AUGUST 2, 1918
The Scots at Buzancy
A week ago I suppose there was hardly a soul in Scotland who had heard of Buzancy, which is one of the gates of the plateau on its western side. Today there is no prouder name borne on the colours of the eight famous regiments by which it was stormed. The Scottish Division has done no harder fighting during the war. The violence of the struggle was frightful. A great deal of it was hand-to-hand fighting in the streets. At the end of the day two bodies were found locked together in death. One was a German officer, in his hand the revolver with which he had shot his opponent. Our man was still holding the rifle with which he had bayoneted the officer as he fired the shot which killed him. The village and the sandstone caves were stiff with machine-guns. At one place there was a high wall which had to be crossed. Our men got over it by climbing on each others’ shoulders, and dropping on the other side in face of a terrible fire. The enemy showed no trace of the failing moral which is too freely talked about. Almost to a man they resisted to the very last, and after the battle several German machine-guns and one Tank were found with the men dead at their posts, and a ring of our dead and wounded close up to them.
The division had already had a strenuous time. They were brought back from Arras after seven months in the line, entrained at 2 in the morning and then moved to their new quarters in motor-omnibuses and, at the end of a 10-miles march, ordered to attack at daybreak. After a great fight, though exposed to galling machine-gun fire on their flanks, they reached their objective, consolidated their position, and held it till the morning of the 26th. Next day came the order for the attack on Buzancy and the high ground beyond, and by midday on the 28th the first wave was through and the objectives attained. Then, however, there was a hitch, as the troops on the right, in spite of the most gallant efforts, could not advance, and were compelled to fall back.
The difficulty about the position is that it is enfiladed by German heavy batteries. The valleys behind the lines are doused with gas, and as, except in the caves, there is almost no shelter, the troops have need of philosophy, as well as courage, to stick it as they do. The whole countryside is horribly devastated.
AUGUST 1, 1918
The fight for Sergy
Yesterday on the American front was a day of ceaseless fighting in which little actual progress could be made. It was plain that the Guard Division had been bitterly chagrined by the loss of Sergy the previous evening, after having four times retaken it, and it came as no surprise when, shortly after dawn, they launched a fresh attack. The attack was backed by the fire of field guns, with a ragged barrage from the 105s and 150s, the enemy’s gun positions above Cierges being well placed for a flanking fire, which the holders of Sergy found most trying. They were at last forced to withdraw from it and fall back across the river.
The enemy was permitted a few unpleasant hours of occupation, during which he did his best to better his defences. He even daringly brought some field guns towards the brow of the hill above it, but they apparently found the price of their daring a good deal too high and the American gun fire a good deal too accurate, for their disappearance was more rapid than dignified. It was as they fell back that what one hopes may have been the last American attack on Sergy developed, but the Guardsmen had apparently been shaken by their last exploit, and though in a few instances they stayed to face the bayonet, the fighting was less desperate than it had been the day before.
Shortly after the recapture of Sergy, American troops to the left, who had forced the passage of the Ourcq the night before, advanced up the narrow valley which divides the hill behind Fère from that behind Sergy, and succeeded, after a hand-to-hand fight in which the bayonet and butt almost alone were used, in taking Meurcy Farm, about a mile up the valley. From the farm it is possible to outflank the Seringes defences and to approach them up a less steep curve of the hill, which is some 600ft high. The enemy held Seringes in great strength, and it was also protected by machine-gun nests on either side. The attack was a wonderful performance for any troops, astounding for troops who have only so recently been blooded, and was as fine as any test to which the American Army has been put, since the men went steadily up the slopes, silenced one after the other the machine-gun nests, swept to the top of the hill, and then, wheeling eastward, stormed the village.
JULY 31, 1918
Great day of grim fighting
The Americans waded across the Ourcq near Sergy early yesterday, but the German guns and machine guns gave so much trouble that they had to retire to the south bank until artillery had prepared the way for a fresh crossing. They then pressed on to Sergy and Seringes.
Sergy has changed hands during recent fighting not less than nine times; tonight it is American. How bitter the fighting has been may be seen from the fact that the Americans have taken few prisoners.
Severe fighting is still progressing on the southern Marne front. The 4th Division of the Prussian Guard has been driven back and the Americans yesterday made slight advances. The losses of this division of the Guard were strikingly severe. In one case, captured Germans say, of a full company not more than 10 men were left.
Never once throughout the day did the fighting slacken. Every foot of ground was obtained at a fearful cost. The men lay out in the open on a slope without protection. A torrent of shells fell among them, the roar only broken by the whirr of the machine-guns that swept the slopes on the other side of the Ourcq. Both sides refused to give ground. The Prussians attacked insistently, only to advance at local points at the price of many dead and hundreds of wounded. Then the Americans would counter-attack. A mixture of bayonet charges and machine-gun actions would eject the enemy, and, temporarily at least, the position would remain in American hands. Then the Prussians would again attack, and at arms’ length the men of the two armies would meet. No chances existed for taking prisoners. At last, late yesterday, the Americans had made a slight advance, and a sadly beaten and despondent Guard Division saw its labours brought to little, although some time had been gained for a further retreat.
Scottish troops have been in action near Soissons, in the region where the Americans fought. The day when the “Kilties” went up to the line they passed the American wounded coming away in motor lorries. From every side came the heartiest of greetings. “Blighty,” the “Kilties” shouted to the wounded, who, painful though it must have been, vigorously waved their hands, and the answer came back again and again, “Give them hell, boys.”
JULY 30, 1918
Work resumed at Coventry
The Minister of Munitions announces that, work having been resumed in Birmingham and Coventry, he proposes immediately to appoint the Committee of Inquiry whose terms of reference he recently announced. The Trade Union Advisory Committee are being summoned to meet tomorrow, to nominate their representatives. The Woolwich Arsenal shop stewards, after hearing the report of their executive, who had conferred with General Seely at the Ministry of Munitions, unanimously carried the following resolution last night: “That we, the Arsenal Shop Stewards’ Committee, after hearing the report of our executive committee, including the acceptance by the Minister of Munitions of the conditions laid down by the Coventry men, and in view of the resumption on the part of Coventry and Birmingham, hereby recommend members to remain at work for the present.” A further resolution thanking General Seely for his activities was carried.
The strike against the “embargo” policy of the Ministry of Munitions is virtually at an end. A mass meeting at Coventry yesterday decided by an overwhelming majority to return to work at once on the understanding that the promised Committee of Inquiry is appointed immediately, that the Government refrain from issuing calling-up notices, and that no man is victimized. Some of the works reported that nearly all their men were back, and at all the rest it was stated that there were marked improvements in the attendance at the benches. Telegrams were sent after the meeting to some of the strikers who had gone to holiday resorts, and it is expected that by this morning the resumption of work in Coventry will be complete. From Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton, and other districts messages were received that all was normal.
Last Thursday the national conference decided to declare a general strike today. Yesterday a further national conference was held, and it was resolved to recommend the continuance of work pending the findings of the Committee of Inquiry. The Leeds engineers last night accepted this advice, and it is anticipated that the men of Barrow and Crayford will also abide by the national decision.
JULY 28, 1918
The German retreat on the Marne
For the second time in this war the Germans are in full retreat from the River Marne, and are being hotly pressed by the Allied troops. They are suffering very heavy losses, and the advancing Allies find their path thickly strewn with enemy dead. Within the narrowing salient they are being attacked byAllied bombing squadrons, and in their rear there is the utmost confusion. Yet the retreat is being conducted with considerable steadiness. Though they are on the run, we have still to discover how far the Allies can force them. That they have been able to withdraw methodically is in their favour, but the confusion behind their fighting line must greatly hamper them.
The incapacity of their Higher Command in the earlier stages of the offensive grows more astonishing as the truth becomes known. What are we to say of the military policy which first poured reinforcements into the “pocket” until the troops were packed like sardines in a tin, and then decided on a swift withdrawal when the salient was so crammed that the road to Fismes was blocked by lorries and troops for eleven hours? There has been no such spectacle of German military indecision since the war began.
Opinions differ as to the precise causes of the German decision to retreat. We have heard far too little of the fine work of the British divisions in this area. Their advance is important, because it is pointed directly at Fismes, the key of the whole salient. The probability is, however, that the retreat is due, not to the success of the Allies at any point, but to the irresistible pressure on the Germans around the whole of their very vulnerable battlefront. They have been squeezed out of the valley of the Marne, and the process of squeezing continues.
They owe their misfortunes chiefly to their tendency to regard opponents with contempt. They thought that on the Marne they could repeat their easy sweep southwards across the Aisne, and they refused to believe that General Foch was strong enough to attempt a counter-stroke. The attempts of the enemy to conceal the truth from the German civil population are indicated by the impudent statement in yesterday’s German bulletin that “on the battle front the day passed off quietly”. A succession of such “quiet days” would suit us very well.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-07-27/register/military-service-for-strikers-w3ldvks0j
JULY 27, 1918
Military service for strikers
The Prime Minister announced last night that strikers “wilfully absent from their work on or after Monday, July 29, will be deemed to have voluntarily placed themselves outside the area of munitions industries” and that “their protection certificates will cease to have effect from that date, and they will become liable to the provisions of the Military Service Acts”.
This decision is grave, but it will have the support of a large majority of the people of this country. The strike at Coventry, Birmingham, and elsewhere is bald defiance of the Government. The men who insisted upon it knew perfectly well that it was this, but chose deliberately a trial of strength. Everyone knows, as they know, that the moment they have chosen is critical beyond almost any other moment of these last four years of crisis. In stricken France men began to breathe again last week, and upon that very instant came the news that English workmen were about to suspend work on munitions. People throughout the country see that this is no ordinary labour dispute, but a plain challenge to the State. Its condemnation is conspicuously general, without distinction of class or sex, in every part of the land. No labour trouble since the war began has been so universally reprobated. The Prime Minister mentions the reasons. Millions of the fellow-countrymen of the strikers “are hourly facing danger and death for their country”, and “the men now on strike have been granted exemption from these perils only because their services were considered of more value to the State in the workshops than in the Army.”
Thousands of other, often older, men have not been so fortunate, and exemptions outside munitions are granted on the strict condition that the work for which they are granted is done without break in occupation. The strikers must know this. They have affected to scoff at it, declaring — as our Special Correspondent at Leeds told us yesterday — that Mr Churchill would be “bound to yield,” and professing “to be more amused than frightened by the threat to send strikers into the Army.”
It is no longer a threat, but a determination; and they will do well to realize that it is the determination, not of the Government alone, but of the country.
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