AUGUST 30, 1918
French dash to the Somme
The Germans are retreating as fast as they dare, as fast, that is, as they can without retreat degenerating into a rout. They are covering the same ground as that over which they retired in the spring of 1917 about as quickly as they did then, but with this great difference — that this time the Allies are close on their heels.
The towns and villages that fall one by one into the hands of the advancing troops are a sorry sight. They are battered out of all recognition. Most of them I know, some of them well. When I went to Moreuil and Montdidier I simply did not recognize them. I could not place any of the houses and not many of the streets I had known. Looked at from the west, Montdidier is a particularly gruesome spectacle. It is not only that the insides of the houses are exposed. The very foundations of the town are laid bare. They seem to have been turned inside out, and upside down. It is like looking at a grave that has been burst open and violated. The naked cliff of sandstone on which it stands is thrown open to view instead of being hidden by a clustering mass of houses, and cliff and fallen stonework form a formless jumble of chaos and destruction which in no way suggests that it could ever have been the handiwork of man.
Roye, fortunately, is not so bad. Some of the streets have been blown up by mines; the church and a certain number of houses have been destroyed by shells, but it still looks like a town, and there are still houses standing, on the walls of which the Germans have left characteristic inscriptions as a trace of their occupation. The brick ramparts overhanging the Avre facing west across the Santerre Plateau have suffered particularly badly, but they are picturesque in their ruin. It is not much consolation to reflect that in the case of these recently destroyed places the ruin is mostly the result of the fair wear and tear of war. But it is in a way comforting to feel that the Germans must by now be bitterly regretting the wantonness with which they blotted out of existence with fire and dynamite during their last retreat the towns and villages of behind their present line. They are in something the same plight as the ancient wanderers in the wilderness, whose soul fainted within them because they found no city to dwell in. And it is their own doing.
AUGUST 29, 1918
The retreat of the Germans
The enemy are clinging desperately to Bapaume, but evidently only for the same reason which prompted them to stay so long in Chaulnes and Roye. They want to gain time, which they need very urgently. The same reason explains the violence with which some of their units, brought freshly into the line from their now small reserves, are fighting about Thilloy and Fiers and Delville Wood. In these districts they have even regained a little ground, but they cannot have the smallest intention of staying there. It is plain that they intended to retreat from a considerable portion of their Somme salient, that the Allies attacked before they were ready to move, and that they are engaging in fierce rearguard actions at selected points in order to delay our advance. Yet our troops continue to move forward, though sometimes the bad ground makes progress difficult.
The crowds of prisoners taken show signs that they have lost the combative spirit, but the best German units are putting up a hard fight, and it would be unfair to our own gallant men to compare the enemy forces which stood so firmly about Croisilles and St Leger with the wreckage of weak divisions which has filled our cages. The German Staff overdid the “storm-troops” principle, and most of the units which have surrendered so readily had been deprived of their best fighters for the sake of the “storm-troops”.
Speaking broadly, the interest of the general situation turns upon whether the Germans will be able to recover stability upon a line of their own choice. Their evident decision to leave the Somme battlefield is comprehensible enough. It would suit the Germans very well, after the severe reverses they have suffered, to leave us for the winter in possession of the dismal wastes of the Somme battlefield and of the desolate areas of Hindenburg’s last retreat, if they could stand on a line not too far beyond. Our obvious purpose is not to give them the advantage of choice, if we can help it. It is quite conceivable that, if they have given up hopes of gaining a victory in the West, they may make some very large decision about shortening their line. But they have also to think of the depressing effect of a wholesale withdrawal upon their already dispirited population at home.
AUGUST 28, 1918
Scots’ and Canadians’ big advance
The chief interest today centres in the northern sector of the battlefront, where Canadians and Scotsmen are hammering the Germans on both sides of the Scarpe. Hard fighting is going on here as I write. On the rest of the battle front we continue to press the enemy back, giving him little rest along more than 30 miles of line.
In the Bapaume area the New Zealanders, continuing the movement on the north of the town, are clear beyond it some miles to the north-east, near the railway line, which runs approximately parallel to the Bapaume-Cambrai road, while on their left our troops have gone through Beugnatre, and this morning were said to be near the sugar factory at the crossroads just outside Vaulx-Vraucourt.
Farther to the south, eastward from Montauban, we pushed through both Bernafay and Trones Woods, and are not far from Guillemont. Still farther south, I understand, the Australians have taken Maricourt and the Vaux Wood, which crowns the heights above the Somme, and from which there is a wonderful view eastwards over the enemy positions.
South of the river the Australians are reported to be within a mile of Dompierre, along the plateau east from Chuignes. A glance at the map will show that on the whole length of front all salients are practically flattened out and all irregularities straightened, so that for 25 miles on the southern portion, from Bapaume to near Roye, our battle line now runs almost due north and south, while for a dozen miles and more above Bapaume to beyond the Scarpe it is hardly less straight, only bulging a little where the Canadians have thrust forward in the last 36 hours to and beyond Monchy.
On all this stretch there is no point where we have not advanced some two to three miles, while south of the Somme we are 12 to 13 miles farther east than we were three weeks ago. The actual gain of ground is something between 150 to 200 square miles, and the prisoners taken must be getting on for 50,000, of whom nearly 23,000 have been taken since August 21. This is no inconsiderable success. Among the prisoners was a battalion commander, with his adjutant, and practically the whole battalion headquarters complete.
AUGUST 26, 1918
A wonderful weekend
The arrival of our forces at the outskirts of Bapaume yesterday set the seal on a wonderful weekend, and brought into view possibilities which were not in sight a week ago. To the north of the Somme the Germans are retreating before the British at such a pace that people are beginning to ask whether they will be able to stand on the old Hindenburg line. Their movement is no planned and deliberate withdrawal, such as was witnessed last year. Their Somme front is said by one eye-witness to be “disintegrating”, and the word is apt. Though fierce resistance has been and is still being made by the enemy at many points, their opposition is patchy. Evidence of demoralization is increasing, their troops have lost cohesion, and their commanders appear to have lost control. Every one expected that the Germans would make a great stand on the heights of Thiepval, which for so long formed an unconquerable bastion in the first battle of the Somme. But our heroic troops overcame the difficulty of Thiepval by turning it from the north and the south, and then swarming over the crest when the encirclement was complete. We can see in these operations the immense advantage of attacking the battle-scarred area of the Somme from the west, and not from the south, as we did in 1916. Over the whole front from Arras to Bray our Armies are moving in one great sweep, and the tale of successes grows almost too rapidly to be recorded. Each day places of tragic and glorious memories reappear in the bulletins. Albert has already been left behind, and Bray has fallen. At Contalmaison our men are deep in the scenes of the last fortnight’s fighting in July, 1916. They have taken Mametz and many other points in their stride.
The Allies have had no such month since the war began, and the British have had no such week as the last. We toiled painfully after the Germans last year while they withdrew in orderly fashion; but, except for a brief space after the battle of the Marne, never until now have we had the satisfaction of pursuing and harrying on a large scale masses of dispirited and defeated German troops who are quickly losing all semblance of battle order.
May these changed and heartening times continue.
AUGUST 24, 1918
Gains all along the line
The whole British front is now ablaze from about four miles south of Arras to five or six miles below the Somme, almost to Lihons. Roughly a distance of 28 miles is now all battlefront, and everywhere, except for local counter-attacks, it is we who are on the offensive, and the Germans being beaten back. At all points large captures of prisoners are reported, and in the aggregate they will total several thousands. On the greater part of the front troops from the British Isles are doing the fighting, but Australians also are at work, as usual, with brilliant success. Aeroplanes and, wherever the ground permits, Tanks have been cooperating.
The most interesting incident of the series of battles has been our re-occupation of Albert, which I was able to enter today. The poor town is a dreadful sight. Streets which used to be familiar are now mere rubbish-strewn paths between stumps and wrecks of buildings. The entrance to the town from the west with the viaduct over the railway has been shattered by shell fire. The great church, or cathedral, from which the golden image of the Virgin and her Babe hung for so long, is only a shell. Yet, ruined as it is, it still stands high above the battered remnants of houses and shattered walls, among which still lie the German dead. When I reached the place our men had already pushed through; and were some 2,000 yards along the famous old Bapaume road, towards La Boisselle. As I watched from high ground on the outskirts of the town, I could see our men moving on the face of opposite slopes, and the Germans shelling. Probably the old associations of Albert have much to do with it, but hardly in all the war has any day seemed more charged with interest than this, or any spectacle more fascinating (I had almost said more beautiful), in spite of all its terrors.
I have today seen one of the German gas masks for dogs. It is not a mask so much as a complete headpiece, which fastens half-way down the neck with straps. It is made of thick canvas lined with rabbit’s wool — a smell which the dog may like — but the whole thing is very heavy, with large circular eye-discs of glass or mica. It has sleeves for the ears, and looks altogether what a pantomime actor would wear in the part of Red Riding Hood’s wolf.
AUGUST 23, 1918
Back on old battlefields
Marshal Foch is giving the enemy no rest, and each week sees an expansion of the war of movement on the fighting front in France. On Wednesday Sir Douglas Haig attacked on a ten-mile front between the Ancre and Arras, and yesterday he extended his attack southward from the Ancre to the Somme. From Ypres to the east of Reims the whole line is ablaze, with the exception of the sector between La Bassee and Arras, much of which is represented by the Vimy Ridge, where we are very solidly posted. A continuous battle of varying intensity is now being waged over nearly half the Western front, and even 1914 now furnishes no real parallel for the present extent of the conflict.
The British attack on Wednesday extended from the Ancre to a point near Moyenneville, about seven miles south of Arras. The advance was made into country just to the north of the old battlefield of the Somme, and the whole area contains the ruins of villages whose names became familiar during the German retreat to the Hindenburg line. Most of these were razed to the ground, and the countryside is extremely desolate. Fog favoured our attack at the outset, but the mists clung to the ground too long, and some confusion resulted at one or two points. Everywhere the advance was rapid, and at first the opposition of the enemy was slight.
As our troops drew near to the embanked railway line which runs from Albert to Arras the enemy’s front began to stiffen. It must be remembered that in all these scenes of previous conflicts the enemy have been busying themselves for four months. The new British attacks are against the heart of their Somme salient, and it was always recognized that to clear them out might be a tough business. The enemy reaction quite early in the day suggests that they were by no means unprepared. As for the British attack yesterday, Sir Douglas Haig’s report shows that it was on a front of about six miles, from north of Bray to Albert, that Albert was taken, and that all the objectives were reached at an early hour. Looked at as a whole, the situation during the last five weeks suggests that the Germans cannot continue to depend upon piecemeal efforts at defence, and may soon have to make some larger decision in the hope of stabilizing their line.
AUGUST 22, 1918
Tank officer’s pluck
Wherever one goes among the Australian Infantry who attacked on August 8 and the following days one finds feelings of warm and generous enthusiasm towards the British officers and men who manned the Tanks. One New South Wales Battalion, for example, speaks of a certain Scottish officer, a slight, pale-faced youngster, who commanded one of their Tanks. On the first day, as the battalion was approaching the end of the first half of its attack, it began to be fired on by a German battery which had been pulled out of the gunpits in order to fire direct. When the infantry reached the end of the first stage, this battery was still beyond them. The German gunners had left the guns, but there was a chance that they might manage to get out the battery and do further damage. The Tank therefore went out, and the young officer quietly jumped out and hooked up the gun-tail to the Tank, and brought it in. While doing this, the Tank was twice hit by another gun, which put it out of action for the day. But the next day this same boy was with another Tank accompanying the same battalion. This day the battalion attacked and took Framerville in a magnificent advance, which went with a swing from start to finish. But it was noticed that the battalion on the left, approaching the great German dump at La Flaque, was in difficulties owing to machine-gun fire from the left, where no troops were. The youngsters in the Tank, seeing their own battalion going well, immediately headed for the machine-gun nest a mile away, and made straight across the country for a factory chimney which they saw to be the centre of the opposition and approached it, blazing away with both broadsides like a battleship in hottest fight. The opposition dwindled. Having seen all right there, he returned and cruised right round the front of his own battalion in order to satisfy himself that everything was secure, and then returned home. The officer of that New South Wales Battalion who saw him told us he looked positively deathly with the strain of the two consecutive days’ heavy fighting inside that inferno. The Australian “digger” is a grand and great-hearted man. There is nothing he appreciates so warmly as real pluck, whether in his own officers and comrades or in those fighting with him.
AUGUST 21, 1918
Advance of the French Tenth Army
Marshal Foch has struck again, this time between the Oise and the Aisne. The French Tenth Army under General Mangin advanced on Sunday on a front of several miles. The left flank touched the line of the Allied offensive between the Oise and the Somme; the right was in contact with the battle still in progress from Soissons eastwards along the Vesle. What Marshal Foch has done is to link up the two battles by attacking across the intervening gap, where comparative quiet had reigned for some weeks past.
The Allies may now be said to be attacking on a continuous front from Albert to Reims, or, if we include the steady pressure maintained by General Gouraud east of Reims, from Albert almost to the Argonne. It is a very long time since battle areas raged even fitfully over such a very long portion of the Western front. To find anything approaching a parallel we must go back to the battles of the Marne and the Grand Couronne de Nancy in 1914.
Meanwhile the British Armies in the north have found themselves the cheerful witnesses of a considerable German withdrawal. The enemy are going back in the region of the River Lys, and it is clear that they are retiring in consequence of British pressure. On Sunday we made a successful attack, quietly defined by Sir Douglas Haig as another “local operation”, on a front of four miles between Vieux Berquin and Bailleul. The average depth of the advance was nearly a mile, and the village of Oultersteene was recaptured, as well as several fortified farms. The enemy vainly counter-attacked during the night. By Monday it was found that, to the south-west of this action, the German Sixth Army, under General von Quast, was retreating in all the country between Locon and the forest of Nieppe. They have made no progress in this flat and muddy district for a very long time, and the successful assault on Oultersteene seems to have finally convinced them of the necessity of shortening their front. On Monday our troops entered Merville without opposition, and by the evening they were well beyond the town. They were also able to cross the Lawe Canal farther south. Our Special Correspondent states that by yesterday afternoon we had recovered “something over twenty square miles of territory without resistance and without loss”.
AUGUST 20, 1918
The omnibus strike
Someone once said that a wet Bank Holiday caused more loss of life through colds and rheumatism than the average battle, and on the same principle an omnibus strike like that which began on Sunday is infinitely worse in its effect on the public mind and temper than the most successful air raid. The strike has arisen out of the demand on the part of the women conductors to receive the bonus of five-shillings recently awarded to the men. There are thus two motives involved: the ordinary economic motive to be paid at the same rate for equally good work as anyone else, and the motive of establishing sex equality. In both the strikers will, broadly, have the sympathy of the public. This happens to be work that women do quite as well as men, often under very exceptional difficulties; and it is clean against the general interest that the sex of the employee should be a disability in the wages market.
We are not much impressed with the contention that, as the award objected to was an official one, the managers had no alternative but to let the strike take its course. The strike is a great deal less damaging to the pockets of the omnibus owners than to the patience of travellers. Nor ought anyone take refuge in the doctrine of an “act of State” which cannot be interfered with. The question is whether the demand is fair and in the public interest.
It seems to us that in substance it is. That being so, the bonus will have to be given, and it had much better have been given with a good grace and without a strike. But, though the substance of the demand is just, its manner is greatly to be deplored. The negotiations no doubt began a long time ago, but the first notice of the strike was not given until after the meeting last Saturday night. In other words, there was no notice. Further, the strike was not in all cases recognized by the official representatives of the union, but was begun in defiance of them.
A strike without notice, especially in one of the prime necessities like transport, is not a labour dispute in the ordinary sense. It is a miniature coup d’etat. The principle involved is a big one, and can only be carried by popular support. It is to be hoped that the strike will not spread, for the same principle is at issue in other, and if possible still more important, services than those of transport.
AUGUST 18, 1918
Artillery battle intense
The artillery battle has been intense, and local fighting, sometimes very severe, has taken place at various points, especially north of the Somme, and on the extreme right of the British front towards Roye. Whether the enemy still hopes to retain possession of Roye or is only trying to make our advance as costly as possible I do not know, but if his desire is to make us attack him in his chosen positions, he must be disappointed. Instead of throwing infantry in strength against Fresnoy and Goyencourt we have been standing off and shelling German positions at those points mercilessly.
Meanwhile the Germans have been shelling their vacated positions in Puisieux and on the Serre plateau, not always, according to prisoners, waiting for their own men to get out. German infantry prisoners talk very bitterly of their gunners. Most of the prisoners recently taken are both despondent and confident about the war; despondent as recognizing the failure of the German offensive and the submarine war, but confident in the belief that, no matter what our strength, Germany can never be crushed on the field. Without exaggerating, it is fair to say that there is now a singular lack of enthusiasm for the war. Men taken in the Meteren region say that the High Command was recently anxious to obtain information about British regiments opposed to them and called for volunteers to make a raid to obtain identifications. A reward was offered of 150 marks [£7 10s], 14 days’ leave, and the Iron Cross. No volunteers came forward.
Although our authorities have so far not approved any device for using parachutes with aeroplanes, the Germans are using them. Two cases are reported of German airmen in Fokker biplanes, after being shot down by our men, escaping from the falling machines by parachute. Apparently the parachute, which seems to be made of white silk, and is smaller than a balloon parachute, opens automatically by air pressure as the machine rushes downwards and automatically pulls the airman out of his seat. In one case observed the parachute did not seem to begin to work until the machine had fallen at least 2,000 feet. Other devices now used by the enemy appear to be gas masks for both messenger dogs and pigeons, as well as for horses.
AUGUST 17, 1918
Telephone girls and marriage
The following memorial, signed by 800 telephone girls, protesting against certain advertisements which have recently appeared about the telephone service, has been forwarded to the London Controller:
“We fail to see that the marriage prospects of telephonists are any greater than those of any other girl workers. In fact, we think statistics will show that by far the majority of girls resigning from the London Telephone Service do so for other reasons than the ‘claims of love’ so facetiously referred to in the advertisements mentioned, which would make it appear that girls enter the service for the sole purpose of contracting a marriage.
“This is not so, and we strongly object to the Press being used as a medium to feed the public on such gross misapprehensions with regard to a service which, whatever else it may or may not be, is most certainly not a matrimonial agency. We would also recall to your remembrance the knowledge of the punishment meted out to an operator if she is heard talking to a subscriber, be it only the common morning salutation.
“The correct reason for the resignation of the majority of the girls and also for the general shortage of staff is because the girls cannot exist on the remuneration offered by the Department. With regard to the ‘comfortable conditions of work and higher pay for higher appointments’ it has long been a vexed point with telephonists that seniority is held of no account where increments are concerned, and that many girls of comparatively short service are receiving higher pay than their seniors. This is an injustice, which, if rectified together with many others (especially Sunday and overtime pay), would go far to break the girls of the provoking habit of resigning when better appointments under better conditions and with more adequate remuneration are offered to them.
“Lastly, we do not think that advertisements of this kind will attract, but rather will they repel, ‘the best type of girl’. Out of respect for the staff of the London Telephone Service, we ask for, and expect, an apology, and wish the public to be informed through the medium of the Press that the service is not, as before stated, a matrimonial agency.”
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