack never materialised; but the German artillery had frequent bursts of zeal. A field battery, in camouflaged pits in the open, a couple of hundred yards from the Fosse, came in for a great deal of attention, as did another battery in Annequin village; while the railway embankment beyond was shelled so heavily on one or two nights that some tanks of B Company, which were hidden there, were withdrawn. The G.S.O. 1 of the Division had a narrow escape on this same railway one morning, a shell knocking him down and killing his orderly. Cambrin was gassed every night, and an obnoxious German balloon which looked straight down the La Bassée road was apt to turn the gunners on to the village if people walked too openly about the street. At this time the inhabitants used to come back to fetch some of their belongings. One man had the temerity to drive up in a cart, and I saw him afterwards careering back towards Beuvry at a gallop, pursued by angry puffs of smoke and dust. After we had been living in the Fosse for about ten days, the 1st Brigade was relieved by the 3rd, and on the following morning, as I was returning with the Major from the usual round of inspection, high-velocity shells began to fall thickly about Annequin. We hurried in considerable disorder to the dug-out in the Fosse, where we found every one in a state of consternation. The new Brigadier, also on his way back from his first tour of the trenches, had been caught in the bombardment and wounded, with one of his staff--the latter seriously.

During all this time the unfortunate town of Béthune, which was only three miles away and in full view from the Fosse, was being shelled persistently. I happened to be watching it through my glasses when the church tower, which had been hit many times, was finally demolished. A great cloud of white dust billowed up over the houses, and when it cleared away the familiar landmark was gone. After a while, the Germans began to use incendiary shells, and the half-ruined town caught fire. All day the smoke hung over it, and every night, until we left, there was the glare of burning.

Toward the end of our stay a minor disaster, averted only by a miracle from becoming very serious, befell B Company, always unfortunate. The battalion was visited one afternoon by General Elles, who accompanied our Brigadier and the Colonel round the tank positions. The day was brilliantly fine, and the three cars which brought the cortège raised great clouds of dust along the roads. One cannot help attributing what followed to this rather characteristic neglect of precaution, for the whole country, being absolutely flat, was under observation from hostile balloons, which as usual were up. B Company’s headquarters were established in a solitary and conspicuous house on the main Béthune-Lens road, near Noyelles, immediately opposite the buildings of a small pithead called Puits No. 12, where two reserve sections of tanks were concealed. The visitors’ cars drew up at this house, and when the inspection was over, drove off again at a great speed, trailing behind them clouds of dust which must have been visible for miles. One cannot have all one’s hostages to fortune returned intact--especially when one has offered other people’s. The august party left at 4.30; and before five o’clock Puits No. 12, deluged suddenly with 8-inch howitzer shells, was blazing merrily. Two tanks were hit at once, set on fire, and burnt out. The other four, by a combination of extraordinary pluck and still more extraordinary good fortune, were started up and driven away from the flaming buildings and the rain of shells without injury to a single officer or man. When the affair started I was down in that apartment of our dug-out which the Major and I shared with the Brigade Gas Officer. Intercepting a frenzied telephone message from B Company, I ran up on deck (as one may call it) with my glasses, and for the next half-hour watched the shelling and the conflagration, which was only 1000 yards away. Within an hour the pithead buildings were mere smoking cinders, the iron wheel-gantry had collapsed, and I could distinguish amid the glowing wreckage the blackened shapes of the two burnt-out tanks.

The last incident worth noting of this interlude at Annequin was connected with the third German offensive, on the Aisne, launched on 27th May. The following evening, during dinner, we were startled by a sudden terrific racket of machine-gun and rifle fire. Running out to see what had happened, we found a German aeroplane circling impudently round the peak of the crassier, like some eagle round Ben Nevis, while its pilot, paying no attention whatever to our bullets, was casting overboard sheafs of pamphlets! These productions announced, in perfect English, the capture of thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns on the Chemin des Dames, and were signed by Ludendorff. Having delivered his load, the German waved his hand, circled away, and drove swiftly upward across the lines and out of our sight. He was a very plucky fellow, and deserved our bad shooting.

We were now nearing the end of these rather humiliating adventures. The first week in June marked for us the beginning of that period of transition from constant alarms and ever-changing schemes of defence to the opposite tactics of attack, which were to end only with the war. Summoned suddenly one evening to battalion headquarters, still at Boyeffles, I was told to reconnoitre next day a route by road to Enguinegatte, a village behind Aire, whither it appeared A Company was to trek at once to commence training with the Canadian Corps. I spent that night in our old quarters at Hesdigneul, where the 17-inch gun, still spasmodically active, did its best to speed a parting guest by dropping one of its huge shells so near that the glass of my window was shattered and fell upon me as I lay in bed. When I left next morning, after an imperfect rest, the two old ladies and their niece were also packing up. The 17-inch gun, and several gas-shells in their garden, had persuaded them of the propriety of a temporary removal.

Enguinegatte, the scene (at a less complicated period of warfare) of the famous battle of the Spurs, lies almost at the end of the longest and straightest Roman road to be found even in France. From Arras to Thérouanne, just beyond our destination, there are nearly forty miles of this abominable highway, straight as a die, except for two modern and insignificant detours to negotiate precipitous hills. By the route the tanks had to travel from Annequin, striking this road near Bruay, the distance was thirty miles, and this, entirely over roads, was ruinous to the machines. Somebody estimated that the journey cost £7000 in damaged tracks and rollers alone, for our one company. (B and C Companies were returning to Bouvigny to train with other Canadians there.) However, we arrived at Enguinegatte eventually, although not until I was heartily tired of the Roman road, up and down which I was riding, on my bicycle or in the Major’s car, for the best part of three days and nights. The village itself was charming, unspoiled by troops, quiet and unsophisticated, and set amid a really beautiful country of rolling hills, woods, and corn-fields. I had the most comfortable billet I ever secured in France. The weather throughout was gorgeous; and if the rehearsals with successive battalions of Canadians became for us somewhat tedious in the end, we suffered in a wholly admirable cause, which bore good fruit two months later. We were far away from any interference, and could do very much as we pleased. A ten days’ interlude at Le Tréport, camouflaged as a rest cure _cum_ reconnaissance course under Gordon, where Jack Brown, Ritchie of B Company, and I sat about on the cliffs above Mirs and read trashy literature, was a sort of gilding to the lily. Le Tréport was rather amusing at this time, because the camp was full of “Bolos” dislodged at last from their limpet-like grip at Bovington, and now fighting tooth and nail to secure fresh posts as instructors at the depot and elsewhere. The rest of us, of course, were hoping to see them posted to fighting units, so long as the latter were not our own. This, indeed, was the whole object of the belated clearance at Bovington; but in most cases, I regret to say, it was not achieved. Only after the Armistice did the majority of these people rush valiantly forward, demanding to be sent to Cologne.

Altogether, in spite of a few slight internal dissensions in our company at Enguinegatte, I look back upon that June as the most restful and pleasant month I spent in France. I returned from Le Tréport to find the tanks gone by road to Erin, a few details packing up at Enguinegatte, and the rest of the company already back in our old quarters at Bouvigny.

II.

Before we come to begin the last phase of the war, as it was influenced by the Tank Corps, something must be said as to the four southern brigades in the March retreat and after.

The 1st Brigade, as we have seen, worked with the 1st Army, covered Arras, and was so fortunate as to escape all direct implication in the disasters of March and April. Next to the south came the 2nd Brigade, in the neighbourhood of Bapaume. Farther south again was the new 4th Brigade, working with the 5th Army around Peronne. The 3rd Brigade was in G.H.Q. Reserve at Wailly and Bray, and was in process of equipment with Whippet machines, but only one battalion, the 3rd, had received these novelties. The 5th Brigade consisted as yet only of a nucleus, one company of the 13th Battalion, without tanks, also at Bray. The losses in tanks at Cambrai had not yet been made good, as no more Mark IV.’s were being built, and the new Mark V.’s were not available till later; and the three equipped brigades mustered between them only about 220 heavy tanks and 50 Whippets fit for action. A number of training machines were at Wailly, Bray, and Aveluy Wood, near Albert.

The cyclonic advance of the Germans on the 5th Army front resulted in the 4th Brigade being sacrificed wholesale on the first two or three days, at the end of which time it had virtually no tanks left. In the frightful confusion of the rout, tank battalions, companies, and sections were pushed in anyhow to do as best they could, lost touch with each other and with the brigade headquarters, and fought independently a series of actions, which it is all but impossible now to disentangle from the general obscurity. The 5th Battalion, having fought at Hervilly Wood, Roisel, and Epehy, among other places, on the 22nd March, rallied seventeen tanks at Cartigny that night, and tried to withdraw across the Somme by the bridge at Brie. The bridge was destroyed prematurely, and fourteen machines, being almost out of petrol and unable to escape, were blown up by their crews. The remaining three got across at other points, and were lost in action next day. The 5th Battalion, now without tanks, was hastily reorganised into Lewis-gun detachments. The 4th Battalion, after managing to retain some tanks a little longer, was in the same state before the end of the month, and the 1st Battalion was reduced to half a dozen worn-out machines and some converted supply-tenders. By the 28th the brigade had 185 crews (including the 13th Battalion nucleus) fighting in the line with Lewis guns. Everything else had been lost--tanks, stores, and even the kit of the officers and men; and the casualties in personnel had been heavy.

On the 3rd Army front the 2nd Tank Brigade was in action on the afternoon of the 21st, when tanks from the 8th Battalion took part in a counter-attack which recaptured Diognies, but failed to hold it. Twenty-four hours later, farther to the left, twenty-five tanks of the 2nd Battalion counter-attacked without infantry to check the German advance on Beugny and the Bapaume-Cambrai road. The tanks came under concentrated artillery fire as soon as they crossed the road, and several were knocked out at once. The remainder put a field battery out of action, surprised the German infantry massing for an assault, and drove them back in confusion beyond Vaulx-Vraucourt and Morchies, which our troops reoccupied. Only five tanks rallied, however, and 128 officers and men were lost. The rest of the battalion personnel was formed as Lewis-gun detachments, and fell back upon Bray on the 24th. In the meantime, the 8th Battalion, losing nearly all its tanks in attempts to cover the infantry withdrawal about Bus and Barastre, was also converted into a machine-gun unit. The remaining battalion, the 10th, fought a series of rearguard actions through Sapignies and Achiet-le-Grand to Bucquoy, sacrificing most of its tanks.

The 3rd Tank Brigade, in G.H.Q. Reserve at Bray and Wailly, was soon involved in the general mêlée. Out of the two battalions at Bray, the 3rd and the 9th, one composite battalion was formed and equipped with forty-eight Whippets, the remainder of the personnel becoming yet another Lewis-gun unit. The 6th Battalion at Wailly seems to have had an easier time than most of the others, and to have preserved a large proportion of its tanks, which may be explained by the fact that it remained behind the left wing of the 3rd Army, which was never seriously shaken, and retreated only so far as was necessary to conform with the centre and right. On the morning of 21st March the 6th Battalion’s camp was shelled heavily, and the whole of its orderly-room staff was killed. The battalion withdrew to La Cauchie on the 25th, and was transferred to the 2nd Brigade a week later. The 3rd Battalion’s Whippets, in the meantime, had made their first appearance in action on the 26th about Serre and Hébuterne, routing considerable numbers of the enemy without suffering any loss themselves; and they were fighting again at Bouzincourt on the 31st. They were found particularly useful for that kind of patrol work which the peculiarities of the situation had thrust upon such tanks as were left--closing temporary gaps in the line, holding up attacks, and gaining information,--doing, in fact, those duties which in the old days were performed by cavalry.

The result of ten days’ continued fighting and retreat was that the Tank Corps practically was without tanks, always excepting, of course, the 1st Brigade. Of the personnel of the other brigades 75 per cent had been in the line as Lewis-gun detachments. About 200 tanks had been lost. The big camp at Bray had been destroyed before evacuation, and a number of Whippets lying there under repair had to be blown up. Brigades and battalions, like all other units in the Army, were in a state of complete disorganisation, and the casualties, especially those incurred in the Lewis-gun units, were an added source of anxiety to Tank Corps Headquarters, owing to the few reinforcements available. The first steps taken toward reorganisation were hampered by the German attack on the Lys, as the 4th Brigade, which had just been withdrawn to the Bermicourt area to refit, was sent north to the 2nd Army front with Lewis guns, and remained fighting about Meteren and Wytschaete until the end of April. Then came the startling news that owing to the difficulty of finding sufficient infantry drafts in England, the Tank Corps was to be cut down from six brigades to four, which would mean the disbanding of the incomplete 5th Brigade in France and of the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th Battalions at home. Happily, this disastrous proposal was never carried out in its entirety. Two battalions at Bovington were reduced for a time to cadres, and a third was equipped with armoured cars; but the successes in July and August once more converted the harassed weathercocks in authority. All was changed again. The six-brigade establishment was not only revived but augmented; and while the cadres were made up to strength and rushed out to France, another six battalions were authorised to be formed.

The immediate task of reorganisation after the retreat was further complicated by the uncertainty as to whether the retreat itself was finished. The force of the initial German blow, which had driven us thirty miles backward in a week, expended itself in the first days of April, but only from temporary exhaustion and difficulties of supply. With Amiens almost in his grasp, the enemy was certain to make another effort as soon as he had found his second wind. It was necessary, in consequence, to maintain as large a force of tanks as possible with our battered armies; and a hurried reshuffling of units left skeletons of the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Brigades, re-equipped with old machines sent up from Erin, within call of the threatened point. The expected blow fell on 23rd April, along the whole line south of the Somme, but was not very vigorously delivered, and was successful only at Villers-Bretonneux. Here the Germans employed for the first time their own tanks, and the latter’s performance, limited and half-hearted as it was, proved what might have been done with more faith and perseverance. The appearance of the three clumsy machines was enough for most of the garrison of Villers-Bretonneux. Nearly the whole of the large village was carried, 2000 prisoners were taken, and tanks and infantry pushed on toward Cachy and the Bois de l’Abbé. In the latter place was lying a section of the 1st Tank Battalion. Moving out at 8.30 in the morning, to help some infantry in the trenches about Cachy, two female tanks of this section sighted a German tank about an hour later, and at once engaged it. Exposed to the enemy’s 6-pounder guns, to which they could make no effective reply, they were both knocked out; but the third tank of the section, a male, now appeared, and there ensued the first genuine contest between these machines. The German seems to have been outmanœuvred, although his one-man control should have given him an advantage over the awkward secondary gears of the Mark IV. The latter attacked him on his blind side, so to speak, where his single gun would not bear, hit him three times with 6-pounder shells, and drove him into a sandpit, where the clumsy tank became ditched. The two other German machines were now coming up, but after a very perfunctory pretence of engaging our solitary male, turned about and escaped. The victor, while in pursuit, was hit and disabled by a chance shell from a field-gun. Villers-Bretonneux was brilliantly recaptured by the Australians the same night.

The same morning a composite company of Whippets started out at 10.30 to clear up the situation east of Cachy. “Whilst proceeding round the north-east of this village, they suddenly came upon two or three battalions of Germans massing in a hollow preparatory to making an attack. Without a moment’s hesitation the seven Whippets formed line and charged down the slope right on to the closely-formed infantry. Indescribable confusion ensued as the Whippets tore through the German ranks. The enemy scattered in all directions. Some threw themselves on their knees before the machines, shrieking for mercy, only to be run over and crushed to death. In a few minutes no less than 400 Germans were killed or wounded. The Whippets having now completed their task--viz., “Clearing up the situation,” returned, one machine being put out of action by artillery fire on the journey home. In all only five casualties amongst the crews were suffered during this action. The two most remarkable features of this little engagement are: firstly, the helplessness of some 1200 to 1500 infantry against 7 tanks manned by 7 officers and 14 other ranks; and, secondly, that the tanks left their starting-point, which was three and a half miles from the scene of action, at 10.30 A.M., covered ten miles of ground, fought a battle, and were back home again at 2.30 P.M.[31]

It was reported at the time that when the Whippets returned their sides and tracks were dripping with the blood of the Germans who had been run over--a pleasant touch, but not authenticated.

There were two other tank actions on this front on the 25th and 28th, the latter with the French Moroccan Division at Hangard Wood. This last was a failure, largely because the barrage came down _beyond_ the German line instead of in front of it. A final minor engagement on May 2nd marked the end of this semi-defensive phase of the campaign. The Amiens front settled down more or less to what used to be described as “peace-time” warfare: the Germans turned their men and guns southward to the Aisne; and the Tank Corps was engaged in no further operations, with one exception, until July, when the whole spirit of our tactics was happily changed, and a series of small offensives preceded the great attack on 8th August.