On the 25th the 9th and 11th Brigades captured the high ridge of Ceylon Wood east of Bray, and thenceforward the advance progressed so rapidly, in spite of enemy resistance, that by the end of the month the Division had captured Suzanne, Curlu, and Cléry, and had reached the Bouchavesnes—Mt. St. Quentin road, some ten miles East of Bray, and 15 miles east of the line of August 8th.
During the early stages of this advance the roads had sustained a good deal of damage from shell fire, and a portion of the Company was employed filling in shell holes and removing fallen trees and dead horses. In order to relieve the main roads, cross-country tracks were much used. They were in good condition, thanks to the dryness of the summer, but required marking with numerous signboards. Throughout the whole period water supply was of the highest importance. Wells had to be located, tested, often cleared of rubbish and fitted with new windlasses. Fortunately the Boche had not troubled to destroy wells, but had devoted all his energies to blowing up railway lines. As evidence of his enthusiasm for this work it may be mentioned that the Company removed misfired or unexploded charges to the number of some hundred from a comparatively short length of line near Hem. Horse watering was of course done from the Somme, but horse troughing had to be erected, as a number of horses were drowned while attempting to water from the treacherous swamps and lagoons along the river. Dugouts, whether of German origin, as those around Bray, or built originally by the French, as were a number near Suzanne and Hem, had all to be carefully searched for mines and booby traps before being used by various Headquarters, and generally required repairs. An interesting task was making an inventory of the various German dumps captured. There were several very large ones round Bray, containing enormous quantities of mining and other timber, steel girders, barbed wire and pickets, corrugated iron and malthoid, and all sorts of interesting odds and ends. One dump, for instance, in addition to much timber, had hundreds of sets of door hinges and fastenings and window fittings, which would seem to indicate that the
German contemplated a big hutting programme in this area. There was a large dump near the railway at Hem Wood, and this the Company was camped alongside at the end of the month.
Two dumps contained small workshops for the manufacture of anti-tank mines, and a long train laden with timber, malthoid, iron and paper sandbags lay in the Bray station yard—with every axle-box destroyed with explosives.
Intermediate Coy. Hdqrs. camps since leaving Mallard Wood had been along a bank near Bray; in some German huts in Ceylon Wood; and along a bank facing the Somme at Hem.
At the Bray camp site, just before the unit moved in, the C.S.M., G. Brodie (D.C.M.), was wounded by a shell and died soon after.
In the advance the division crossed, between Suzanne and Curlu, the original front line of 1916, and passed on to the area devastated by the fighting of that year. The desolation of this region of shell-holes, dead woods, and villages represented by a few broken bricks has often been described; suffice it is to say that all ranks were pleased that progress across it was rapid.
On Sept. 3rd the Divisional front was cut out by the 2nd Australian Division and the 74th Division joining across it, and the Company started improving accommodation for the 11th Brigade in the area around Curlu. As there seemed some possibility of a short stay in this dismal locality, the 11th Brigade Concert Party—the “Blue Gums”—was brought up, and the Company improvised a concert hall, with stage and seats for 450, out of the ruins of some huts at Curlu. Work was also continued on water supply arrangements. The area had been too far behind the Boche line for him to make much use of it during the summer, and he had done nothing to improve and little to maintain the old wells sunk in 1916, which proved scarcely able to cope with the demands of the concentration of men and animals now living in the vicinity. Fortunately the 74th Division, which here overlapped the 3rd, had only recently come from Palestine, and being thus familiar with the problem, helped a great deal to improve the conditions.
But the Eastern sky indicated with increasing clearness that the warlike stream would soon move forward. The strong position about Peronne had been breached by the 2nd Australian Division’s capture of Mt. St. Quentin, and the glow of many fires by night, and huge columns of smoke by day, showed that the enemy was burning everything possible in the country behind him, preparatory to a retreat to the Hindenburg line. So no one was very surprised when on Sept. 5th orders were received to move once more.
3. Up the Valley of the Cologne.