BREAKING THE DROCOURT-QUÉANT LINE—THE BATTLE OF EPEHY
I
We have said that August 22 had, in the original plan, been devoted to consolidation and to the moving up of guns. Only the 3rd Corps in the 4th Army area, with its twenty-four Tanks of the 4th and 5th Battalions, launched an interim attack on the Bray-Albert front.
We gained all our objectives. The 18th Division crossed the river Ancre, captured Albert by an enveloping movement from the south-east, and our line between the Somme and the Ancre was now advanced well to the east of the Bray-Albert road.
The left of the 4th Army was taken forward in conformity with the rest of our line.
The way had now been cleared for what was really the main attack, though it was not the attack in which the greatest number of Tanks were employed.
The assault opened on August 23 by a series of attacks on the whole of a thirty-three-mile front, that is to say, from our junction with the French, north of Lihons, to the spot near Mercatel, where the Hindenburg Line from Quéant and Bullecourt joined the old Arras-Vimy defence of 1916.
The hundred Tanks which went into action on this day were nearly all fresh machines which had not fought on the 21st.
They were distributed in groups along the fronts of both the 3rd and 4th Armies.
South of the Somme, with the Australians near Chuignolles, the largest group of nearly sixty Tanks went into action. They were machines belonging to the 2nd, 8th and 13th Battalions.