Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  Such is the typical history of a redoubt. Some succumbed more readily, some survived until the afternoon of the next day; but the difference may sometimes have depended upon the various degrees of severity of attack, which was by no means the same upon all sectors. The total effect was the complete destruction of the eleven gallant battalions which held the advanced line of the Fifth Army, and the loss of all material therein. One can but hope that the enemy paid a full price. Occasionally a sudden rise of the mist gave the defence a splendid opening for their machine-guns. On one occasion such a chance exposed a German officer standing with a large map in his hand within thirty yards of the fort, his company awaiting his directions beside him. Few of them escaped.

  We shall now follow the line of the Fifth Army from the north. The Seventh Corps upon the left consisted of the Ninth (Tudor), the Twenty-first (Campbell), and the Sixteenth (Hull) Divisions in the order named, and it carried the line down as far as Ronssoy, where it joined on to Watts’ Nineteenth Corps. The Ninth Division had two brigades in the line, and all the battalions both of the Twenty-sixth and of the South Africans were in the forward zone and exposed to the usual devastating losses. Their front joined that of the Forty-seventh Division at Fifteen Ravine in the north, and the Twenty-first at Chapel Hill in the south. About eleven o’clock the main advance of the Germans struck up against this front. There was no action upon the left between Gauche Wood and the canal, though the bombardment was exceedingly heavy. On the right in the neighbourhood of Gauche Wood the fighting was very severe all day, and the stormers were able to make little progress, although they attacked again and again with the utmost resolution. This attack fell mainly upon the South African Brigade, who held on with the same firm courage which they had shown at Delville Wood, and proved once more that there are no better soldiers in all the vast army of the Empire. It was only at this point, however, near the junction with the Twenty-first Division that the Ninth Division was attacked, for the German infantry was crushed by the artillery fire upon the left in front of Gonnelieu, so that the total losses of the Ninth upon this murderous day were probably less than those of other divisions in the Fifth Army. Gauche Wood was continually attacked, but the Quentin redoubt to the immediate north of it was left alone during the whole day. It was the 2nd or Natal South African regiment which held the extreme front, and after a very fine resistance they were driven through the wood, until at 11:30 the Germans held it all, but the Africans still clung to the system of Chapel trenches to the immediate west and south of it. To this they held all day, being much helped by a local rise in the mist about eleven, which enabled the guns in Quentin redoubt to see their targets in the south. Finally, the Germans were compelled to dig in in Gauche Wood, and give up the attempt to get farther. No other point was gained upon the Ninth Divisional front.

  Meanwhile, the enemy had pressed their attack with great violence upon the immediate right, where it fell with special strength upon the 2nd Lincolns of the Twenty-first Division. At 12 they were well behind the right rear of the Africans, who were compelled to throw back a flank. The Lincolns held on splendidly, however, and the danger was arrested. At 3:30 a new concentration of the enemy developed in front of Vaucelette Farm, and was heavily shelled by the British guns. At 5 o’clock the fight was very desperate upon Chapel Hill on the southern limit of the South African area, where the Lincolns were still holding out but were being gradually pressed back. The 4th South African Regiment (South African Scots) was therefore ordered to counter-attack in this direction, which was done with great dash, the position upon Chapel Hill being re-established. Such was the general situation when at 8:15 orders were issued for the withdrawal of all units to the rear zone. This was done during the night, the general line of retirement being towards Sorel and Heudicourt, while the Scottish Brigade kept position upon the left. The order to retire came as a complete surprise, as all was well upon the immediate front, but the reason given was the penetration of the line at other points.

  Upon the right of the Scots and South Africans of the Ninth Division the line was held by Campbell’s Twenty-first Division, consisting of the Leicester Brigade and two brigades of North Country troops, all of them the veterans of many battles. They covered the ground from south of Gauche Wood in the north to Epehy in the south. Two brigades were in the line, the 62nd in the north and the 110th in the south, and were exposed all day to a very severe attack which they held up with great steadiness and resolution. Heudicourt, Peizière, and Epehy were the scenes of particularly severe fighting. In the evening these places, and the whole line through Quentin Ridge and east of Gouzeaucourt, were still firmly held by the defenders. It may truly be said that along the whole fifty-mile front of battle there was no point where the enemy met with a more unyielding resistance than in the area of the Twenty-first Division. During the long day three German divisions essayed the task of forcing Epehy and overcoming the defence of Chapel Hill, but as the night drew in all three lay exhausted in front of their objectives, and there would certainly have been no British retirement had it not been for the movements in the other sections of the line. Only at one seventh post had the enemy made any lodgment, namely at Vaucelette Farm, and here he could have been thrown out by a counter-attack had the general situation permitted it. The Leicesters and the Northumberland Fusiliers upheld the fame of their historic regiments on this day of battle, but two of the outstanding exploits in the fight lie to the credit of the Lincolns, who kept an iron grip upon Chapel Hill, and to the 15th Durhams, who made a dashing counter-attack which swept back the German advance when it tried to penetrate between Epehy and Chapel Hill. The village of Peizière was held by the 7th Leicesters of the 110th Brigade, who fought as this brigade has always fought and held the Germans out. Once with the help of flame-throwers they gained a lodgment among the houses, but the brave Midlanders came back to it and threw them out once more. It was a party of this same Leicester regiment which held the farm of Vaucelette, and fought it out to the very last man before they suffered it to pass from their keeping.

  The fighting upon Chapel Hill was particularly severe, and was the more important as this eminence, lying almost upon the divisional boundary, enfiladed the Ninth Division to the north. There was a trench in front of the hill, called Cavalry Trench, and a farm behind called Revelon Farm, and the battle swung and swayed all day, sometimes the British holding all the ground, and sometimes being pushed back as far as the farm. The 1st Lincolns gained great honour that day, but they could not have held the hill were it not for the co-operation of the South Africans, who twice helped to retake it when it had been temporarily lost. The 11th Royal Scots from the Ninth Division Reserve Brigade struck in also with effect when the enemy filtered round the north edge of the hill and worked to the rear of it. They had got as far as Genin Copse when the Royal Scots attacked and hunted them back once more. The weak point of the Twenty-first Division lay upon their right where they had to throw out a defensive flank 3000 yards deep. They had not troops enough to cover this ground, and it was only the splendid work of the batteries of the 94th Brigade R.F.A. which prevented a disaster.

  The Sixteenth Irish Division (Hull) lay upon the right of the Twenty-first Division, carrying the line to the south of Ronssoy. This division had two brigades in the line, the 48th to the left and the 49th to the right, and it appears to have sustained an attack which was of a peculiarly crushing nature. It cannot be denied that the wretched parochial politics which tear Ireland in two, and which are urged with such Celtic extravagance of language, cannot have a steadying effect upon national troops, but none the less every soldier will admit that the men who carried Guillemont and breasted the slope of the Messines Ridge have proved themselves to be capable of rising to the highest exercise of military virtue. If, therefore, they gave way upon this occasion while others stood, the reason is to be sought rather in the extra severity of the attack, which had the same crushing effect upon other divisions both in the north and in the south of the line. All the
se brigades were desperately engaged during the day, as was the 1 1 6th Brigade of the Thirty-ninth Division which came to the help of the Irish, while the other two brigades of this supporting division endeavoured to strengthen the line of defence in the rear zone with a switch line from Saulcourt to Tincourt Wood. On the right the attack was too severe to be withstood, and not only the advance line but the battle position also was deeply penetrated, the Germans pouring in a torrent down the Catelet valley and occupying Ronssoy and Lempire, by which they turned the flanks both of the Twenty-first in the north and of the Sixty-sixth Division in the south. Especially fierce was the resistance offered by the 48th Brigade in the north, some units of which were swung round until they found themselves sharing with the Twenty-first Division in the defence of Epehy. The 2nd Munsters lived up to their high reputation during a long day of hard fighting, and were for the third or fourth time in the war practically destroyed. Colonel Ireland was hit about 10:30 in the morning, and one company, which counter-attacked near Malassise Farm, was annihilated in the effort; but the survivors of the battalion were undismayed, and under Major Hartigan they continued to oppose every effort of the stormers. One of the features of the battle in this area was the fight maintained all day by C Company scattered in little parties over Ridge Reserve and Tetard Wood. Lieutenant Whelan was the soul of this fine defence, contesting every bay of his trench, and continuing to rally and lead his dwindling band until noon of the next day. A road ran past this position, and it was all-important for the enemy to move their artillery down it in order to press the retreat; but the Irishmen shot down the horse teams as they came up until the passage was blocked with their bodies. Finally, all the scattered bands rallied near Epehy village where, under Captain Chandler, who was killed in the contest, they fought to the last, until in the late evening their cartridges gave out, and the gallant Hartigan, with the headquarter staff of the battalion, was overwhelmed. Lieutenant Whelan, meanwhile, held his post near Epehy until noon of March 22, when he and his men fired their last round and threw their last bomb before surrender. The defence of Malassise Farm by Lieutenant Kidd and his men was also a glorious bit of fighting to the last man and the last cartridge.

  The general situation upon the front of the Seventh Corps on the night of March 21 was that the Sixteenth Division, reinforced by the 116th Brigade, held the main battle positions, save on the extreme right, as far north as St. Emilie. Thence the line followed approximately the railway round and east of Epehy, in the region of the Twenty-first Division. East of Chapel Hill and Chapel Crossing it entered the holding of the Ninth Division, and passed west of Gauche Wood, through Quentin redoubt and so to the original line. Behind this indented position the 118th and 117th Brigades with the Sappers and Pioneers of the Thirty-ninth Division were hard at work upon the switch line, which should form a cover for retreat or a basis for reorganisation.

  Upon the right of the Seventh Corps lay Watts’ Nineteenth Corps, which had two divisions in the line, the Sixty-sixth Lancashire Territorial Division (Malcolm) in the north, and the Twenty-fourth Division (Daly) in the south. They covered a front from south of Ronssoy to south of Maissemy. The Lancashire Division, the same which behaved so splendidly in the mud battle of Broodseinde, had all three brigades in the front, covering 4000 yards, and were exposed all day to a most terrific assault. From the north they were in the order 197th, 199th, 198th. To the south of them an even more strenuous attack was launched upon the Twenty-fourth Division, which had two brigades in the line. These were the 17th upon the left and the 72nd upon the right, with the 1st North Staffords, 8th West Kents, 1st Rifle Brigade, and 8th Queen’s in front. About 11 o’clock the news came that the enemy was pushing through at the point of junction with the Eighteenth Corps upon the right, where there seems to have been a gap of some hundreds of yards between divisions, and later that they had penetrated into the village of Hargicourt in the rear of the Sixty-sixth Division. There was heavy fighting all day, and by evening the whole forward zone held by the 2/3 Lanes Fusiliers, East Lancashires, and Manchesters had passed into the hands of the enemy. Colonel Stokes-Roberts of the former battalion being among the casualties. The twelve redoubts which constituted the main defences of the. battle zone held out stoutly all day, all three brigades fighting with great valour. The Germans were continually pushing in, however, upon the right of the Twenty-fourth Division and enlarging their gains in that direction, so that the First Cavalry Division was called up, and the Pioneer Battalion of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade was thrown in on the right of the Sixty-sixth Division near Roisel to form a defensive flank. By 1 o’clock the battle zone of the Twenty-fourth Division was seriously compromised. The 72nd Brigade upon the right had been turned and the village of Maissemy had been taken by the Germans. Stone’s 17th Brigade Corps held a tight grip, however, upon the hamlet of Le Verguier, and though many assaults were made upon it the place remained untaken in the evening. In the area of the Sixty-sixth Division the enemy was still gaining ground, however, and they had pushed on from Hargicourt to Templeux, where a counter-attack by the 6th Lancashire Fusiliers held them for a time. The fighting continued to be very bitter until late in the evening, for though the Germans had infiltrated all the ground between the redoubts, they were unable to overcome their resistance, or to take possession of their gains. At 10:15 the order from General Watts was that there should be no retreat, and that however great the odds against them — and it was manifest that they were indeed very great — the two divisions should prepare for a fight to a finish. Meanwhile, the Fiftieth Division (Stockley) in army reserve had been ordered, after a march of seven hours, to support the line of the Nineteenth Corps, taking up a position in the rear from the Omignon River to the Cologne River, upon a front which had been partly wired. With the early morning of March 22 there came a renewed German attack which forced back the left of the Sixty-sixth, who were always much handicapped by the deep incursion the enemy had made into the area of the Sixteenth Division to the north, which continually endangered their flank and even their rear.

  The battle was soon general along the whole front, and everywhere the resistance was most desperate, though the troops were gradually pressed back by the ever-increasing weight of the attack as Hindenburg’s legions came rolling in from the east. Many a bitter curse went up that day from overwrought men against the perjured traitors on the Russian front, who to ease their own burden had thrown a double weight upon those who had helped and trusted them. At 11:30 in the morning the post of Le Verguier, which had been held so long and so gallantly by the 8th West Surreys, was at last carried by storm and its brave garrison destroyed or taken, though Colonel Peirs, who had been the soul of this defence, dashed out, revolver in hand, at this last moment, and got away in the mist. The whole line of the Twenty-fourth Division was shaken by the gap thus created. The pressure was very great also at Roisel, and the 151st Brigade from the Fiftieth Division had to be hurried up in order to hold back the advance down the valley of the Cologne, which would have turned the right flank of the Lancashire men to the north. The 9th Sussex was heavily engaged in this quarter and suffered severely. About noon a valiant attempt was also made by some tanks and dismounted troopers . to turn the tide by recapturing the village of Hervilly, which had some temporary success. The German penetration had been too deep, however, and there was very pressing danger of isolation unless the corps fell back. This they did in the late afternoon and evening, passing through the ranks of the Fiftieth Division behind them. “They were nearly all gassed and dead weary,” said one who observed them as they passed. The 11th Hussars and 19th Entrenching Battalion most gallantly covered the retreat. The enemy were close at their heels, however, in great force and most aggressive mood, as the Fiftieth Division soon discovered. This unit will be remembered as the famous Yorkshire Territorial division who helped to turn the tide at the second battle of Ypres, and have shown their worth upon many fields; but on this occasion the odds were too heavy, though they held the enemy for the res
t of the day.

  The lower half of the line between the Omignon and the Cologne rivers was held by Riddell’s 149th Brigade of Northumberland Fusiliers, while the northern half was held by Rees’ 150th Brigade of Yorkshiremen. Against this thin wall dashed the full tide of the German advance as it swept on in the wake of the Nineteenth Corps. It was a long and hard fight in which the enemy had heavy losses, especially in front of Poeuilly, where considerable sheets of wire lay in front of the position of the 6th Northumberland Fusiliers. It was a most gallant affair — gallant on both sides. Their Colonel, Robinson, laid out his machine-guns in the long grass upon each side of this wire and enfiladed the German line with most murderous results. In the south the 4th Northumberland Fusiliers were attacked in front and on the right flank, and the pressure was so great that they had to abandon Caulaincourt, which was then recaptured and again abandoned by the 6th Northumberland Fusiliers from the supporting line. The enemy, with his usual wile, telephoned from the mausoleum, a central building, that reinforcements be sent to that point. Upon asking the name of the officer and getting no reply, General Riddell, in local command, turned on five batteries of 18-pounders and blew the mausoleum to pieces. At Poeuilly also there had been two successful counter-attacks, but the enemy was swarming round the southern flank in great numbers, and the river, which is not more formidable than an average South of England trout stream, was of little use as a protection. An important point named Nobescourt Farm, lying near the junction of brigades, had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and the village of Poeuilly was also taken. By evening the Fiftieth Division had done its work, however, as it had held up the pursuit and enabled the Nineteenth Corps to reach the line of the Somme without severe pressure. That night they received orders to withdraw, which were carried out in the morning of March 23, Martin’s 149th Brigade in the south making a show of fighting in order to cover the movements of their companions in the north who were moving over a perfectly flat plain from Mons to Brie. Finally, General Riddell destroyed Tertry bridge and dropped back to St. Christ. During all these operations the German infantry were moving slowly forward in successive lines of skirmishers, about a thousand yards from the British, who retired in leisurely fashion, continually turning and holding them up, so that the whole spectacle was exactly that of a well-ordered field-day. When the main body had reached the bridges, a single company of the 10th Northumberland Fusiliers lay out in the higher ground, under the leadership of Captain Proctor, who received the D.S.O. for his able conduct of the operation. This company held up a brigade for two hours, and then, their comrades being safely across, they withdrew in their turn, leaving half their number behind them. Every one being across, both the St. Christ and Brie bridges were blown up. The latter was a brand-new construction and was in charge of an American officer of engineers who distinguished himself by his cool courage, starting out alone, and bringing across the river a train full of ammunition which lay upon the farther side. The Twenty-fourth Division had crossed at Falvy, the rearguard action being fought by the depleted battalions of the 72nd Brigade. Colonel Pope of the 1st North Staffords, Colonel Charlton of the 4th Yorks, and Colonel Le Fleming of the 9th East Surreys were among those who had fallen.