100 Years Ago - Battle of Cambrai 2

A WIRING PARTY RETURNING

IN MEMORIAM

A GAS MASK PARADE.

The Sergeant is examining the masks to see that they fit· and are in good order

A STRANDED TANK


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The German counter-thrust

The only notable success which was obtained by the Germans was at the southern end of the salient, where it must be admitted that for a time they made swift progress

December 4, 1917

The first organized attempt of the Germans to recover the great salient torn out of their line before Cambrai was made on Friday, and it is possible now to estimate its results. The attack was formidable, but though it has led to the loss of a portion of the fringe of the salient it failed in its broader purpose. The bulk of the valuable ground won by Sir Julian Byng is still in our possession, and we continue to hold the height crowned by the Bourlon Wood. The onslaught of the enemy was repulsed by our troops with the greatest heroism; perhaps they have never fought with more devoted courage than on Friday and again on Saturday.
It was not, of course, to be expected that the Germans would sit down lightly under their defeat on November 20 and the subsequent days. They had been hurrying up reinforcements and guns to the Cambrai battlefield, and an order by General von der Marwitz, found upon a prisoner, discloses the plan they followed. They aimed at delivering “an encircling counter-attack,” but their greatest strength was thrown at the two flanks of the salient, where it joined our old line. There they advanced in masses in the now familiar Verdun manner, and Sir Douglas Haig remarks that they tried “to break through our defences by weight of numbers.”

It is clear that their chief thrust failed completely. It was delivered from the neighbourhood of Moeuvres, and from the area east of Anneux and Castaing, and its object plainly was to cut off the troops holding the Bourlon Wood. Wave after wave of Germans swept forward between Moeuvres and the wood, and at one moment the advancing line reached the sugar factory on the main road from Bapaume to Cambrai. The attack was driven back, and the positions are said to have been completely restored. At some points the Germans were caught by the point-blank fire of our artillery, and the ground was strewn with their dead. The wood still forms a somewhat sharp salient, but it is firmly held. To the south-east, in ihe centre of the salient, an equally fierce attack was made upon the village of Masnieres, which for some days has been an exposed spot. The fiercest hand-to-hand fighting occurred at this point, for the Germans again adopted mass tactics, and were killed in heaps. Their losses in Masnieres are said to have been heavier than ever before in so narrow a spot. They obtained a temporary lodgment in the adjacent hamlet of Les Rues Vertes, across the Scheldt, but were summarily ejected. Though they were entirely unable to make good their attack on Masnieres, the place was evacuated on Saturday night owing to what had happened farther south. Long after our troops had gone the enemy were still shelling the ruins.
The only notable success which was obtained by the Germans was at the southern end of the salient, where it must be admitted that for a time they made swift progress. Advancing from Banteux and Honnecourt, and also from the direction of Vendhuille, they attacked without any artillery preparation at the villages of Gonnelieu and Villers-Guislain, which are just within the line we have held since the German retreat in the spring. There is no doubt that at Villers-Guislain they effected a surprise, just as we ourselves did the other day. They swept through the village, and also through Gonnelieu, while farther north they reached the vicinity of La Vacquerie. Their attack then passed across the slopes and woods beyond, and converged upon the important village of Gouzeaucourt, which is about two a miles inside the line we have held since the spring. The advance of the enemy upon Gouzeaucourt was so rapid that their approach appears to have been entirely unexpected, and they were able to seize the whole place, though most of the troops stationed there managed to escape. It was plain, however, that their attack had lost momentum - indeed, the really surprising thing about the whole episode is that the Germans made so little of their temporary advantage. They have never before accomplished such a thrust on such a scale, and they do not seem to have known what to do with it.
The British line was rallied with commendable vigour and the German tenure of Gouzeaucourt lasted only four hours. Our counter-attack was organized very early in the afternoon. The Guards marched on Gouzeaucourt in two coq imns, from Trescault on the north and from Metz-en-Couture on the west. They were aided by dismounted cavalry and by Tanks. The enemy had managed to get a large number of machine-guns into Gouzeaucourt, and they operated a withering fire. But the Guards would not be denied, and all the accounts suggest that their recovery of the village was one of the finest exploits of the war. Some of the Germans ran, but others fought stoutly, and the place had to be cleaned house by house. Our counter-attack pasted 1tar beyond Gouzeaucourt, and we recovered Gonnelieu across the valley, but the enemy are back at Gonnelieu again and its possession is still being contested. Villers-Guislain, to the south, appears to be still in German hands, while to the north the enemy are still close to La Vacquerie. Away to the north-east they have crossed the Scheldt and got into the Lateau Wood, the seizure of which was the immediate cause of the evacuation of Masnieres.

The net result of the first stages of the whole attack is that the stroke at the Bourlon Wood, and the entire northern part of the operation, met with a failure which must be pronounced disastrous, in view of the cumulative evidence of the heavy losses of the enemy. From a point near Marcoing southwards the Germans have regained a relatively narrow strip of the salient. Villers-Guislain and Masnieres define the sum total of their gains, though the fluctuations of the battle are only reckoned in villages as a convenient method of indicating topography. We have lost a number of prisoners and guns, though not to the extent the Germans claim, and in the single month of November we took many thousand more prisoners than they did on Friday. The battle is still continuing, though our Special Correspondent says it is now raging only at the southern end of the salient. He warns us, however, that it has “assumed immense proportions,” and he mentions the computation that the enemy are now employing two hundred thousand infantry in their efforts to deprive Sir Julian Byng of the fruits of his victory.
It is even said that Hindenburg himself has hurried to the scene of the conflict, accompanied by the faithful Ludendorff. Our Correspondent further says that captured plans indicate the magnitude of the original German aims, and also, it may be added, the extent to which they have so far failed. The impression seems to be that one of the greatest battles of the war is developing, and that the enemy are staking much upon the issue. All the more need, therefore, for the better co-ordination of the military effort of the Allies. It is a welcome coincidence that the first meeting of the Allied War Council was held at Versailles on the day after the Germans began their counter-stroke.

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Failure of a great plan

Once more the Germans came on in dense waves, such as we never dream of using, over open ground, without concealment, and they paid a terrible price

December 5, 1917

The great German counter-offensive here has, I think, definitely failed. The enemy has gained some ground, and will probably get more, but he is spending thousands of lives to win acres which we took from him without the loss of a hundred. The great coup has missed. All the dreams of converting “the English victory into a defeat,” as General Marwitz put it, or of smashing through the base of the salient, as the captured maps show the intention to have been, thereby cutting off all our troops which were beyond there, and at one blow wiping out our gains and re-establishing the old positions on the Hindenburg Line - all these dreams are ended. My own belief is that this fighting here in the last few days has been almost worthy to rank with the First Battle of Ypres. Perhaps the issues at stake were not as great, but we do not know how large the German hopes were if they had brought off their coup and this wide section of our line had lain prostrate before them. Here would have been a gate which might have let them pass almost to anywhere.

HOW THE ENEMY STRUCK
There have in these last few days been times of anxiety, and all credit must be given to the Germans for the formidable plan of their attack. They massed their troops, consisting of not less than six divisions on each side of our salient, quickly and secretly. They had no need to proclaim their presence by a preliminary artillery bombardment, because we had in our new positions no defensive works to destroy or wire to cut.
The enemy could attack when he pleased. He chose for the first attack on the weakest and critical point on the south side of the salient, the early morning hour, when the first activities of dawn were over and our daybreak patrols would have come back reporting all quiet. Then he struck with all his weight. Two hours later, when he calculated that the sudden breaking through of his armies on the south would have bewildered our defence, and concentrated all attention on that section, he flung in a second attack, with no fewer men, and in even denser masses, on narrow areas against the northern side.
You already know how on the north the attacks were checked altogether, with appalling losses. On the south, by the first surprise the Germans made certainly material gains, but they were only a small portion of what they aimed at, and were quite useless for the larger ends. After two days’ interval, in which much scattered fighting had continued, he again flung against the south side of the salient, on an even wider base than before, an attack no less heavy and no less determined. Though the first shot had missed, it was still not too late, by winning a great success, to attain at least some measure of the original plan. Our victory might still have been so far neutralized as to be made to bear some resemblance to defeat.

That attack was in progress when I wrote yesterday. It has made even less gain than the first, and its cost has been as heavy. Once more the Germans came on in dense waves, such as we never dream of using, over open ground, without concealment, and they paid a terrible price. Their front is a little farther forward than it was, but our front before them is firmer than it was. Anxiety in any acuteness has passed. They may attack as they will now, and we may yield them this village or that, but always at the same fearful price in German lives. It has to be remembered that the whole essence of our original victory and its chief brilliance was that it was gained with so few troops. If we had lost the whole infantry force engaged it would hardly have equalled the German losses here since this battle began. The Tanks compensated for the fewness of numbers, and cavalry came on and cleaned up afterwards. Our troops then were comparatively very few. In their new positions they had little formal protection, and the men were justifiably tired. It is the glory of the fact that these men, in such circumstances, held all the weight of the German attacks till the time of crisis had passed, that makes me say it was not incomparable as an achievement to the First Battle of Ypres.
HOURS OF STEADY FIRING
One gets astounding pictures of the fighting from men who were in it through those amazing hours of strain and triumphant excitement while the Germans still came on in masses such as we hardly thought to see across open country again. One hears of machine-gunners working their guns till they got too hot and jammed, or till all the ammunition was used up, and then seizing rifles and turning in to shoot, shoot. shoot, till the rifles, too, were hot. One hears of men firing steadily hour after hour, using three or four rifles in the course of the day, till dusk came on and the strain relaxed, and they put their heads down on their rifle-butts and sobbed. One hears of field guns firing as fast as they could fire at point-blank range into the masses as they came on, until wave after wave of the enemy melted and disappeared.
There were absurd things, too, in the first turmoil, when the Germans appeared unexpectedly at places behind our immediate front line, and even a General of Division escaped only at some personal inconvenience. Then the first thought of everybody was to get a rifle and turn in and help. I have already mentioned the fine behaviour of certain American engineers engaged on railway work, who were among those surprised in the early rush. With them were some Canadians, and you know that just now Canadians at the front are balloting in the Canadian elections. The tale is told of one of the Canadian engineers who, when the Germans came by and when our counter-attack developed, seized a rifle and helped to chase the enemy. When that was over, he did not know whether the enemy might not come on again and take him prisoner, and as he did not propose to go to Germany without having cast his vote for conscription, he proceeded at once to register it. As for the events of the last 24 hours, details are insignificant compared to the fact that the enemy attack as a whole has failed.
As you know, it was thrown against all the southern front from west of Masnieres to near Vendhuille. The hamlet of La Vacquerie has passed into German hands again, and they have made ground between Masnieres and Marcoing, but the gains arc small and the enemy losses have been very great. Before the end of the day the German effort had died down. The night was fairly quiet, and when I returned at noon from the place where, at the same hour yesterday, the air shook to the thunder of artillery, only now and then a single gun spoke lazily in the frosty air. The Germans may, and doubtless will, keep hammering and throwing men away, but their chance has gone. The great counter-stroke has failed. In my message yesterday I spoke of a certain rise in the ground just north of La Vacquerie giving good observation north and east, and it seems that yesterday afternoon our men from here inflicted especially heavy losses on the enemy. As elsewhere, the Germans came on almost solidly in full view over the lower ground to the eastward, and were cut down in great numbers. Around here and in the Masnieres area were the chief scenes of the German casualties.
ESCAPE OF 40 BRITISH - PRISONERS.
Some of our men had a cold experience in the night. The Germans have been keeping prisoners taken in the attack of November 30 in a cage somewhere across the Canal. Last evening a party of 40 succeeded in breaking gaol and got back to our lines by swimming the Canal. They arrived shortly before dawn clad in ice, but otherwise happy. Among the cages which we have been using is one where prisoners find temporary lodgment on the way down. It was built by the Germans themselves for British prisoners taken on the Somme. It is not a very good cage, but it has been vastly busier lately than ever it was last year, and among one of the latest batches of inmates was a man who knew the place well, having been a member of the guard over British prisoners in the same cage last year.
MORE TANK STORIES.
I have already told many incidents of the fighting of the Tanks. One Tank in the original advance was pushing on about 400 yards ahead of the infantry when it was hit by a field gun near Flesquieres, which is the dominating ground of the whole region till you come to Bourlon Wood. From Flesquieres Ridge the ground slopes gradually to the north-east, and it was along the top of the ridge, just over the brow, that the Germans built the great Hindenburg Support Line. As this Tank topped the ridge it was fairly hit by a field gun at close range. The officer and the crow of the Tank, climbed out with their Lewis guns and turned theni on the enemy in and about Flesquieres. After a bit they got on top of the Tank and continued firing from there till the guns got too hot and jammed and all the ammunition was gone. Then they found a German machine-gun and used that from the same position till all ammunition for that was gone too. That they took to rifles, and, a small party of Scottish troops coming along without an officer, the Tank officer took command and organized an attack on the German positions, and kept command till a new officer came up and took over. After our advanced line had gone through Havrincourt, some machine-guns were still playing from the village, so one Tank went into the village and routed out the machine-gun positions till all the fire was silenced. At Graincourt two Tanks went around the village, destroying enemy positions and capturing two field guns, and kept command of the village till the infantry came up. Just north of the Cambrai road a German position was holding out, when a Tank went in and caused the surrender of five officers and 75 men.
Tanks helped very much, as I told at the time, in the capture of Bourlon Wood, and they killed large numbers of the enemy at Cantaing. It was a Tank which practically stormed and seized the strong position at the Crucifix and killed a lot of Germans there, and others went into Anneux ahead of the infantry. One Tank, after it had become ditched, converted itself into a stationary fort and had a battle of its own in which the dead on the ground showed that it killed over 100 of the enemy. Another Tank took some 200 Germans prisoner out of the trenches, and at various points in the advance Tanks went first into defended positions and silenced opposition and then signalled the infantry to come on. The Tank contribution to the success of the whole operation was, indeed, incalculable. It has been another cold but beautiful winter day. In the early morning the whole country was white with frost, which, even in the end of the afternoon, has only entirely disappeared where the sun fell full upon it. Visibility, however, has not been as good as yesterday, the distance being veiled in a wintry haze.


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Hard fighting in the West

Germany has at the moment a good many men available. Hindenburg has shown that he is of a mind to use them in reckless numbers

December 6, 1917

A two days’ pause in the great Cambrai battle gives time for a fresh consideration of the results up to the present. There has been nothing on the German side comparable with their massed attacks on Friday and Monday since the heroism of France foiled their desperate thrusts at Verdun. The day after Sir Julian Byng had burst through the triple barrier of the Hindenburg Line, and had carried his advance to within sight of Cambrai, we said that the Germans in the West had held a large number of divisions in reserve all summer and that these divisions would be heard of before long. They have been heard of.
On Friday morning they were massed round the salient that the British advance had thrust out, and were hurled to the attack in numbers and formation far greater and more dense than had appeared on the Western front for many months. On Monday the same tactics were used against the south of the Cambrai salient. Since then there has been a lull, but all the evidence goes to show that the Germans are not yet done with. They are hurrying into the line picked detachments from divisions on the Russian front; the gaps in their. assaulting columns are being filled in this way; they will almost certainly try again, for the alternative is to acknowledge a failure on the scale of Verdun or of the second battle of Ypres; and yesterday’s serious but unsuccessful attack near La Vacquerie is likely to be the beginning.

The British High Command, which has seldom borne a heavier burden, can be trusted to deal with these renewed attacks. In this country it is our plain duty to understand the facts. Our Correspondent at Headquarters speaks to-day of certain “readjustments” which may be necessary in the British lines west of Cambrai. Let it be remembered that when the Tanks and the attacking troops swept over the Hindenburg Line on November 20 the impetus of their advance carried them from three to four miles farther over a front of at the utmost thirteen miles. This was in open country, and when the British troops settled down in their new positions they had to improvise such defences as they could. The places in which they found themselves were those where they happened to be at the end of their thrust forward. Inevitably there were some awkward corners in this new line. The village of Masnieres was one, and was evacuated in due course. There are others. Bourlon Wood itself, for instance, is embarrassingly placed, though its height makes it a dominating point. Moeuvres and Inchy lie due west of it. They have remained in German hands, and have proved so strong that the Hindenburg Line - breached just to the south - has held there.
The vulnerability of the British line round Bourlon Wood was shown on Friday, when the German masses pushed down between Moeuvres and the Wood, and at one moment reached the sugar factory on the Cambrai-Bapaume road, some way to the south-west of the wood itself. It is true that they could not stay there and were rolled back again, leaving innumerable dead behind them. But the dominant facts in the situation may be the plain determination of the enemy and the obvious advantages of turning the Hindenburg positions, now in our hands, into defensive barriers against the men who created them.
However that may be, the duty of people here is to see this great battle in the right proportion. Germany has at the moment a good many men available. Hindenburg has shown that he is of a mind to use them in reckless numbers if he can wipe out the results of what he himself has admitted to be “the British victory” of November 20. The British troops in the field accept his challenge, not only with determination, but with alacrity. As for the nation at home, if they understand the stakes that are at hazard and the fine points of sword-play on each side, they can have as little doubt of the ultimate issue as their comrades in the field.