Chapter XIX

THE FIGHTING FOR BEUGNY, AND THE ADVANCE TO THE CANAL DU NORD.

I.

The storm blew itself out in the night, and the morning of 25th August was again sunny and clear, with that bracing freshness that follows after heavy summer rain. At nine o’clock I walked over with the Major to see the New Zealanders. We found them now immured in an uncomfortable and, as I thought, highly dangerous dug-out near the crest of the ridge where the derelict Whippet was standing. The dug-out was merely a cramped, unfinished, and untimbered gallery cut in a crumbling soil which appeared to be in imminent peril of falling in. One entrance, indeed, was half-choked with detritus shaken down by concussion. Our interview settled the question about the tanks. After some discussion, the Brigadier decided against their use, to our considerable relief, and I was no less pleased to get out of that untrustworthy tunnel into the fresh air.

I walked down to the railway embankment after this to hear how M’Chlery’s section and C Company had prospered in that morning’s attack. A Company’s four tanks, it appeared, had led the infantry into Sapignies and Behagnies, but these villages were only cleared after severe fighting. One tank was knocked out by shell-fire in Behagnies, its commander, Charnock, being wounded. C Company and the Mark V.’s, attacking Favreuil, Avesnes-les-Bapaume, and Thilloy with the 63rd Division, met with an even more tenacious resistance and suffered heavily. Neither Thilloy nor Avesnes could be held, although both were partially cleared. Favreuil was captured; but the section of C Company which took the village met with disaster later on. The tanks were returning south of Favreuil, between Monument Wood and Bapaume, when a field-gun in the outskirts of the town knocked out three of them. Brassington and his driver, O’Mahony, in the first tank, were killed together by a shell which came through the side of the cab and set the machine ablaze. A gunner was killed while getting out, and there were several other fatal casualties among the N.C.O.’s and men in the two disabled tanks behind. Poor Brassington’s death came as a great shock to me. We had been in the same hut as cadets at Bisley and in the same section in G Battalion, had shared quarters at Bovington, and had been much together in France. Before joining the Tank Corps, Brassington had been a sergeant in the Duke of Wellington’s. Like so many North-country men, he was genuinely musical, with a good voice and a knowledge of how to use it; and he shared another local characteristic--that sort of independence (as it is called) which, often aggressive and unpleasing, in his case took only the form of a determination to go his own way. He would never bother to cultivate friendly relations with influential people if he did not like them, an attitude fatal to progress in the Army. A really capable soldier, with long experience in the war, he always said he would end as a tank commander.

After these actions on the 25th, the 7th Battalion enjoyed a rest for three days, being taken into Corps Reserve. B Company’s tanks moved up to a little valley behind our huts. We made ourselves fairly comfortable in the latter, and were disturbed very little by shelling, although a battery of our 60-pounders, posted a few hundred yards in rear, rendered the nights hideous. We had driven some of our tanks into one of the big hospital sheds, and camouflaged the others behind it, there being now eight fit machines left in the company. A certain amount of reorganisation was necessary throughout the battalion; but everything was turned upside down by a most extraordinary development on the 28th. It had been known for some time that a proportion of the officers and men of the Tank Corps in France were to be sent home to provide an experienced nucleus for new units forming at Bovington, the establishment of the corps having been raised again from eighteen to twenty-five battalions. Now that we were involved in a general offensive, however, it naturally was supposed that these changes would be postponed for a time. That the offensive would end only with the war was not then suspected, of course, by any one, least of all by Tank Corps H.Q. in London, which now took an entirely unexpected step. The personnel selected for England was called for at a few hours’ notice. In the middle of a battle, some units, including the 7th Battalion, found themselves deprived at a blow of 30 per cent of their already reduced complements. The first intimation we of A Company received at Bihucourt was a message which arrived during the afternoon of the 28th ordering all officers and men detailed for Bovington to prepare to leave that evening. This sudden and wholesale removal affected our company more seriously than either B or C, for the party to go included the Major, the second in command, two section commanders out of three, Jukes, the Assistant R.O., several tank commanders, the orderly-room corporal, and a number of our best N.C.O.’s and men. The company, in fact, lost all its senior officers. M’Chlery, the junior section commander, as the only remaining Captain, found himself in charge pending the arrival of a new O.C. to be posted to us from the 11th Battalion. B and C Companies, while less hard hit, sent away two section commanders apiece (Merchant being among them), with a proportion of subalterns and men. As for battalion headquarters, it virtually disappeared. The Colonel left, to command a new unit, and took with him the Adjutant, Henriquez the R.O., and most of the orderly-room staff, who, rumour had it, were all promoted sergeants in the train. All this happened, as I say, in two or three hours. Lorries arrived at Bihucourt to take away our contingent immediately after we received the order. The Colonel rushed up in his car to say good-bye and to introduce his successor, Major Thorp, to the bewildered residue of A Company; and then M’Chlery, M’Elroy, and I, the only survivors present of the original officers, and in consequence responsible between us for the immediate prosecution of the Great War, retired in a dazed condition to our hut to have a much-needed drink before grappling with the new situation.

II.

In the meantime, while the 3rd Army paused in front of Bapaume, the general offensive was extended northward, where the 1st Army struck out from Arras. The 3rd Tank Brigade, some of whose units trekked twenty miles during the 24th and 25th August, advanced with the Canadians against Wancourt, Guémappe, and Monchy-le-Preux, on the 26th. These places were taken, and on the 27th Roeux and Gavrelle, north of the Scarpe, fell also. Far to the south the 4th Army and the French were advancing again, and on our front the Germans evacuated Bapaume on the 28th. Our line in the 3rd Army sector now ran, from north to south, east of St Leger, east of Mory, east of Beugnâtre (beyond Favreuil), across the Cambrai road between Bapaume and Fremicourt, and east of Thilloy.

The German armies, bewildered by this series of blows, were preparing to retreat to the Siegfried Line and the Canal du Nord. But to give time for their heavy guns and supplies to escape, they held out stiffly during the last days of the month along the whole front. The 3rd Army, attempting to advance from Bapaume up the Cambrai road, was checked before Fremicourt and Beugny; and a series of assaults on the latter village ended in sanguinary failures. In two of these the 7th Tank Battalion took part.

On the morning of the 29th, while the battalion was in the throes of reorganisation after the startling disappearance of a third of its officers, it was ordered to provide eight tanks for an attack with the 5th Division on Beugny the following morning. One section of A Company and one of B were detailed accordingly, Major Rossi-Ashton of B Company being in command. M’Elroy and I were now running affairs in the camp near Bihucourt, M’Chlery having left us to wrestle with returns and other horrible matters at Bienvillers, where our rear headquarters was still situated. Early in the afternoon we received instructions to move four tanks to the valley beyond Biefvillers. This valley was a wide and shallow depression running north and south between the village and the Arras-Bapaume road. We got our tanks here by about four o’clock, parking them up under a bank beside a battery of 4.5 howitzers, whose people were very annoyed at our arrival. Behind us the whole of C Company’s tanks appeared from the railway at Achiet-le-Petit and hid themselves among some huts on the west side of the valley. An hour later we moved again, following the valley northward and then north-east across the Arras-Bapaume road to a point almost north of Favreuil, where, under another high bank, we joined the four tanks of B Company which were to co-operate with ours in the attack. I will try to make clear the features of the country that now lay before us. Bapaume, 3000 yards due south of our lying-up point, stands on a moderate elevation about 450 feet above sea-level. The ground falls away from it in a series of spurs to the north and north-east. There radiate out from the town, like the fingers of a hand and alternately along the spurs and in the valleys between, four roads, the most westerly the main highway to Arras, running west of north; next a road through Favreuil, running north; next again one through Beugnâtre, running north-east; and finally, the highway through Fremicourt and Beugny to Cambrai, running north of east. All these diverging roads except the last-named were now behind our front, which had reached a point two or three hundred yards east of Beugnâtre, whence it trended a little west of south, crossed the Cambrai road between Bapaume and Fremicourt, and then continued east of Thilloy. The whole of this country was bare rolling grass-land, of a uniform appearance, all traces of cultivation and even of the boundaries of fields having vanished. It was dotted with a large number of hutted camps, mostly old ones of our own, and the only cover, apart from these, was to be found in the trees around the various villages. The roads were sunken in places, and there was a general resemblance to parts of Salisbury Plain, except that the undulations were less pronounced.

Our two sections of tanks were to lead the 13th Infantry Brigade into Beugny. This village lay on the Bapaume-Cambrai road a mile east of Fremicourt. It was surrounded by wire and entrenchments, and was further protected by one of our old defence systems converted by the Germans, two lines of trenches and entanglements running obliquely into our front north of Beugnâtre. On our left the 2nd Tank Brigade, with infantry of the 3rd Division, was to carry Ecoust, Longatte, and the Noreuil Switch, while on our right the New Zealanders, with a few Mark V.’s, were to move straight forward from Bapaume upon Fremicourt and Bancourt. Zero was at 5 A.M. on the 30th.

The valley in which we were lying preparatory to the attack was a thoroughly unpleasant place. It curled round to the north of the spur on which stood Favreuil and Monument Wood. There had been a good deal of fighting here, and a number of dead men and horses, in varying degrees of decomposition, were lying about. Our tanks were drawn up under a high bank topped by a row of trees on the south side of the valley. On the north side a little gully, lined with rough hutments that were full of old straw, dirt, smells, and flies, led up to the main Arras road at Sapignies. Eastward, at the foot of the valley, field batteries were in action; and beyond them one could see the line of trees along the road from Beugnâtre to Ecoust-St Mein, which marked approximately our front. Having found Beale, the Reconnaissance Officer of B Company, with his tanks, I walked forward with him past Favreuil to some rising ground near Beugnâtre. We wished to see something of the country before us while the light held, but although the evening was fine a mist had risen, and the smoke of shells bursting around the village helped further to hide the landscape beyond. We sat for some time in a trench, memorising as much as we could verify on the map. Camps of Nissen huts were clustered about Beugnâtre, and others seemed to extend far over the monotonous plain behind toward Beugny. It was agreed between us that our sections should move together by the track we had just followed to within a few hundred yards of Beugnâtre, when Beale would lead his tanks south of the village while I took mine round by the north. Once over the front line, where our duties would end, the two sections would have each an unmistakable guide to direct them on to Beugny. M’Elroy’s tanks would strike sooner or later the old converted trench system of which I have spoken, and which it was their first task to clear. It would lead them down to the village from the north. B Company’s tanks, on the right, had for a guide the Bapaume-Cambrai railway, running north of the main Cambrai road and roughly parallel to the latter until it crossed it between Fremicourt and Beugny. In an attack over such monotonous country, shrouded in smoke and the mists of early morning, it is very easy to lose one’s direction in a tank, and as even a temporary delay may provoke serious trouble, any obvious means of guidance is an inestimable boon. In this case we were very fortunate. The trenches and the railway, like two hand-rails, converged together and crossed immediately in front of Beugny; and the tanks, moving up this angle, could not possibly lose their way. The chief feature of the country they had to fear was a gentle rounded spur behind which the village itself was hidden, and on whose absolutely bare crest they would stand out as admirable targets as they approached.

I had some dinner that night with B Company’s people beside their tanks, and then went for a few hours’ rest in one of the wooden shacks in the gully opposite, which had been cleared of litter. At midnight the tanks were unsheeted and the engines started up. By one o’clock seven of them were in line above the bank, ready to move. The eighth, one of A Company’s, developed engine trouble at the last moment and had to be left behind. There was no moon now, and the night was very dark, with a slight mist. The distance to our front line beyond Beugnâtre was only 3000 yards, but part of the route was unknown to us, and we had to move at the slowest speed to prevent noise. The two sections separated at the point Beale and I had chosen, and he led his four tanks away to the south of Beugnâtre, while M’Elroy and I held straight on to pass the north end of the village. So far there had been no hitch; but now I could not find the track I had noted earlier in the evening, and was forced to feel my way without this slight help. There was no danger of our losing our way here, for the trees of Beugnâtre and the huts about it were quite visible, but there was always the chance of coming upon some obstacle which the track naturally would have avoided. We ploughed forward through long grass, M’Elroy and I in front feeling about with sticks for wire or holes, and were passing to the north of the village, which made a vague mass of trees and ruins on our right, when shells began to burst in front of us. There ensued a very disturbing quarter of an hour. A regular barrage fell directly in our path, between us and the Beugnâtre-Ecoust road, the flashes of the shells coming and going in rapid succession. We had no time to waste in halting until this was over, and indeed we were almost in it at the start; and having ordered our runners and every one else who was walking to get into the tanks, we moved on through the barrage. M’Elroy and I continued to walk in front, as it was necessary for me to act as a guide, and he insisted on staying with me. For a few minutes we were hopping nimbly about to take shelter on one side or the other of the leading tank, as the shells were crashing and sparkling unpleasantly near. With that good fortune which always seems so extraordinary in the retrospect, we passed through without damage to the tanks or ourselves. The barrage was still falling behind us when the trees along the Beugnâtre road appeared out of the darkness. We were now among the huts of a camp, and having missed the track I had aimed for, we struck the road at a point where it was deeply sunken. The first tank crossed without difficulty, but the other two experienced some trouble in mounting the farther bank. I pushed on with the leader, leaving M’Elroy to bring on the others. We had come so slowly that the few minutes’ delay caused by the barrage and our wanderings among the huts threatened to make us late. Beyond the Ecoust road, a second one runs out of Beugnâtre to the north, leading to Vaulx-Vraucourt, and immediately beyond this was our front line. The tank I was leading, commanded by Sergeant Duddridge (we were so short of officers that two out of the three machines were in charge of N.C.O.’s), was now several hundred yards ahead of the others. The sky was already brightening in the east, zero was due in a few minutes, and as soon as we crossed the second road I began to peer about for the front line. So far I had not seen a single infantryman since we started. In the semi-open warfare in which we were engaged, front lines were always indeterminate features difficult to recognise and liable to frequent fluctuations; and on this occasion all I ever discovered was a group of three men crouching in a shell-hole, who told me they were in support. A hundred yards farther on a blaze and a crash behind me signified the opening of our barrage at zero. I hauled myself up on to the front of the tank, yelled to Sergeant Duddridge to get into fourth speed and push ahead, and then ran back to look for the others. I remember nothing more until I found myself sitting on the ground, with my head spinning like the proverbial top and a general feeling of having been hit all over with some violence, watching the two rear tanks going by. As they were a long way behind the leader, several minutes must have elapsed. There was a hideous noise everywhere, and heavy shells were thudding all round. The Germans, expecting an attack, had dropped their barrage a few seconds after ours along our front line, and I must have been knocked over (and temporarily out) by the explosion of a shell close astern of Duddridge’s tank. I got on to my feet with some difficulty, and looked for M’Elroy, but he was nowhere to be seen. The two tanks were already past me, and rolling on in great style, and as my head still appeared to be doing several hundred revolutions a minute, I decided to get out of this inferno for a while, if I could find some sheltered spot in which to recuperate. It was growing light, although the mist and smoke were very thick, and just behind me was a row of old Nissen huts, protected by earthen banks against bombing raids. There were no trenches in sight, and I ran, therefore, rather unsteadily, into one of these huts and found at the end of it a sort of miniature dug-out, where I sat for some time trying to induce my head to behave in a normal manner. It was perfectly evident that the German counter-barrage was uncommonly heavy as well as very prompt, for the whole gimcrack place shook continuously with concussions close outside.

I must have remained here for half an hour, for it was quite light when I came out again. Nothing could be seen for smoke, and the shells were falling as thickly as ever. I had now to make my way back to the headquarters of the 13th Infantry Brigade, near Beugnâtre, to report that the tanks had started at zero. Still somewhat fogged, as I suppose, I pushed off in the wrong direction altogether, toward the battle instead of away from it. I met a wounded infantryman looking for a dressing station, and with the best intentions took him with me. After wandering about for some time among huts, dodging shells, I realised that we were going wrong by the lie of the ground, which was steadily downhill, and we turned about and groped our way back again through the smoke. The brigade headquarters, where I guessed there would also be a dressing station, occupied some dug-outs in our part of the old defence trenches, just west of the Ecoust road. We reached it at length, after various vicissitudes, to find every one driven underground by the shelling. The latter, in fact, was something quite out of the ordinary. The enemy, determined to cling for another few days to his last position west of the Canal du Nord, had put down, not a normal barrage, but a heavy bombardment by 5.9’s over a large area. I have never, before or since, seen such consistently severe shell-fire so widely spread. It extended for a mile back from our front line. At the brigade headquarters, where ordinarily one would have found most of the staff and details standing about as interested spectators with maps and field-glasses, there was not a soul above the surface; and shells were falling as far back as Favreuil.

I got very little news from the staff, as nearly all the telephone wires had been cut, and after waiting in the dug-out, in a temperature of about 190 degrees, for half an hour or so, I decided to try to make my way to the rallying-place chosen for the tanks. This was a valley which ran northward from Fremicourt. It was now about eight o’clock, and another brilliant day, but the shelling was as fierce as ever, and smoke and dust hung thickly over the country between Beugnâtre and Beugny. I made my way down the trench, as the only sort of covered approach, past our original front line, over a number of bodies, British and German, to the point where it crossed the valley from Fremicourt. But I could not see the rallying-point for smoke. The place was being shelled mercilessly, and it was obvious that no tanks could stay there. If they had rallied by this time, they must have come farther back. I tramped back up the hill to the brigade headquarters, seeing on the way a party of prisoners and their escort blown to pieces by a shell, and having several narrow escapes myself. Obtaining no information from the brigade beyond the fact that things were not going at all well, I walked down the Beugnâtre road to see if the tanks had rallied somewhere near the village, found no sign of them, nor indeed of any infantry or anybody else, and then made a second attempt to get to the original rallying-point in the Fremicourt Valley. But things there were as bad as before. A number of huts were on fire, and the whole place was smoking like a furnace. It was impossible to see anything, and it would have been suicidal to have gone groping about in the murk for problematical tanks. It was quite possible that all had been knocked out long before this. The whole battlefield was extraordinarily deserted. In my two journeys I had met only a couple of artillery officers reconnoitring for battery positions, two or three walking wounded, and the prisoners whom I saw destroyed. Every one who could find some cover from the ferocious shelling had taken it.

After a final hunt about Beugnâtre, I decided to walk back to our starting-point behind Favreuil. And there, about midday, I found some of the officers and men of the two sections, who had been in an hour or two already. Close, of B Company, was having a number of small wounds attended to. Beale, hit slightly in the leg by the same shell, was there also. Two out of the three tanks of A Company, it appeared, had been knocked out, and two out of the four from B, all on the dangerous ridge looking down into Beugny. The surviving tanks, returning to the rallying-point after it was plain that the infantry could not get near the village, had found the Fremicourt Valley, as I suspected, too hot to hold them--so hot, indeed, that it was considered inadvisable even to attempt to get them back through it into safety. They were driven against the railway embankment at the head of the valley, which afforded some slight protection, and there temporarily abandoned until the unprecedented shelling should have slackened. The crews had taken refuge in culverts and other holes and corners, where they still remained.

Almost everywhere the attack had been a failure. A slight advance had been made, and the New Zealanders and Mark V.’s on the right had captured Fremicourt and Bancourt; but the backbone of the position was untouched. On our left, four tanks of the 12th Battalion, misled by an infantry guide, arrived late, and the 3rd Division, attacking Ecoust and Longatte without them, could make no progress. Two other tanks which advanced against the trenches called the Noreuil Switch became ditched before they could effect anything. The assault on Beugny itself, as I have indicated, was hardly more successful. Of M’Elroy’s three tanks, which had cleared without much trouble the old trench line as far as the spur in front of the village, two were knocked out by gun-fire the moment they appeared over the high ground. The third tank reached Beugny, but found that the infantry could not follow. B Company’s section, moving along the railway, had a similar experience--two tanks disabled and the others unable to make any permanent impression on the village for lack of infantry support. In addition to Close, whose injuries sent him to hospital, we had two officers wounded. Sergeant Duddridge, whose tank was one of those hit on the ridge, performed extraordinarily fine work. Getting out his Lewis guns, he took his crew forward to join the infantry, and rallied parties of the latter who had lost their officers and were retiring. Having used all the ammunition of his own gun, he returned alone to his tank for more, and remained inside for some time firing 6-pounder shells into Beugny. He sent his crew back eventually, but stayed in the firing line himself throughout the day, turning up at Favreuil, as placid and cheerful as ever, late in the evening. He won the D.C.M. for this performance.

The 3rd and 5th Divisions seemed badly shaken by this affair, in which they suffered heavily from the terrific shelling. The latter continued on into the afternoon, so that it was two o’clock before the crews of our three surviving tanks (which, by a miracle, were untouched) could issue from their hiding-places and drive the machines back to Favreuil. A semi-humorous element in an otherwise nerve-wracking morning was provided by an officer of the American Tank Corps, one of three attached to us for a few days’ experience. He had only been in France a week, and had hardly seen a gun fired until he rashly volunteered to go forward with Beale and the Major to the rallying-point, where he found himself in the middle of as ferocious a bombardment as any one there had ever experienced. I met him afterwards, when I returned to Favreuil from my wanderings in search of the tanks. He was an extremely nice fellow, and quite ingenuous in his obvious delight and surprise at finding himself still alive. I think his ideas of modern war had been drawn from the surprising journals of his native land, on which our own newspapers are so successfully modelled; and undoubtedly that morning’s ordeal had been one of the shocks of his life. He was burning to use his new-found knowledge in confuting some of his fire-eating colleagues, who had been proclaiming (from a distance) their fondness for battles and gore.

III.

The fighting on the 3rd Army front from 30th August to 3rd September was practically a rearguard action on a very large scale. Von Below’s 17th German Army, its right threatened by the advance from Arras, still clung desperately to its position from Ecoust southward. Our first attempt to hustle it into a premature retreat having failed, the attack was renewed the next morning, 31st August. The hard hit and somewhat shaken 3rd Division was reinforced by units from the 56th and 62nd Divisions, and nine tanks of the 12th Battalion led this infantry in another attack on Ecoust, Longatte, and the Noreuil Switch, which were carried in spite of a very stubborn defence. The pair of tanks responsible for the switch and other trenches between Longatte and Vaulx-Vraucourt provided two of the most notable incidents of the morning, described as follows in the ‘12th Battalion History’:--

“‘Lorraine’ (Lieut. Staub), after working down Vraucourt
trench to within a thousand yards of Vraucourt itself, turned
north again at the request of the infantry to deal with some
machine-guns near Vraucourt Copse. While heading to take these
guns in the rear, the tank was disabled by a bullet from an
anti-tank rifle hitting the magneto. Intense machine-gun fire
was now concentrated on the tank, and four of the crew were
wounded by A.P. bullets. Our nearest infantry were in a trench
150 yards away, and unable to advance, so Lieut. Staub, with
great gallantry, got his badly-wounded men out of the tank
and pulled or carried them under a severe fire to the trench.
For this action he was recommended by the infantry for a
decoration, and received the Military Cross. Meanwhile ‘Lupin,’
the other tank, had disappeared into the blue. Its commander,
Lieut. Acroyd, was the only officer to cross the front line the
previous morning, and on this occasion he seems to have carried
on until well in front of our foremost infantry, when his
tank stopped through magneto trouble. While in this situation
some of the enemy managed to climb unseen on to the roof, and
having from there shot the N.C.O., either through the manhole
being unbolted or by means of an open revolver port, compelled
the rest of the crew to surrender. The N.C.O., who was shot
through the stomach, was left behind in a cellar when the enemy
retreated, and _after three days_ was able to make his way out
and summon assistance.”

The 7th Battalion was not engaged on the 31st. The 5th Division was licking its wounds in front of Beugny, and no further attempt was made upon that place until the general offensive was resumed on the 2nd. By the evening of the 30th, M’Elroy and I, with most of the crews that were in action that morning, had been conveyed in cars and lorries back to Bienvillers, where we indulged in hot baths and clean clothes, and met our new company commander, Merriam, just arrived from the 11th Battalion. Inhabitants were already returning to Bienvillers, and we were threatened with eviction from our fly-blown and dilapidated billets. The 6th Corps Club, an institution which followed up the army on the heels of the heavy guns, had now moved its branch from Bavincourt to our village, and one was able to enjoy some of the sweets of civilisation in the form of comfortable chairs and passable wine. Within a day or two this enterprising club had opened another branch at Gommecourt, and a third actually in Behagnies, while the latter was still odorous with dead horses and other uncleared refuse of the battle.

Returning to Bihucourt on the afternoon of the 31st, we heard the first rumours of a possible German counter-attack with tanks. Two of A Company’s few remaining machines were ordered to stand by to assist the New Zealanders in the event of these rumours materialising into facts. No one believed in them; but on the following day the enemy did counter-attack at Thilloy with a couple of his massive _Panzerkraftwagen_, and six tanks from our three companies moved toward Bapaume to be at hand if wanted. They were not wanted, although the right-hand pair, from B Company, did a little voluntary work among some huts south of the town. The counter-attack was a failure, and the German tanks did not get into action at all. Their half-hearted crews drove them (apparently on purpose) into a sunken road and abandoned them there. They were afterwards towed into Bapaume, where they lay in the station yard for many weeks.

Preparations were in hand for a heavy blow to be struck by both the 1st and 3rd Armies on 2nd September. The Canadians of the 1st Army astride the Arras-Cambrai road, and in touch, north of Ecoust, with the left of our 17th Corps, were now in front of the famous Drocourt-Quéant switch-line, supposed to be stronger than the main Hindenburg system. All the available tanks of the 3rd Brigade (9th, 11th, and 14th Battalions) were to lead the 4th Division and the 1st and 4th Canadians against these formidable trenches. To the remnants of the 2nd Tank Brigade, the 12th and 6th (Light) Battalions, was allotted the capture of Lagnicourt and Morchies, north-east of Beugny, with the infantry of the 6th Corps. For our part, we were to supply twelve tanks for a renewed attempt with the 5th Division on Beugny, and for a further operation south of Bapaume against Villers-au-Flos, beyond Thilloy. Four tanks of C Company were detailed for each of these objectives, a section of B Company following up in reserve.

As everybody knows, the attack of the 1st Army on the Drocourt-Quéant Switch was a brilliant success. To quote Colonel Buchan, “It went clean through all the line of one of the strongest positions in the West, and took six miles of the switch, the villages of Etaing, Dury (with the important Hill of Dury), Villers-les-Cagnicourt and Noreuil, and 8000 prisoners.” The Switch, in effect, had fallen as the Hindenburg Line fell at Cambrai, instantly, and this time irrevocably. But Colonel Buchan does not explain how it was carried so swiftly and easily. He does not mention tanks, and leaves it to be assumed that the infantry unaided fought their way in an hour or so through triple trenches and belts of wire. It will be well, therefore, to point out that once more the assault was led by tanks, of which fifty-seven (all the 3rd Brigade could muster) were employed. Fifty-three got into action. Only the most strenuous exertions got the depleted and disorganised tank units ready and in position for the battle. The 11th Battalion, which had recaptured the debris of Monchy-le-Preux on the 25th, had to trek across the whole front of the Canadian Corps, often within 1000 yards of the line, to reach the 4th Division, with which it was attacking Etaing, in the marshes of the Sensée. It is possible that the enemy heard this approach, as he sent up S.O.S. signals three minutes before zero. The tanks carried the massive trenches of the Switch, but had to make so wide a detour farther on to avoid the marshes that they could not reach Etaing with the infantry. In the centre, twenty-three out of twenty-four machines of the 9th Battalion reached their final objectives, which included Dury, where the Town Major was taken prisoner. The 14th Battalion, on the right, was no less successful, but had seven tanks knocked out beyond the Switch. “It is estimated that in this attack one company of tanks alone destroyed over seventy hostile machine-guns, the German gunners surrendering to the tanks as they approached.”[40] South of the Canadians, the 17th Corps of the 3rd Army closed on the great knuckle of fortifications about Quéant, where the Switch joined the main Hindenburg Line. Quéant was almost surrounded by nightfall. The 6th Corps, in the meantime, had not fared so well; and two companies of the 12th Tank Battalion were sacrificed by the failure of the infantry to arrive at the time they themselves had arranged, and by their inability to get forward when at length they did reach the point of attack. Zero, for some reason, was fixed for 5.30, half an hour later than was the case with the corps on the left, so that the enemy’s retaliation there, overlapping the 6th Corps’ front, fell about the tanks of one company of the 12th, and they were moved forward into No Man’s Land to escape it. Our barrage came down at 5.30, but the assaulting infantry had not arrived; and it being considered equally dangerous to keep the tanks stationary or to attempt to withdraw them, they were sent forward alone, in the hope that they could keep down the German machine-gun fire while the belated infantry got into position and advanced. The latter were forty minutes late, and then made no advance at all. The tanks cruised about, destroying machine-gun posts around Noreuil until they came under the fire of field batteries, when most of them were knocked out. Only two out of nine returned. The company on the right, with eight tanks, received little better support in its attack on Vaulx Wood and Morchies, and suffered almost as heavily. The battalion left twelve machines out of seventeen on the field, and lost eight officers and fifty-six other ranks. The 3rd Division, which was responsible for the disastrous fiasco on the left, had shown a progressive deterioration in quality since the attack on 30th August, and its staff work had gone from bad to worse. Such cases are not uncommon; but it is unjust that the sacrifices of one arm should remain hidden in order that the blunders of another may be hushed up. There was very little reticence in the old days, when tanks were uncertain and untrusted novelties, if they did not perform some impossibility expected of them. Now that the boot was on the other foot, a discreet silence shrouded every small misadventure. From the first capture of Monchy-le-Preux in 1917 to the end of the war there was a multiplication of cases where inefficient staff work on the part of infantry brigades and divisions caused tanks to be sacrificed unnecessarily. In the strain and hurry of the last advance these incidents became very frequent. The new tactics, in which every attack was led by tank units, made the latter absolutely dependent upon proper co-operation by the infantry staffs concerned. Tanks are large objects which cannot easily be hidden, and any misdirection, any omission to notify changes of plan, any hitch in the assembly of the assaulting troops (all common faults), meant in nine cases out of ten that the particular tanks involved would find themselves sooner or later caught in the open without support in face of an enemy who could devote his whole attention to destroying them. I will give chapter and verse later on for an instance within my own experience; but what I wish to point out now is that the general ignorance of the part played by tanks in the last year of the war is due to an official reticence based very often simply on a determination to avoid unpleasant disclosures. The tanks were not the only victims of this tendency. Their case happens to be peculiar, but every arm suffered in turn for the susceptibilities of the others.

While the 12th Battalion, through no fault of its own, was losing tanks in vain about Morchies and Noreuil, we were suffering again at Beugny and winning a welcome success at Villers-au-Flos. The latter village was carried by the 42nd Division with the help of one section from C Company, three of whose tanks subsequently broke down east of the village while on their way home, and had temporarily to be abandoned. The fighting was severe, the German machine-gunners holding out to the last with that conspicuous bravery which they displayed in almost all these actions; and the fourth tank, commanded by Sergeant Penny, having done splendid work in the village, returned plastered grey with lead and stuck all over with armour-piercing bullets. The other section, in the meantime, working again with the 5th Division, had again found Beugny unconquerable. The place was a veritable fortress, entrenched and wired and held by a large garrison with field-guns; and although our infantry, as a result of the first attack, were close to the outskirts, they were checked at the start by intense machine-gun fire, and failed to make any progress beyond a slight advance to the north of the village. The tanks could do nothing alone, and the affair was another expensive failure. It cost us the life, among others, of Adney, a boy who joined the battalion before Cambrai, where he got the Military Cross, and who was now killed in rather extraordinary and still obscure circumstances. He had with him two of my old crew, Corporal Mitchell and Taylor. His tank, having pushed on alone in default of infantry support, cruised along the north side of Beugny, firing into it, and then started to return. It was hit, apparently, somewhere in front, by a shell which wounded Taylor (who was driving) and filled the inside with smoke. Adney and the rest of the crew, believing the machine to be disabled, as it had stopped, scrambled out, but finding themselves isolated among groups of Germans, ran back and got inside again, with the exception of Corporal Mitchell, who was captured. The tank, on examination, proved to be still in running order. She was therefore started up and driven toward our lines. She was now hit a second time, in the petrol-tank, and finally disabled, and simultaneously, it appears, Adney was killed by a bullet which came through his open flap. Presumably it was fired by one of our own infantry. The latter making a slight advance at this point, the rest of the crew escaped, carrying Taylor with them, and shortly after Corporal Mitchell was rescued from a dug-out where his captors had left him. I happened to be in C Company’s huts in the Favreuil Valley, talking to Coutts and Alden, who had just returned from the action, when Mitchell, who was supposed to be killed, made a dramatic reappearance. He had lost his watch and everything else in his pockets, but otherwise was none the worse for his fifteen-minutes’ captivity.

IV.

We had not yet finished with Beugny. Toward dusk on 2nd September I was waiting about in our camp at Bihucourt for the Major, who was taking me back to Bienvillers in his car. Word had come through that the 1st Tank Brigade was to be withdrawn into Army Reserve to refit, and those of us who had nothing particular to do were returning to our old headquarters that night. I was especially glad of this release, as the symptoms of another attack of influenza (or some kindred variant of P.U.O.) were beginning to affect me, and I was longing for bed. At this time battalion headquarters had established an advanced base at Bihucourt in one of the huts, and the Major was now conferring there with the Colonel, who had just arrived. Unconscious of my doom, like one of the infants in the poem, I was standing about outside when the Major appeared to summon me, as I supposed, to the car. His first words dissipated this natural delusion.

“There’s another dog-fight on to-night,” he said. “They want two of our tanks for Beugny again....”

Beugny was becoming a perfect curse to the battalion, a sort of King Charles’s head, or Old Man of the Sea. This was the third time in five days that we had been called upon to tackle it, and it was A Company’s second turn in the pleasant round. We were, I think, inclined to feel that the 5th Division might have done their own work on this occasion without dragging us into it again, as we had given them two opportunities which they had failed to seize. However, the thing had to be done. We were working once more with our old acquaintances the 13th Infantry Brigade, who had attacked the place with us on the 30th. Our only fit tanks, three or four, and none of them in good condition, were still in the valley by Favreuil. We had no officers available as tank commanders, and two sergeants were sent off to prepare the most likely machines for action. M’Elroy, who was once more to share with me the responsibilities of office, was already away at Bienvillers, no doubt luxuriating in a bath and the prospect of several days of peace; and a car was despatched to bring him back to these unpleasant realities. After a hurried meal with the Colonel, the Major and I departed in his Vauxhall for the 13th Brigade Headquarters, still in the dug-out near Beugnâtre. As it was now quite dark, we were able to drive most of the way to the village. We found the Brigadier and his Brigade Major in the dug-out, and obtained from them the plan of attack and the _rôle_ the two tanks were expected to play. Beugny, it appeared, was to be dealt with faithfully at last. Six field batteries and one battery of 6-inch howitzers were to pound it for half an hour before the infantry advanced. The tanks were required only to clear a trench which ran immediately behind the village. It appeared rather obvious that if the latter was carried, the fall of the trench would be only a matter of time, and that if the artillery preparation was sufficiently thorough and accurate, both village and trench (together a small and compact target) would be rendered so untenable that tanks would not be needed for their capture. One cannot argue with brigadiers, however. We promised that the tanks should arrive, if we could get them there. I remember this interview, held in a candle-lit compartment of the dug-out, with peculiar clearness. I had seen the Brigadier and his Brigade Major before, and was to meet them again some weeks later when I was with the 12th Battalion at Solesmes, and I was struck by the marked contrast between them. The General, whose name I forget, was a powerful bulky man, with an odd resemblance to a boar. Stewart, the Brigade Major, was very young, very fair, slim, and rather exquisite. He seemed to find speech an exhausting process, and wore a permanent expression of boredom and fatigue, neither of which, I dare say, was an affectation at that time.

When we returned to the tanks at Favreuil, the two machines detailed for the attack were filled up and ready to move, and M’Elroy had arrived from Bienvillers. I spent half an hour explaining the details to the crews and plotting out compass-bearings on the map. We should be approaching Beugny in the dark over ground that was unknown to me except for the few glimpses I had obtained through the smoke on the 30th, and I determined to strike the railway, of which I have spoken, as soon as possible, and use it as a guide to the village. Soon after midnight we started, following the road north of Monument Wood, through Favreuil, and so through the deserted camps south of Beugnâtre. The two tanks, although the best we could provide at this stage, were in great need of an overhaul, and we soon began to have trouble with them. One stuck in the sunken road beyond Beugnâtre. After waiting for some time, M’Elroy and I went on with the remaining machine, as we had still a long way to go. We were now launched upon the open grass-land, devoid of landmarks, and I began to use the compass. Far ahead of us, in a direct line with the bearing I had taken to the railway, a fire was burning behind the German front, and this served us as a useful guide. I supposed it to be a village or a dump set alight by our shells, but presently a second fire was visible, and then a third, and I began to wonder if these conflagrations did not signify that the enemy was burning his stores before retreating. Our guns were very quiet, as they had been throughout the evening, and it was difficult to account otherwise for these sudden glares on the horizon. In the meantime, the tank we had left in the sunken road had not overtaken us, and our remaining machine was giving trouble. One or two delays, due to engine defects, wasted a lot of valuable time. Zero was at 5.40, and it was four o’clock before at length we struck the railway at a point marked by two stacks of fodder and an overturned Whippet. This machine, incidentally, had been the cause of a very gallant action a few days before. One of a section of the 3rd Battalion sent in to “clear up the situation” (whatever that euphemistic phrase may mean) on 29th August, the Whippet had turned completely over in a shell-hole, catching fire at the same time. The door of the cab was jammed in the earth, and the crew of three was imprisoned upside down in burning oil. The commander of another Whippet, Lieutenant Sewell, got out under intense machine-gun fire at close range, and with a shovel dug out and forced open the door of the inverted tank. He liberated the crew, but was shot in several places and killed, together with his driver, while endeavouring to return to his own machine. A posthumous V.C. was awarded him.

Having found the railway, we pushed along beside it at a good speed. The fires in the east were growing brighter, and the extreme quietness of the night confirmed me in my belief that the expected retreat of the enemy actually was begun. When we reached the head of the valley which had been our inauspicious selection as a rallying-point for the 30th, the tank developed further eccentricities, and eventually refused to move at all. The engine stopped, and no coaxing would start it up again. There was no sign of the second tank. At a quarter past five, as we were still 1000 yards from our front line, M’Elroy and I decided that nothing more could be done. We told the crew to take refuge in a culvert, which ran through the railway embankment close at hand, if the tank was discovered and shelled at dawn, and then we began to make our way back to the 13th Brigade Headquarters to report our failure. We were nearing the Beugnâtre road as the barrage fell upon Beugny at zero. Dawn was breaking, and as, deafened by the throbbing clamour of the batteries all round us, we looked back eastward from the rising ground, we saw fresh fires blazing and clouds of white smoke rolling away from a dozen points far beyond the range of our shells. There could be hardly any doubt about it now: the German retreat had begun. At the brigade headquarters we found nobody but a few signal officers and other details staring at these distant conflagrations, and they had no news to give us; but tramping on to Biefvillers we met the Major in his car, and learnt from him that the enemy had indeed vanished in the night. Beugny, pulverised for half an hour by high explosives, was empty of all living things. Only a few machine-gunners were left amid the debris of the retreat between us and the Canal du Nord.

V.

On 4th September the whole Tank Corps was withdrawn into G.H.Q. Reserve to refit and reorganise. Since the 21st August, 511 tanks had been in action, and had been largely responsible for a succession of victories in which we had captured 53,000 prisoners and 470 guns. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Tank Brigades were now so crippled that they could not have mustered fifty fit machines between them. The 4th and 5th Brigades, having suffered heavily on 8th August and after, had less work to do in the course of the 4th Army’s subsequent advance south of the Somme, for which reason I have not attempted, amid so much other matter, to follow their actions during this fortnight; but they were hardly less reduced and in need of rest than the three northern brigades.

Strikes, and the vacillating policy of the authorities in respect of tanks, had left the corps with no reserve from which casualties and worn-out machines could be replaced. The ratio of wastage in any series of tank actions, from mechanical causes alone, was very large, increasing proportionately as machines were used again and again with no opportunity between times for a thorough overhaul. On the other hand, the majority of repairs needed were only of a minor character; and after a week’s rest a battalion which had been reduced perhaps to half a dozen serviceable tanks could put twenty or thirty into the field again. Cases of disablement by gun-fire, of course, fell into a different category. Such machines as could be salved on the spot and were worth repairing were despatched to Central Workshops, whose personnel at this time was working day and night, but the replacement of shattered armour-plate was a longer job than a change of track-plates or rollers. In any case, nothing could make up for the lack of an adequate reserve of new tanks. The batches of Mark V.’s which came out from England replaced only a small portion of the casualties in the dozen battalions which used that type, and the 12th Battalion and ourselves carried on to the end with Mark IV.’s, most of which were nearly two years old.

The period of reorganisation after 4th September included the inevitable reshuffling of battalions among the five brigades. It will be enough to state here that the 1st Brigade was made up once more of its old units, the 7th, 11th, and 12th Battalions. The 301st American Tank Battalion was attached for a short time and came with some Mark V.’s to Bihucourt, where the 7th remained.

The fever, which I had felt to be impending before our last abortive attempt to reach Beugny, took a good grip of me immediately afterwards, and I spent three or four days in bed at Bienvillers, at first in my tumble-down billet, in a room that swarmed with flies and reeked of chloride of lime, and then, when I could stand this no longer, under a tarpaulin in an orchard. When I visited the camp at Bihucourt again, after a lapse of a week, it was a scene of violent activity, due largely to the Americans. Why these people called themselves the 301st Tank Battalion I never understood, as they were in fact the 1st, but it was of a piece with their other eccentric customs. They took over all the huts in the camp which A Company did not occupy, and they provided us for days with interest and amusement. They seemed to spend most of their time pulling their tanks to pieces. There was usually a Mark V. in some stage of disintegration in the space between the two main rows of huts, where it had no business to be, and over it and around it swarmed crowds of Americans filled with what (to us) was incomprehensible zeal. Perhaps by this time we were somewhat satiated with tanks and with the war in general. Our Allies were inspired with all the enthusiasm of belated proselytes. They were like children with a new toy, and very like children, too, in other ways. Some of their methods were stupefying even to casual persons like myself, who am no stickler for pedantic ritual in anything. One did not expect to find an American tank unit (or any other) behaving like the Guards; but mere intelligent order and discipline, which common-sense should indicate as essential to any military body, seemed to be unknown to these people. Their orderly-room they themselves described very aptly as “the mad-house.” The junior officers, a set of excellent fellows, lived in a state of wholly unnecessary discomfort, partly from obscure notions of democratic behaviour, and partly (I imagine) because they had obtained from books some odd conviction that warriors should at all times be Spartans. They appeared to have no batmen (presumably the free-born American citizen would not serve openly in that capacity), and they certainly had no mess, as we understand the term. Those of them who visited our headquarters at Bienvillers were quite overwhelmed by the primitive luxuries of A Company’s tarpaulin shelter, with its rickety forms, dirty table-cloths, and imperfect crockery. An American officer drew his meals in his tin pannikin from the men’s cook-house, sometimes fetching the food himself, and sometimes being obliged in this little matter by a condescending and casual-mannered N.C.O. or private, full of familiar talk and audibly chewing gum. The meal was then consumed, from the pannikin, wherever the officer happened to be. This was not in some trench before an attack, but in camp at Bihucourt, now eight or ten miles behind the line. The whole American Army, of course, was “dry” in theory, and seemed to subsist largely on beans and bacon. Poor Jack Brown, who was attached to the 301st for a few days when that battalion left us for the Havrincourt region, complained bitterly that he was half-starved while he was with them, as the officers, dependent upon the men’s cook-house, had no meal after tea, and nothing alcoholic to drink at any time. These peculiarities, trifling in themselves, were symptomatic of that puerile element in the American character which seems so incongruous in an otherwise preternaturally acute people. The whole force was a strange compound of zeal, intelligence, fads, and conceit. The men fought well enough, as did every one else except the Portuguese. Being the first contingents drawn from a vast population, they were physically and mentally of the best type. They were keen to a degree, and honestly anxious, in their own peculiar way, to learn everything. But they had learnt no more than the rudiments of their job when the war ended. Their staff work broke down hopelessly under any strain. The army, in short, wanted another year or so of hard experience. After the Armistice, in America, I understand, people wore in their button-holes little discs, on which were inscribed the words, “We went to do it, and we’ve done it.” In the same spirit the Prussians and the Belgians claimed to have won the battle of Waterloo.

This peaceful interlude at Bihucourt lasted for a fortnight. The battalion was busy overhauling tanks, resting, washing, and re-equipping personnel, and preparing in general for the forthcoming attack on the reputably formidable position to which the Germans had retired. The weather, changing with the fortunes of the war, after a few rain-storms in the beginning of the month, had settled down to another spell of sunny days, which made even the obliterated landscape around Bapaume seem comparatively attractive. For amusements, we had a veritable museum of battle relics at Achiet-le-Grand, where, in addition to a host of disabled tanks awaiting trains for Erin, there was the anti-tank stockade and a miscellaneous assortment of captured German guns, which a week or two earlier had made our lives a burden; while we were surrounded by a congeries of officers’ clubs that reminded one of St James’s Street after a social upheaval and an earthquake. The E.F.C., after many months’ enforced absence from the Promised Land, had erected once more its huge marquees at Achiet-le-Grand itself, the 6th Corps had its clubs at Gommecourt and Behagnies, and in Bihucourt there was a New Zealand Officers’ Club with a first-rate library--manna from heaven in such a wilderness. For one who lives on books it is difficult to speak with calmness of the spirit and enterprise which inspired this literary mission. No British club or institution that I ever discovered in France troubled about books at all, if we except the dog’s-eared cheap editions in the Y.M.C.A. canteens. The Canadians had a small library of instructional works (horrible things) which followed them about; but it was left to the New Zealand Division to establish, in a ruined house in Bihucourt, among other places, a genuine library of volumes in good editions--shelves of verse, history, geography, books of reference, fiction, and so on, labelled and well kept, and obviously in demand. Among the many miracles of this war, I count this discovery among the most noteworthy. Unfortunately for me, I came upon it too late, although it was at my very door. One does not look for pearls among the refuse of a battle, and I only heard of the library by accident. Two days later we had left the place, and did not meet the New Zealand Division again. But if any one from that Dominion should read this book, I hope he will accept the thanks of one (I have no doubt among many) who received benefits from this exceptional enterprise.

On the morning of 18th September the battalion received orders to trek to Morchies, north-east of Beugny, of evil memory. The Colonel and the company commanders went ahead in cars to prospect for a camp, and returned enthusiastic about some mysteriously empty huts (another German hospital) which they had discovered. Early in the afternoon, in brilliant sunshine, the eight tanks that A Company had now got fit again for action were trekking across the rolling grass-land of our old battlefield; B Company, from the valley behind us, and C, from Favreuil, had joined in the procession; and before dusk we were unpacking and settling ourselves down in our new quarters.