These orders were the first hint of the approaching offensive, and were followed by instructions received on August 2nd to send the attached infantry home, after partly dismantling the demolition arrangements, and to concentrate most of the sappers, leaving a few men to patrol the groups of bridges. Detonators and primers were removed from the circuits and stored separately; the leads and fuzes of fixed charges were concealed.
It is quite possible that a proposal for an attack with limited objectives, and on a small scale, would not have been very popular with the troops, tired as they undoubtedly were after nearly five months’ strenuous warfare; but the plans for the proposed battle, as outlined in the first days of August, fired the imagination. This was to be a “stunt” worth doing. To follow the first attack at once with a second, and so to penetrate some five or six miles within the enemy lines; thus to capture most of his guns; and to play around in his back areas with light tanks and armoured cars and cavalry; such schemes as these must help to win the war.
The first definite battle instructions marked the end of the great programme of works carried out to stem the German advance; thenceforward our labours were to fulfil the requirements of our counter-stroke; and the preparations for the first blow may best be included in the tale of the attack itself. The last bridge had been mined, the last deep dugout dug.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT OFFENSIVE.
1. The 8th of August, 1918.
A narrative of the experiences of a small unit in the Great War most properly should include only those facts and aspects of the struggle, which the unit learnt in the field from its own observation and adventures. A keen student of the newspapers in London, or even in Melbourne, will have a more complete knowledge of the progress of events, and a more comprehensive view of the general situation than the soldier in the field, whose view is curtailed by the “Fog of War,” and who, besides, is too absorbed in the problems of his own immediate sector to have the leisure of the arm-chair strategist.
For the members of the formation to be engaged, the eve of the battle of Amiens was, however, one of the exceptional cases where even a hint of coming events illuminates the whole military position.
It was obvious that the enemy had lost the initiative in the failure of his attempt to force the Marne, and that the violent battles on the French and American sectors in July marked its definite passage to the Allies.