IV
We had now reached another—the last—stage of the battle. The nature of the terrain had begun to change, for we were travelling at last.
[103]“Despite the unfavourable weather and the determined opposition at many points from the German machine-gunners, in two days our infantry and Tanks had realised an advance of five or six miles over difficult country.”
We had now reached the half wooded, half pasture and orchard country which lay on the outskirts of the Forest of Mormal, “like fringe upon a petticoat,” and the last of our battles had been fought amid the trees of the Bois L’Evêque and of Pommereuil.
We were within a mile of Le Quesnoy, which lay in a clearing in the Forest.
There was no chance of giving our machines an overhaul. It was therefore in a state of mechanical “efficiency,” which a little while before we should have said made any sort of fighting out of the question, that most of the remaining Tanks gaily tackled this difficult piece of the advance.