June 13th, 12.45 A.M.
Then at 12.45 the guns began. For three-quarters of an hour the air was full of the preparation. An enormous force of heavy artillery had been assembled, against which no ordinary parapet or traverse would stand for an instant. The 18-pounders reached an astonishing total, with several Belgian field guns in addition. It is true that the whole of this artillery would not be turned on the actual field of battle. Some of it was to be employed for purposes subsidiary to the action. None the less, a great battery of guns of all calibres pointed their muzzles towards the Germans on Hill 62 and Mount Sorrel. The enemy's positions on Mount Sorrel and Hill 62 were to be shelled upon a frontage of 1,500 and to a depth of 1,000 yards, while it was the ambition of the artillery to break to pieces, day in and day out, some 10,000 yards of German trenches, so that when the moment for the assault arrived the infantry could go forward, in General Burstall's words, with slung rifles. This ambition they very nearly fulfilled, as the light casualty lists of the 1st Division show. The infantry would be the first to acknowledge the immense debt they owed to the artillery behind them.
War, while it is in one sense a contest between two opponents, is also a struggle between the weapons of offence and the methods of defence. A strange kind of attack suddenly grows formidable, and after winning one or two resounding victories is countered by the cunning brains which organise an appropriate form of resistance. On the other hand, man raises what appears to be an impregnable bar to the forward progress of armies; instantly, far away, perhaps in laboratories beyond the seas, human intelligence is contriving to break the bar and to prove that it is impossible for any one force to say to another, "So far shalt thou go and no farther." In this interplay of forces the functions of the infantry, cavalry and artillery are constantly changing. Now one has, for a short period, a greater superiority and importance, and then the circle swings round and
"The spoke which is to-day on top
To-morrow's on the ground."
In all these calculations, each side is fallible until it has gained by experience.
It is a general and very fallacious view that the Germans foresaw all these developments of war and prepared for them, while the Allies were caught napping. Nothing could be more untrue. The Germans were better prepared for all possible eventualities than anyone else, but no soldier in any army foresaw the actual course which modern warfare would take. As a matter of fact, the development of trench warfare and the reign of the machine-gun was so fatal a blow to German prospects that it is improbable that they would have declared war at all if they had thought it anything more than a bare possibility. To them it was a matter of life and death to keep the armies on the move—life if they could crush the French and British armies in the field and then turn back on Russia; death if they were condemned to a static defence while the invincible resources of the Allies in men and money accumulated slowly on either front. History decided at the Marne in favour of the latter alternative.
From the date of the Aisne the infantry in defence gained a decided superiority over the artillery in attack and kept it for many months after the race to Calais had locked the lines in Western Europe. The enemy possessed indeed a great superiority in heavy guns, but it was not sufficient to blow out of its position a resolute corps or army. The deadlock was complete. The gunners could not destroy the trenches and the machine-gun emplacements sufficiently to allow the infantry to advance, and time was on our side. It was in the attempt to break through this impasse that gas was first used at Ypres; but after that terrible experience the defence produced the gas helmet, and the new weapon broke in the German's hands.
Then began the race between the contending armies to produce guns and shells of such size and in such quantities as would blast a whole area with death, bury the machine-guns and the garrisons, destroy the superiority of the infantry in defence, and give the game once more into the hands of the offensive. In this race we were slow starters. The generals took time to realise the necessities of the new situation, and it was not until the cyclonic energy of Mr. Lloyd George was harnessed to the work of the Munitions Department that the vast industrial resources of Great Britain were really brought into play. It was a work which required not only the energy of genius, but the tact of a consummate man of affairs conversant with all the details of civilian life. But presently the machine began to work and to gather momentum in its course. Every private concern adapted to the task was taken over and pressed into the work. The factories smoked on every hillside and the furnaces flared in every city. The vast metal tubes of the guns took shape, and a tremendous volume of shells began to flow in ever-increasing numbers across the Channel. By the summer the work was well in hand and the guns were ready to overpower the defence of the German defenders and clear the way for the 1st Division. On that June night Mr. Lloyd George was fighting on Canada's side.
June 13th, 1.30 A.M.
Then, as the guns lifted, the infantry charged. On the right Lieut.-Col. Allan led the 3rd Toronto Battalion forward, with the 1st Battalion close in support. So dense was the brushwood in Armagh Wood that in the first stages they went forward in the curious formation of sections in file. Advancing with great dash, they got in advance of the enemy's barrage before the latter could be turned on to our trenches, and took the Germans' front line. One of our Fortified Posts, then in the enemy's hands, turned a machine-gun and rifle fire on them, but the fort was taken by assault and the garrison bayoneted in the fighting. This Fortified Post represented the left of the 3rd Battalion, and thenceforward they met with little opposition here and in the centre, except attacks from isolated bombing posts, and their casualties were almost entirely due to enemy shell fire. They rushed a position somewhere in the region of their old line on Mount Sorrel, as soon as our guns lifted to the old German line, and were the first of the attackers to signal that the final objective had been reached at ten minutes past two in the morning of June 13th, forty minutes from the commencement of the action. June 13th, 2.10 A.M. The right-hand company, however, working up the old front line British trenches, was somewhat delayed by an obstinate resistance, but with the assistance of a company of the 1st Battalion it also pushed through.