by Barrie Pitt
Under cover of night, along the whole length of the line won that day by the Germans, parties of British infantry crept out from shell-holes, from dug-outs and sections of blown-in trenches, to begin filtering back towards their own lines. Platoons – or their survivors – sections, individual men, all moving secretively and intently across the cratered surface, listening for guttural voices, for the grate of the sentry’s rifle on the parapet, for the smooth click of the cocking-handle. Sometimes they were caught or killed, sometimes they had to fight their way through enemy positions – preferably with bayonet or club – more often they avoided them. Sometimes, inevitably, they completed their journeys only to be shot by their own compatriots holding the foremost British positions, and taut with expectancy for the renewal of attack.
In several places the British artillerymen returned to the guns they had abandoned during the day, connected up the gun limbers, and dragged the guns out. One such episode took place near Velu:
I had given strict orders as to silence, and from now on all instructions were given in whispers and every effort was made to keep the horses and limbers clear of anything that might make a noise. In silence I led three teams forward to the three right guns … and in almost complete quiet we limbered them up and then moved back about fifty yards. There I had to leave them whilst Ogilvie and I took teams to the other two guns 400 yards away from the main positions over the hill to the left. … Yet I hated to leave them where they were, for every moment I expected a burst of machine-gun fire or shelling, and to either of these they would be entirely exposed. But during the hour we were in the position everything remained wrapped in complete silence, which was made even more intense by the deadening effect of the heavy mist; no gun-fire; no rifle-fire; all was as peaceful as a night on Salisbury Plain, and it was in very strange contrast to the tremendous noises of the day just past.
When dawn came there was another thick mist to blind the machine-gunners of the defenders, and to cloak the movements and intentions of those Storm Troops who had survived the ordeal of the first day.
After hearing the official report of the progress of his armies on the opening day of the offensive, the Kaiser ordered an immediate award of the Iron Cross with Golden Rays to von Hindenburg. As the last occasion of this award had been to Blücher in 1814, it can be seen that the All Highest took a sanguine view of the results of the battle: but it does not seem that his enthusiasm was shared by any of his more responsible officers. Ludendorff maintained an aloof silence, von Kuhl contented himself with the observation that British obstinacy was proving, for the moment, a most useful ally. They both watched the lines on the Staff maps of the northern area with peculiar intentness, and despite news of success elsewhere, became more and more concerned at the lack of progress of the Michael 1 attack against the suddenly solidifying front of the British Third Army.
For von Below’s Seventeenth Army, after its successes of the first day, on the second ran into the apparently impenetrable wall of the Third Army reserve battalions. Nothing the German infantry could do availed, for they could not retrieve a partial failure on the part of their artillery. Whereas in the previous day’s bombardment the German gunners had known exactly where the British front line lay in relation to their own guns and were thus not inconvenienced by the fog, on the morning of March 22nd they lacked this knowledge, and until the fog lifted were firing by guesswork. Often their guesses were based on sound surmise, but the confidence of certainty was missing and thus the targets could not be pin-pointed. When the mists dispersed (before 10 a.m., along the whole of the Third Army Front) the Storm Troops therefore found themselves attacking the well-entrenched positions of the rear line of the Battle Zone, still strongly held by troops whose morale had not been shaken nor their ranks decimated by pulverizing bombardment.
All day long the battle raged, from the positions north of the Sensée where Lieutenant-Colonel Reitz’s battalion still held the ridge, southwards in a twelve-mile sweep to the Cambrai–Bapaume road and the Flesquières Salient beyond. It was as though the Arras defences above and the Salient below were iron spikes driven into the ground, anchoring at each end a flexible and slightly elastic cable: and Michael 1 could not break it. As so often before, rifle and machine-gun dominated the field, and all the valour and sacrifice of the attackers was to little effect against entrenched defenders.
© CASSELL & co. LTD. 1962
It was not, however, entirely in vain. Soon after 3 p.m., there was an enormous massing of German attack waves in Vaulx Wood and along the Hirondelle valley, which culminated in a crushing attack on the British holding the ruins of Vraucourt. Every mound of rubble, every ditch and every shell-hole became the scene of epic battle, and the ground between was carpeted with grey-uniformed bodies – and still the attack was pressed. British reinforcement battalions digging defence lines further back ‘downed tools’ and moved up in support – but now they were moving above ground into a position partly held by the enemy, and inevitably their ranks were quickly thinned. The original occupants of the village were driven back by sheer weight of numbers and by 6.30 p.m. the Germans were in sole possession. Thus an indentation was made in the line, necessitating withdrawal on either flank.
And by direct orders from Ludendorff, the drive along the Cambrai–Bapaume road was intensified and the northern haunch of the Flesquières Salient eroded even further, regardless of cost. Early in the afternoon it became obvious that the whole of the Third Army’s V Corps, including the Royal Naval Division, must come back deep into their Battle Zone: the southern anchor-point was shifting under the inexorable pressure.
South of the Salient, the situation was much more serious for the British.
As a result of the withdrawal behind the Crozat Canal during the night, the length of the Fifth Army front had been increased by some five miles, and owing to their casualties during the previous day it was all extremely thinly held. Moreover, with the sometimes total loss of battalions holding the front line when the offensive began went a large number of Lewis and heavy machine-guns, whose loss was to be keenly felt during the days which followed.
On the right flank, the Crozat Canal offered some protection, but its vapours also contributed to the fog in the Oise valley which blindfolded the defenders. Under its cover, von Hutier’s Storm Troops moved up close to the east bank of the canal and as soon as the fog lifted, without waiting for support from their artillery, they laid down a short and furious barrage from trench-mortars and machine-guns. By noon they had crossed the canal on the debris of an inefficiently destroyed road bridge in the extreme south, and were fighting through the remains of the village of Tergnier against troops whose confidence was wilting under many rude shocks. During the morning a British subaltern went mad and tried to shoot the horses of a battery of artillery taking up new positions under the impression that they were Uhlans, twice a London battalion had reason to believe it was being shelled by its own artillery, and as more and more Germans poured over the canal and into Tergnier something very close to panic seized the hard-pressed and harassed British infantry. They were eventually rallied on a line some mile and a half in the rear, their flank bending back to the canal north of yet another village which had fallen into enemy hands as a result of only partial demolition of a bridge.
By evening, therefore, the whole line of the Crozat Canal was in danger of being turned from the south, and its tired defenders cannot have been much heartened by a message which reached them from General Gough, reading: ‘In the event of serious hostile attack, corps will fight rearguard actions back to the forward line of the Rear Zone (Green Line) and if necessary to the rear line of Rear Zone.’
They were already behind the first, and whatever the illusions of their army commander the troops knew quite well that in their area at least, the second was nothing more than a line drawn on a map.
But it was to the north of the Crozat Canal that utter disaster threatened, for the troops which had yesterday fought their way back out of
the shambles of the Forward Zone were finding that the defences even of the Battle Zone were either unmanned or nonexistent. They had, moreover, received little training in the techniques of steady and controlled retreat – this as a matter of Staff policy (‘It is undesirable to train troops for retirement, as such a movement is not envisaged and it would affect troops’ aggressive spirit adversely.’) Once withdrawal began, therefore, they quickly lost contact with units on either side and became isolated in belief if not in fact, often with ruinous consequences. They had lived and fought in line for almost the whole of their military experience, and the new conditions were a psychological shock to the vast majority.
At Roupy, for instance, a battalion of the Green Howards were holding a redoubt, but the second-in-command was in grievous uncertainty as to the tactical situation:
Again the morning was thickly misty. Our own artillery fire was desultory and useless. Under cover of the mist, the enemy massed in battle formation, and the third attack commenced about 7 a.m. We only heard a babel in the mist. Now our artillery was firing short among our men in the redoubt. About ten o’clock the enemy penetrated our left flank, presumably in the gap between us and the battalion on our left. … Machine-gun fire began to harass us from that direction, somewhere in the ruins of the village. We never heard from the battalion on our right, and a runner I sent there did not return.
Altogether, they were attacked seven times during the day, and the onslaught at four o’clock was obviously intended to be conclusive.
We fired like maniacs. Every round of ammunition had been distributed. The Lewis-guns jammed; rifle-bolts grew stiff and unworkable with the expansion of heat. … In the height of this attack, while my heart was heavy with anxiety, I received a message from brigade. Surely reinforcements were coming to our aid? Or was I at length given permission to withdraw? Neither: it was a rhetorical appeal to hold on to the last man.
It was an appeal which fell, fortunately for the Green Howards, on ears which became in time deafened by the clamour of the attack.
Another hour passed. The enemy pressed on relentlessly with a determined, insidious energy, reckless of cost. Our position was now appallingly precarious. I therefore resolved to act independently, as perhaps I should have done hours earlier. I ordered the organization of a withdrawal. This message dispatched, I lay on my belly in the grass and watched through my field glasses every minute trickling of the enemy’s progress. Gradually they made way round the rim of the redoubt, bombing along the traverses. And now we only held it as lips might touch the rim of a saucer. I could see the heads of my men, very dense and in a little space. And on either side, incredibly active, gathered the grey helmets of the Boches. It was like a long bow-string along the horizon, and our diminished forces the arrow to be shot into a void. A great many hostile machine-guns had now been brought up, and the plain was sprayed with hissing bullets. They impinged and spluttered about the little pit in which I crouched.
I saw men crawl out of the trenches, and lie flat on the parados, still firing at the enemy. Then, after a little while, the arrow was launched. I saw a piteous band of men rise from the ground, and run rapidly towards me. A great shout went up from the Germans: a cry of mingled triumph and horror. ‘Halt Englisch!’ they cried, and for a moment were too amazed to fire; as though aghast at the folly of men who could plunge into such a storm of death. But the first silent gasp of horror expended, then broke the crackling storm. I don’t remember in the whole war an intenser taste of hell.
My men came along spreading rapidly to a line of some two hundred yards length, but bunched here and there. On the left … the enemy rushed out to cut them off. Along the line men were falling swiftly as the bullets hit them. Each second they fell, now one crumpling up, now two or three at once. I saw men stop to pick up their wounded mates, and as they carried them along, themselves get hit and fall with their inert burdens. Now they were near me, so I rushed out of my pit and ran with them to the line of trenches some three hundred yards behind.
It seemed to take a long time to race across those few hundred yards. My heart beat nervously, and I felt infinitely weary. The bullets hissed about me, and I thought: then this is the moment of death. But I had no emotions. I remembered having read how in battle men are hit, and never feel the hurt till later, and I wondered if I had yet been hit.
Then I reached the line. I stood petrified, enormously aghast. The trench had not been dug, and no reinforcements occupied it. It was as we had passed it on the morning of the 21st, the sods dug off the surface, leaving an immaculately patterned mock trench.
Such bitter disillusionments occurred a hundred times along the tenuous front held by the XVIII and XIX Corps of the Fifth Army, and as the day wore on, the battalions – now down to company or even platoon strength – retreated further and further, reaching out blindly all the time for contacts on either side. With the weight of the attack, the disruption of communication systems and the chaos of unrehearsed – virtually unimagined – retreat, disappeared all form of organization or command at higher than battalion and often company level. Enemy aircraft hovered over the men as they hurriedly dug temporary defences, their menace often enough to cause abandonment of the positions even before enemy guns sent over their high explosive to cause tired flesh to shudder, strained nerves to twist. The contact flares used by the Storm Troops had a similar effect, rising and falling often in lines curved around the defenders, like horseshoes with their points miles to the rear. As confidence evaporated, discipline weakened and sometimes naked force was used to strengthen it again. Groups of fleeing men were rounded up by military police and herded into isolated and improvised redoubts, already held by men kept in position by officers with drawn revolvers standing behind them.
This was not always necessary and many posts were held to the last with utmost gallantry – but nothing could serve to halt the enemy advance, and points of resistance had only the effectiveness of high patches of sand in front of the incoming tide. By dusk the entire Battle Zone of the Fifth Army had been lost, and during the night the remnants of three army corps – the XVIII, the XIX and the XII – fell wearily and tragically back to what derisory defences their commanders could devise for them. In the south, the XVIII Corps had lost the line of the St. Quentin Canal and gone right back behind the Somme, with the exception of a tiny bridgehead around Ham: in the centre, a yawning invitation to the enemy stretched for four miles up to the Omignon valley, and from there a thinly-held, forlorn horseshoe curved around to the Cologne valley. Here lay an exposed flank pointing towards the enemy, for the valley was occupied for nearly two miles as far forward as Tincourt, where the survivors of the 6th Connaught Rangers – the headquarters company and thirty-four riflemen – under command of their sole remaining officer, held the southern extremity of the VII Corps Green Line.
I must say I had hoped to find some fresh troops there, but there were none. Indeed the trench was practically empty … [wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Feilding]. I made my Headquarters for the night in an exceedingly comfortable three-roomed hut in Tincourt Wood, formerly the abode of an officer of the Divisional Staff, whose Headquarters had been here until the proximity of the enemy during the last two days had driven them further back.
© CASSELL & co. LTD. 1962
Having in my mind the heroic exhortations which had of late been coming so unsparingly, addressed to us in the front line from this wood, I confess I was not prepared for the aspect of sudden abandonment which the hut presented.
Its appearance suggested that some sudden and deadly cataclysm had overcome the occupant while he was having his breakfast, the remains of which, together with one or two half-finished cups of tea, still littered the table. The walls were hung with bookshelves and maps (of which latter I have annexed a useful specimen): the floor had a carpet: expensive oil lamps, crockery, and a profusion of knick-knacks lay about: but there was no sign of any effort having been made to save these treasures, so rapid, apparently, had been the owner�
��s exit. Lastly, and to our great satisfaction, there were two camp beds and a mattress of the softest down.
Think of the exhausting hours through which we had passed, and you will understand that I shall not easily forget that night’s rest, the only pity being that we did not get enough of it, and that the few hours we did have were spasmodic and disturbed.
And from Tincourt, the Green Line – held everywhere in similar insubstantiality – covered the front of VII Corps up to the edge of the Fifth Army area, where it met the flank of the Third Army’s V Corps, still jutting forward into the Battle Zone of the Flesquières Salient, and increasingly sensitive to threats of encirclement.
All through the next day – Saturday, March 23rd – the pressure continued, and under it the defences crumbled, the Fifth Army slowly but surely disintegrated. Reeling with weakness and fatigue, the troops fought until they were killed or retreated until they dropped unconscious – and inevitably contact with the army to the north was lost.
At 7 a.m. on Sunday, March 24th, the six battalion commanders of the Royal Naval Division – in the absence of any form of direction from higher command – decided that their position had become untenable, and that in order to avoid capture or annihilation, they must withdraw.
The Flesquières Salient was evacuated: the iron spike wrenched from the ground.
The Great Retreat had begun.
* * *
In accordance with the agreement for mutual support which had been made between the two Commanders-in-Chief (thus avoiding the necessity of complying with the directive of the Versailles Council to place a reserve force under General Foch), on the evening of March 21st Pétain had ordered the three divisions of the French V Corps to be ready to move, and a few hours later he instructed them to begin concentration in the Noyon area, some twelve to fifteen miles behind Gough’s right flank. This reinforcement was delayed for a few hours upon receipt of a courteous note from Haig thanking the French for their offer but intimating that it would not be necessary, but was expedited and indeed doubled shortly afterwards in response to a second message from Haig dispatched after his realization that the southern corps of the Fifth Army was being pressed right back to the line of the Somme.