The first, or upper section of this line—from Drocourt to Queant—was
called the Wotan line. The lower section had become known as the
Siegfried line. Both together formed the general scheme of the
Hindenburg front.
It was along this line, then, that the British struck on the morning of Nov. 20, 1917. The drive had for its chief objective the capture, or possible isolation, of Cambrai, one of the most important positions in this sector in German hands. Cambrai was a railroad center in those days, a terminus from which the German general staff supplied various points of the long line with munitions, food and men, the latter when required.
The capture of Cambrai, it was apparent, would mean the ultimate fall of St. Quentin and Lille, both points of strategic advantage.
General Byng ordered his third army forward shortly before daylight so that when the moment came for the first blow his men would have daylight with which to go about their work.
As has been said, there was no preliminary bombardment of the enemy's positions sufficiently in advance to give the enemy time to prepare his resisting measures. Instead of the uprooting barrage, British tanks cleared the path for the infantry, and what few cavalry was used in the attack. Thus the enemy was given no warning.
The attack was a complete surprise—and a surprise attack in this great war had been called well nigh impossible. Even the German air service was fooled. As a result of its inability to anticipate General Byng's movements, the German fighting machine naturally lost some of its efficiency.
As dawn broke, the British tanks bore down on the foe steadily and without the appearance of undue haste; in fact, the tanks could not have made haste had such been General Byng's plan. Formidable instruments of warfare that they are, they do not number speed among their many accomplishments.
Hundreds of these tanks, bearing every resemblance to mythical monsters of a prehistoric day, crawled across the ground that separated the opposing armies. What must have been the surprise of the German general staff when the break of day showed these monsters so near?
Having had no warning of the impending attack, the enemy naturally was taken at a disadvantage. The warning of the advance was flashed along the German first-line defenses the moment daylight disclosed the hundreds of tanks advancing to the fray. The second-line defenses were made ready to withstand an attack should the first line be beaten back, and, although it was not within the comprehension of German leaders that it could be possible, the third-line defenses also were made ready to repel the invaders.
Between the German first-line trenches and the British front at this point the distance was something under half a mile. Between the various German lines of defense, the distance was almost an even mile. As the British tanks advanced across the open ground, smashing down barbed-wire entanglement and crawling in and out of shell craters as though they did not exist, defenders sprang to their positions. Rapid-firers opened upon the British from every conceivable angle; but the shells dropped harmlessly from the sides of the armored tanks. The tanks just seemed to shake their heads and passed on.