TH.EES FELLED BY THE GERMANS AT PERONNE IN ORDER TO OBS1RUCT THE ROAD
WIREMEN ON A " DUCK-WALK" LEADING TO THE FRONT
THE BRITISH ENTER BAPAUME
A WORKING PARTY GOING UP TO CONSOLIDATE NEWLY CAPTURED TRENCHES
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/towards-bapaume-fnmdlqd2j
Towards Bapaume
Bluish-white clouds broke, vivid with flashes of sudden lightnings. Momentary flames lit the woods. Shrapnel broke above the trees frantically
March 14, 1917
Press Headquarters, March 12. I was talking to an artillery major of the heavies. We got in our words between the terrific blasts. “Fritz is counter-attacking now.” So that accounted for the infernal din in the Somme foundry, now again working overtime. “How does it go?” I asked, during a lull. The salvoes recommenced, and the major went to a telephone secreted in a chaotic heap of nameless rubbish. He came back. “It doesn’t go,” he said. “It’s gone.”
He spoke as a man would concerning a mere consignment of hardware. Some walking cases, their bandages immaculately and startlingly white in that world of filth, came from the opposite direction, where the trouble was. The men going up called with good-humour to the men coming back. “Hullo, goin’ to keep the bed warm for me?” and “Don’t look so glum, old son, you’ll come back all right”; and (to a man with his hand bound up), “I told you not to play with that hot poker. ‘Ave a fag, ole love.”
The enemy, angry for being thrown out of Irles, was trying to come back. He had gone to the Bapaume Ridge expecting a time of rest while he matured whatever plans he has, because he thought we should find it hard or even impossible to follow him, seeing that the ground he left behind him is what our guns have made it. No sooner did he get to the ridge than he has to turn, at bay. We are already there. The Somme fury is relighted. He has no respite.
Climbing over old trenches, stumbling over risty tangles of wire, we went forward away from the batteries, till we could hear the sky traced with the cross-hatching of high and dolorous cries, our shells on the way to the ridge before us. Trains seemed to be going north through invisible tunnels.
BOMBARDING LOUPART WOOD
In front of us stood Loupart Wood on the ridge, its separate trees visible, for the air was much clearer by now. We could even mark, helped by an occasional burst of sun, the scars of the trenches, on the slopes below, where the bombs were breaking in their blue smoke. Black fountains spouted there, full of dark debris. Bluish-white clouds broke, vivid with flashes of sudden lightnings. Momentary flames lit the woods. Shrapnel broke above the trees frantically.
Trudging over the horrible litter left by the shell fire which had now passed to the ridge before us - soddened helmets and equipment, broken rifles, rusting bayonets thrusting out of the mud, unexploded shells and bombs, chewing gum wrappers - an essential feature of this battlefield - boots, and the hasty graves of the misguided of oligarchies, we came to a place by chance which was like, a grouse-butte on a moor; except that this ground before us had not, even a blade of grass. It was only waves of brown mud.
I listened and heard an English voice say, “Five minutes right.” Another voice repeated monotonously, like a schoolboy, “Five minutes right.” There was a pause; and I heard the second voice say “Battery fired, Sir.” A second or two later came confirmation of that.
My officer guide and I found inside a youth on his stomach in the mud, looking at Loupart I through binoculars. He turned cheerily roimd on his elbow as we slithered in, and said, “That got them all right.”
We left him, to see Pys before us, showing in ruin through the trees of its deserted road. Whizz-bangs made occasional but futile fire-works there. Beyond that rose the church spire of Achiet-le-Grand. We are lifting new landmarks every day.
Reaching the Mount by Miraumont it was clear enough, even to a layman like myself, that such a ground as this, which the Germans held a few weeks ago, would never have been surrendered except by an enemy who well knew he was beaten there. Serre rose conspicuously to the north. Between it and the Mount where we stood the land which the Germans recently held formed obviously a natural and, by the look of it, an impregnable obstacle to our advance. But it has, been cleared. Miraumont was under German fire even then; but all to no purpose.
And the reason was about us. Here was the famous Boom Ravine, at the bottom of the steep southern slope of the Mount which overlooks Miraumont. Its aspect is as shocking a tribute to our gunfire as the evidence I saw before Le Barque recently. No troops in the world could stand such gunfire. And that gunfire at that very moment was following them along the Bapaume Ridge.
The British in Bapaume
Here was the symbol of victory for that prolonged series of battles - the fighting from Fricourt to Le Barque, from Gommecourt to Thiepval, to Combles and St Pierre Vaast, known as the battle of the Somme; and the British Army had won.
At the bare word, but a most authentic one, well behind the lines, where I heard with others that we were in Bapaume there was at least a little jubilation. Yet when, several hours later, I found a British soldier, clothed chiefly in a three days’ growth of beard and mud, seated among some awful ruins while by candlelight a doctor extracted a little shrapnel from a soft place - he was very chatty and was smoking a cigarette - his chief comment was “We went over at ha’ past 7 this morning (Saturday) and Fritz beat it. That’s all, chum. Fritz got out. He hadn’t time to stop.”
To get to that dressing station we had had to travel the whole length of that famous field which has been opened by nearly eight months of the most serious fighting of the war. It was incredible to us when an electric torch showed us an official direction post with the legend, “Bapaume, 2 kilometres”.
By the wayside was the long wreck of a German ammunition train, caught by our shells. We could see that easily enough, because now the star shells made a radiance as of intermittent arc-lights. They also showed us just in time the profound cavities caused by German mines in the road.
Round a turn of the road, and we were in Bapaume. It was veritably ours. There were the lights of the English in its windows; in a very few of its windows. But round Bapaume the night was crimson and throbbing with the incendiary fires of the destroyer, who had not long since been driven out. His green stars were rising anxiously into the glowing night, looking nervously for his pursuers.
What I mean is that if I could tell you what Bapaume looked like, with its wild and improbable lights, and the violent ripping of machine-guns, I would. But it is not so easy to remember, when one gets out of it at such a time, with bullets whistling past one’s ears and shrapnel overhead. One makes good time back, like the galloper who knew more than we did.
The Hindenburg Line
The broad inference is that the Germans are engaged in a far more comprehensive retreat than was realized.
The first sign that the German withdrawal was planned on a larger scale than originally seemed possible became manifest between Noyon and Soissons. The French discovered that the Germans were evacuating their old positions between tho Oise and the Aisne, and our Allies found themselves, much to their own surprise, able to move over the plateau behind Soissons. A general abandonment of the line of the Aisne seemed to be contemplated by the German commanders. But where were they going, and where did they propose to make their expected stand?
The common supposition, rather vaguely confirmed by the German Press, was that the enemy would dispose themselves afresh along a mysterious new front known as “the Hindenburg line”. Last Friday we explained various versions of the Hindenburg line which have obtained currency. Early this week the most prevalent impression was that the Hindenburg line was represented by the St Quentin Canal, which passes from Cambrai through St Quentin to a point near La Fere. But there is no conspicuous advantage about the line of the St Quentin Canal. Its northern end traverses fairly open country, and the whole suggested front is merely part of the low swelling ridges common to this region.
On Tuesday, and still more yesterday, it became tolerably plain that the enemy had no intention of holding the substantial works they are believed to have constructed in the neighbourhood of the canal. On Tuesday afternoon the French cavalry were within five miles of St Quentin, and farther south the French infantry occupied the important railway junction of Tergnier and actually crossed the canal within three miles of the obsolete fortress of La Fere. Yesterday morning our Allies took the village of Jussy, and thus established themselves at another point on the canal. The broad inference is that the Germans are engaged in a far more comprehensive retreat than was realized.
If the St Quentin line is not a very good one, there is nothing better behind it until the northern French frontier is neared. The suggestion is even made that we may soon see the German Armies on a line running close to the French frontier, from Lille through Valenciennes to Hirson and Mezieres, and then along the Meuse to Verdun. Such a wholesale movement would mean that the Germans had evacuated almost the whole of the occupied territory in France except the ironfields of French Lorraine.
On the other hand, until the situation is clearer, it is very necessary to avoid premature ecstasies, though we may all rejoice at the recovery of so much of the soil of France. We should recognize, for example, that so far the Germans have made a reasonably successful retreat, and have lost comparatively few men and no guns. The possibility of such a skilful withdrawal was foreseen by every soldier of experience. We have better pieces of work to our own credit. Though the German retirement has been very well planned, the British evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula was a far more difficult undertaking.
One of the changes brought about by modern weapons is that nowadays it is easier to retreat than in the warfare of the past, while it is far harder to attack and destroy a retreating enemy unwilling to stand at bay.
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