Perhaps one of the most striking roads on this part of the front is that which goes through Aveluy and runs along the valley of the Ancre to Miraumont. From it can be had a wonderful panorama landscape of former trenches and heavily shelled battlefields.
The end of March and beginning of April saw, for a time, at any rate, a return to the more interesting though less comfortable open form of warfare. Cavalry patrols were out on reconnaissances, and in touch with Uhlans and the rearguards covering the German retreat. They were at such places as Miraumont and Bihcourt, and not once, but several times, Brigades marched out in the early hours of the morning "into the blue," spoiling for a big open fight.
During this time, one echelon or section of the Supply Column was employed in rationing the troops. The second section was employed on various other jobs, such as stone and road repair material fatigues, and taking up ammunition for the guns. The latter is a particularly interesting job; especially is it so when 9.2-inch howitzer shells compose the load. First of all, there is the loading, at one of the many ammunition dumps. These dumps seem to be everywhere; they spring up like mushrooms in a night and in the most unexpected places. Perhaps on what was once "No-man's-land," to-day there are enormous stacks of shells silhouetted against the sky. From these dumps the lorries draw their death-dealing loads. The shells are taken from the stacks and piled on to trucks running on a light railway to the edge of a road. Here they are transferred to the motor-lorries. Then there is the journey up to the battery, at snail's pace, probably, for no vehicle, except a Staff car, must pass another along the —— road. Traffic control officers and mounted military police on the road see to this. Arriving back at your parking ground, you have just swallowed breakfast, only to find that you must go off again almost immediately and repeat the performance. So that, though tired perhaps, you feel you are of a little use, even though it is only the Army Service Corps you are in! Long days and nights, but full of interest, and not infrequently enlivened by a few "souvenirs" from the Hun batteries across the way-shells that blow motor-lorries into matchboard and scrap iron and kill the men in charge of them.
The bombardment during this period was the prelude to an offensive, the results of which I will not attempt to write. They are now ancient history, for what is news to-day is history to-morrow, so suddenly do events sometimes occur in this war. Suffice it to add that British troops took close on 20,000 prisoners and an appropriate number of guns in a month, besides capturing large tracts of land and many fortified positions, including the Vimy Ridge, to mention only one, which the enemy, at any rate, had thought to be impregnable.
That part of the line towards which we were working was held by Anzacs. The Australian Army is a democratic one. Officers go through the ranks first, and all ranks are thus more or less on a footing of familiarity, the officer invariably addressing a man as "Son." There are many stories of them. One, I think, got to Punch, of the Staff Officer who remarked, "This morning I was saluted by an Anzac. It has been a great day for me." Every day General Birdwood is to be seen in his car going up to the forward positions.
Our motor-lorries were also employed on salvage. This also is an interesting job. Thousands of men are dismantling old dug-outs, collecting R.E. stores and equipment—in fact, every kind of material imaginable, from live shells to dead bodies. The salved material so collected is loaded on to horse wagons and driven to the roadside, where loads are transferred to lorries, thence taken to railhead dumps, piled up, and sorted. Eventually it is put on train and mostly reaches the Base, some of it being sent further up to the front. All equipment that is repairable at the Base workshops is reissued later to the troops; the remainder, and scrap metal, sold by weight. By this means such places as Beaumont-Hamel and Serre are gradually being cleared. Corpses, when recoverable, are taken in horse-drawn wagons to the nearest military cemetery. Here they are, if possible, identified by an officer of the Graves Registration Committee, and then given a Christian burial, British and German alike, by a padre who is always there for the purpose.
No sooner is the ground cleared than its owners suddenly reappear and proceed to search for the money that they hid before their departure. Alas! I fear they seldom find it! The farmers begin to till the soil, so that land which a few months before was the scene of bloody fighting is gradually ploughed up, and not a sound is to be heard except the ploughman's cries in the stillness, urging on his horses, and away in the distance the never-ending thunder of the guns. The inhabitants are allowed to return and granted a permis de séjour if they are cultivateurs. When harvest-time comes they will be provided with reaping and thrashing machines by the British Army.
I recall two amusing items in connection with salvage. One was a notice outside an old dug-out which bore the legend, "This dug-out is mined": "To-night's the Night." The other was a sentence in a letter I was censoring: "I am now doing 'savage' work in the trenches."
The second week of May 1917 found us once more on the move, this time to Péronne. The move itself was an interesting one. Our route lay through Albert, Bray, and Cappy, and we travelled along roads in the Somme Valley which I have written of in a previous chapter—roads on which we had taken convoys as far back as August 1915. when they were at many points under observation of the enemy and in close proximity to the trenches. Thence along the main Amiens-St. Quentin road, the straightest and most tedious road imaginable.
Crossing the former lines of trenches and the old No-man's-land at Estrées, we turned into Péronne. The latter must have been an altogether delightful riverside town, with handsome buildings and broad streets. Now it is ruined, though not so completely as Bapaume. To pass through it one has to cross the Somme about four times, and at each point the original bridge has naturally been destroyed. The other side of Péronne each village has, of course, been systematically destroyed and the trees felled. Even the cemeteries have been desecrated by the removal of corpses from coffins and of tombstones. The Huns have used the coffins and lead shells for their own dead, and even altered the inscriptions on the stones and re-erected them as gravestones for their dead soldiers. In one churchyard a huge family vault shows signs of having been used as a bakehouse. A Frenchman who had lived in one village during its occupation by the Germans said the Hun soldiers told him that their orders were to destroy fruit trees, gardens, graves, and houses, so that, after the German Army had retreated, the civilian population, returning, would be appalled at the wanton destruction of their homes, and, reflecting on the towns and villages ahead still occupied, would collectively revolt and demand terms of peace to be made by France.