On the extreme right of the battle the attack of the 9th Corps was a complete success, the 46th Division particularly distinguishing itself in the capture of Bellenglise.
[98]“Equipped with lifebelts, and carrying mats and rafts, the 46th Division stormed the western arm of the Canal at Bellenglise and to the north of it, some crossing the Canal on foot bridges, which the enemy was given no time to destroy, others dropping down the sheer sides of the Canal wall, and, having swum or waded to the far side, climbing up the farther wall to the German trench lines on the eastern bank.”
The Tanks were, of course, unable to cross with their infantry. They moved on Bellicourt, crossed over the tunnel at the nearest point, and swung south, working down the further bank of the Canal and arriving just in time to take part in the attack on Monchy.
Our success here was so complete that one division alone captured 4000 prisoners and seventy guns.
Many of these batteries were taken from the rear by Tanks and infantry while they were still in action, the enemy not realising in the least that they had been outflanked.
III
At the end of the day it was pretty clear what must be the ultimate result of the battle. But our front was extremely ragged and the breaches we had driven in the Hindenburg Line but narrow.
So for some days our attacks continued on all fronts; from north of Cambrai, where the 7th Battalion Tanks and the Canadians met with a desperate resistance, right down to our junction with the French 1st Army south of St. Quentin.
With the exception of a party of six machines belonging to the 1st Brigade, who helped in an attack just north of Cambrai, all the Tank actions of this period were fought in the 4th Army area, where we were busied in driving in the wedge whose thin end we had inserted with so much effort on September 29.
On the 30th, twenty Tanks belonging to the 5th, 6th, 13th and 7th Battalions fought in different groups, none with striking success, in one or two cases owing to the fact that the fresh infantry who had been brought up were unaccustomed to Tanks, and that liaison was therefore defective.