VI
The final stage of the day’s battle had been reached by early afternoon.
The armoured cars, moving rapidly east along the main roads, did much to complete the demoralisation of the enemy.
[76]“The enemy, once in retreat, became completely demoralised. One heard from the commanders of the armoured cars which were returning on the main Villers-Bretonneux road, how they chased excited German Staff cars and officers through the ruined village of Faucourt, and eventually had been held up, because the enemy’s traffic was so congested on the roads behind his lines that they could penetrate no further. The Air Force were then reported to have completed this confusion, by obtaining some excellent results in flying low over these roads....
“The cars which had turned northwards entered Proyart and Chuignolles, two moving up to the river Somme. At Proyart the cars found the German troops at dinner; these they shot down and scattered in all directions, and then moving westwards met masses of the enemy driven from their trenches by the Australians. In order to surprise these men who were moving eastwards, the cars hid in the outskirts of Proyart and only advanced when the enemy was between fifty and one hundred yards distant, when they moved forward, rapidly shooting down great numbers. Scattering from before the cars at Proyart, the enemy made across country towards Chuignolles, only to be met by the cars which had proceeded to this village, and they were once again fired on and dispersed. Near Chuignolles one armoured car obtained ‘running practice’ with its machine-guns at a lorry full of troops, and kept up fire until the lorry ran into the ditch. There were also several cases of armoured cars following German transport vehicles, without anything unusual being suspected, until fire was opened at point-blank range.
“Although more than half the cars were out of action by the evening of the 8th, there were no casualties amongst their personnel sufficiently serious to require evacuation.”
The Mark V. star Tanks successfully reached the day’s final objective and delivered their infantry machine-gunners on the line which was to be the limit of our advance.
That they were duly “delivered” is, however, about as much as can be said of many of these unfortunates.
The motion, the heat, and the fumes of the inside of a Tank closed for action, almost invariably proved too much for all but the Tank’s own well-salted crew.
Consequently where little fire had been met with, the machine-gunners had come up either riding or walking behind it.
Where the fire had been heavy and they had been sternly ordered in and the Tank closed up, they had been delivered flushed, feverish, and either vomiting or extremely faint and quite unfit for duty until they had been given at least a couple of hours’ rest.
The Australian Corps and their Tanks had alone taken about 7900 prisoners, and our total captures amounted to over 13,000 prisoners, and more than 300 guns, besides all kinds of stores and ammunition. Along the eleven miles of attack we had advanced to a depth of nearly seven miles, and (except Le Quesnoy, which we captured before dawn on the 9th) the whole of the outer defences of Amiens had been taken. The armoured cars and some of the cavalry had, as we have seen, been in action far beyond. It was north of the Somme that our advance had been most hotly contested, but even here we had pushed forward considerably and the enemy’s casualties had been particularly heavy.
The Paris-Amiens railway was completely disengaged, and the Despatch characterises the first day’s fighting as a “sweeping success.”