The net result of an arduous day was that the division was still short of the coveted road, but that it had won about 2000 yards of ground, including a good position for future operations. Casualties were heavy, and included Colonel Jourdain of the 2nd North Lancashires as well as Captain Weeks, C.O. of the 4th Royal Sussex. The French had got Grand Rozoy upon the left flank, and though they were driven out of it again they won their way back in the early morning of July 30. All this day and the next the troops prepared for a new effort, lying under heavy shell-fire which, among other casualties, killed Colonel Dooner, the chief staff officer of the division.
On August 1 the attack was renewed under a very heavy and efficient barrage, which helped the infantry so much that within two hours all objectives had been won. Beugneux fell after the hill which commanded it had been stormed by the 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in a very gallant advance. Colonel Barbow fell while leading his men to victory. On the left the French Twenty-fifth Division had been held up by the deadly fire from a knoll, but Major Atkinson of the 2nd North Lancashires realised the situation and diverted his reserve company to storm the obstacle, enabling the French right to get forward. It was planned that two British battalions should push on beyond their objectives in order to cover the flanks of a further French advance. One of these, the 4th Cheshires, carried out its part to perfection in spite of heavy losses, which included Colonel Swindells, its commander. The 1st Herefords, however, whose rôle was to cover the left of the Sixty-eighth French Division, was unable to do so, as that division was itself held up. That night the enemy was in full retreat all along this line, and falling back upon the River Vesle. On August 3 the Thirty-fourth Division was returned to the area of the Second British Army, having done a fine spell of service which brought the warmest compliments from the French commanders, not only to the infantry, but to General Walthall's guns (152nd and 160th Brigades) as well as Colonel Dobson's 207th, 208th, and 209th Field Companies.
The northward advance of the French, Americans, and British was slow up to the end of July, but became accelerated in the first week of August, Soissons falling to the French on August 2, and the Germans being driven to the line of the Vesle, when they held on very tenaciously for a time, their rearguards showing their usual high soldierly qualities. The Americans had a particularly hard struggle, being faced by some of the élite of the German Army, including the 4th Prussian Guards, but winning their way steadily forward in spite of many strong counter-attacks. The situation upon the Vesle and the Aisne seemed for the moment to have reached an equilibrium, when Marshal Foch called Marshal Haig to his assistance and a new attack was launched in which British troops were once more employed on the grand scale. Their great march had started which was to end only at the bank of the Rhine.
General Survey.
Before embarking upon this narrative, it would be well to prevent the necessity of interrupting it by casting a glance at those general events connected with the world war which occurred during this period, which reacted upon the Western front. It has already been shortly stated that the Austrian Army had been held in their attempt to cross the Piave in mid June, and by the end of the month had been driven over the river by the Italians, aided by a strong British and French contingent. The final losses of the Austrians in this heavy defeat were not less than 20,000 prisoners with many guns. From this time until the final Austrian debacle there was no severe fighting upon this front. In the Salonican campaign the Greek Army was becoming more and more a factor to be reckoned with, and the deposition of the treacherous Constantine, with the return to power of Venizelos, consolidated the position of the Allies. There was no decided movement, however, upon this front until later in the year. In Palestine and in Mesopotamia the British forces were also quiescent, Allenby covering the northern approaches of Jerusalem, and preparing for his last splendid and annihilating advance, while Marshall remained in a similar position to the north of Bagdad. A small and very spirited expedition sent out by the latter will no doubt have a history of its own, for it was adventurous to a degree which was almost quixotic, and yet justified itself by its results. This was the advance of a handful of men over 700 miles of desert separating the Bagdad front from the Caspian. Arriving at the town of Baku they kept the German-Turks out of that town for six weeks at a time when oil supplies were a most pressing problem for them, and so influenced the course of the war. Finally they withdrew in safety after a most remarkable exploit, hardly realised amid the clash of greater forces. Russia still remained in its distracted condition, hag-ridden by forces which at their worst surpassed all the classical excesses of the French Revolution. Regeneration began to appear out of chaos, however, though the end was still afar. Allied forces in Siberia and on the Murman Coast formed nuclei upon which the supporters of civilisation could rally. On the water the atrocities of the German submarines and their sinking of hospital ships, accompanied in several cases by the drowning of the sick and wounded men, were the outstanding feature. In the main, therefore, it can be said that there was a hush upon the periphery, while in the centre the Allies with concentrated energy hurled themselves upon their enemy with the fixed determination to have done with the thing for ever, fighting without a break until either they could fight no more or the German menace had passed from the world which it had overshadowed so long. Nowhere was there a thought of compromise. There could be no justice unless it were thorough justice. The criminal methods by which the war had been waged forbade every thought of an incomplete settlement. With stern and deliberate determination the French and British turned to their task, strengthened by the knowledge that the vanguard of America was already in the field, weak as yet in numbers, but the head of that long column which extended across the Atlantic and was based upon the virile nation of a hundred million souls beyond.
CHAPTER II
ATTACK OF RAWLINSON's FOURTH ARMY
The Battle of Amiens, August 8-22
Great British victory—Advance of the Canadians—Of the Australians—Of the Third Corps—Hard struggle at Chipilly—American assistance—Continuance of the operations—Great importance of the battle.