III
Till the night before the battle the work of preparation had gone smoothly.
Maps had been issued, stores stood ready, pack animals and limbers were at hand to form advanced dumps.
The Reconnaissance Officers had taken little parties of Tank Commanders to the best observation posts in their sectors, and had there shown them the ground they must cross and expounded their maps to them. All the Tanks had been brought safely to their railheads and successfully detrained, and now they lay waiting in their tankodromes. “C” (afterwards No. 3) Battalion lay in Arras itself. The town had been most carefully prepared for troops to assemble and wait in.
Great chalk quarries underlay it, and these had been linked up and lit with electricity, and here two divisions could lie thirty feet underground secure from the heaviest shelling.
The Tanks had chosen the Citadel as their assembly place. There in the great grassy ditch of the old Vauban Fort they lay, nosing for cover into the re-entrant angles of the tall cliff of mellow brickwork that towered above them.
As soon as it was dark, on the night of April 8–9, the Tanks set off on their journey up the line.
There had been a question as to the route which these Tanks were to follow.
The alternatives were a long detour round the head of a shallow valley or a short cut over ground of questionable soundness.
The short cut had finally been decided upon, and, on the Reconnaissance Officer’s report, the Battalion had applied for enough brushwood and sleepers to build a rough causeway.
Owing to transport misunderstandings and difficulties, only a very small proportion of this material arrived in time. It was, however, decided still to chance the short cut. Brushwood had been laid in some of the worst places and the ground had a firm top. It was thought probable that this would, after all, bear the weight of the Tanks.
Alas, the hope was vain! The smooth turf proved to be no more than a crust, covering a veritable bog, and it broke through when the column was about halfway across. In the darkness six Tanks floundered one after another into the morass.
The scene which followed is described by an officer who was present:
“Never shall I forget the scene at Achicourt on the eve of the battle. It was round about midnight when I got there and pitch dark save for the fitful light from the still burning village[19] near by and the flashes of the guns.
“We had got word of ‘trouble near the railway crossing,’ and trouble indeed there was.
“There, sunk and wallowing in a bog of black mud, were some half-dozen Tanks—Tanks that should by then have been miles ahead and getting into their battle position for the attack at dawn.
“Instead, here were the machines on which so much depended, lying helpless and silent at all sorts of ominous angles, and turned this way and that in their vain struggles to churn their way out of the morass.
“About them were great weals and hummocks of mud and ragged holes brimming with black slime. The crews, sweating and filthy, were staggering about and trying to help their machines out by digging away the soil from under their bellies and by thrusting planks and brushwood under their tracks. Now and again an engine would be started up and some half-submerged Tank would heave its bulk up and out in unsteady floundering fashion, little by little and in wrenching jerks as the engine was raced and the clutch released.
“Then the tracks of a sudden would cease biting and would rattle round ineffectively, the ground would give way afresh on one side, and the Tank would slowly heave over and settle down again with a perilous list, the black water awash in her lower sponson. No lights could be shown on account of enemy observation, and at any time he might reopen with his heavy artillery, which had already been blasting the immediate neighbourhood earlier in the night.
“Altogether it was a desperate and discouraging business for those of us who knew that there were infantry already assembled for the morning’s assault who had practised with us, who looked to us for a lead across the German wire, and who must now do as best they might without us.”
In the event, however, it did not turn out as blackly as those at the Achicourt slough had feared.
Had the approach march of the Tanks been run to time, the column would almost certainly have come in for the blowing up of the ammunition dump at Achicourt, which was hit and exploded by a German shell soon after nightfall.
Also, the half-dozen Tanks that were extricated from the bog too late to join in that morning’s attack, provided a small local reserve that later proved of the utmost value and had an appreciable effect on the course and ultimate issue of the battle.
The ruins of Achicourt continued to smoulder through the night.
[20]“It had just been very badly shelled by the enemy. Two sides of the square were burned and blasted away (it had been all right, nearly, when I passed through it a few days before). The ruins still smoked and glowed, and shadowy working parties shovelled rubbish into shell craters to make them passable for transport and cleared a way through the sorry wreck. Smashed limbers, strings of dead mules, burnt-out and buckled motor lorries, transport wagons, and the like, all rather weird and depressing, the red glow of some other conflagration as a background, and this stabbed with the flicker of white light from our guns, little and great—thousands of them (actually), a throbbing roar in the distance, and fit to deafen you anywhere near. The great thing is to go about with an open mouth. It equalises the pressure on your ear-drums. I am acquiring a permanent droop of the lower jaw. Anyway, a discouraged, shell-shaken sentry told me that one could not go through for the shells, mostly our own, exploding in the fire, and refused to let me take the car in. It did not look anything like as bad as he tried to make out—from the danger point of view—and indeed when I walked through there were the working parties stolidly filling up the craters by the light of the glowing ruins. Having fulfilled my mission, I got back to report at Brigade Headquarters about 4 a.m., and then set out again at 4.30 to follow the battle and note and report the doings of our Willies.”
A DERELICT. VALLEY OF THE SCARPE
A BURNING TANK
“DIRECT HITS”
BELLIED ON A TREE-STUMP AND SUBSEQUENTLY HIT