At 6-20 a.m. the great assault was launched. The tanks went forward behind the barrage, followed by their infantry columns. From the first moment it was evident that the calculations of the British staffs had been correct. The surprise was complete, showing that the Germans had learnt nothing of importance from their prisoners. The advance had the precision of clock-work, the infantry following the tanks without difficulty through gaps in the most formidable wire entanglements in the world. It was 7-15 ere observers of the 36th Division upon the ridge east of Hermies could penetrate the mist and smother of smoke. Then they saw the tanks going forward over the ridge north of Havrincourt, well up to the barrage and waiting for each lift, the columns of the 62nd Division behind them, meeting with small opposition and suffering few casualties. It was a very impressive sight. To the Germans it must have been appalling, this line of great engines rushing through their magnificent defences as they had been of paper, checking an instant to put down huge brushwood-bound bundles to enable them to cross the wide trenches, then moving steadily and remorselessly on. Here and there a stout-hearted officer organized momentary resistance, but for the most part the affair was on one side a rout, on the other a procession. German barrage there was none; only some desultory and ineffective shelling. By eight o'clock the first objective, which included the villages of Havrincourt and Ribécourt, and Couillet Wood, and, of course, the front system of the Hindenburg defences, was in our hands all along the line. In Havrincourt and its château park fighting continued till ten o'clock or later, but it was without importance.
Upon the first objective there was a pause to allow troops for the next to pass through. At 8-35 a.m. the new advance began. Here again all went well—save at one point. The 62nd Division swept on unchecking; on the front of the III. Corps all resistance was easily overcome. But the 51st Division had no such fortune. The Highlanders were baffled by the village of Flesquières, perched upon its hill-top. Field-guns, dragged from their pits on the north side of the village, came into action as the tanks approached, firing over open sights, at point-blank range, crumpling them up, one after the other. The front line of the Hindenburg Support System was pierced; but as the tanks could not cut the wire of the second line, the infantry could not penetrate it. For the moment there was deadlock here. We must turn to our more immediate problem, the attack of the 109th Brigade, launched simultaneously with the general advance from the first objective.
For the assault upon the spoil heap a battery of four-inch Stokes mortars to fire "thermit" shell, which had been used with effect at Messines, had been procured. For four minutes these mortars and the covering artillery bombarded its south-west side. Then the 10th Inniskillings charged home and took it. There was no serious fighting here. The effect of the "thermit" shell was terrific morally. The defenders ran northwards up the trenches. A number were, however, killed by machine-gun fire, while seventy prisoners and two machine-guns were taken. The prisoners belonged to the 20th Landwehr Division, which had not been identified, and had come into line but two days before. This discovery was of good augury for the attack, since by this period of the war Landwehr troops were not of high quality.
The necessary point of entry into the German trenches having been won, the 10th Inniskillings pushed up them according to plan, behind their barrage. A second doorway was forced when, directly the barrage lifted from it, a company of the 14th Rifles, attached to the 10th Inniskillings, entered the communication trench on the Demicourt-Flesquières Road, fifteen hundred yards north of the first one. The clearing of the captured trenches was carried out most systematically. The leading platoons dropped a man at the entrance to each deep dug-out, to be picked up by the fourth section following in rear, which was allotted the duty of "mopping up." As each dug-out was cleared, a notice-board was set up at entrance bearing the significant inscription "Mopped"! When the leading platoon exhausted its men, another moved through to the front, the first reorganizing behind it. A single flag with the battalion colours was carried by the leading platoon, and never displayed save at the head of the advance. The 10th Inniskillings reached their objective just north of the Demicourt-Flesquières Road at 9-30 a.m., or a few minutes behind schedule time. This, however, was of no significance, since the line now held was part of the general second objective of the whole attack, and there was a pause upon it of twenty-five minutes. The second objective had been reached upon the whole front, save only at Flesquières.
Meanwhile, the 9th Inniskillings, responsible for the next phase of the attack after the 10th had captured Hill 90, had moved in. Those only who have seen the Hindenburg trenches can realize how comparatively easy it was to pass one body of troops through another in them. In ordinary trenches such methods would have resulted in hopeless congestion. Here all went smoothly owing to the great breadth of the trenches. The 9th Inniskillings had one platoon moving along the bed of the Canal, here dry. Craters on the Demicourt-Graincourt Road, defended by machine-guns, caused trouble, but the right companies pushed on, and gradually the situation cleared. The 11th Inniskillings, for the final stage of the attack, had now moved in. This battalion met with somewhat stronger resistance. On the right some determined German bombers held up the advance for a while, the Lewis gunner not being able to see them. Here, as was generally the case, the Germans with their stick bombs outranged our men with the Mills, but the Mills rifle grenade more than restored the balance, and the Germans were driven steadily back. This company of the 11th Inniskillings was also able to give material assistance to the men of the 186th Brigade, across the Canal, by its Lewis-gun fire. Lock 6 was the last centre of strong resistance. Eventually the garrison fled across the Canal, though few of them reached the other side. About half-past three the Inniskillings crossed the Cambrai-Bapaume Road, and were soon afterward consolidating their position, with their outpost three or four hundred yards north of it. The bridge across the Canal here, it may be added, had been blown up hours earlier. It had never been doubted by the British that the enemy had prepared it for demolition.
On the left of the 109th Brigade the 56th Division now prolonged the line along the Bapaume-Cambrai Road. On its right the 62nd Division, working up the Hindenburg Support System and over open country, had met with complete success. Graincourt had been reached and taken at 1-30, and the long communication trench north of the Bapaume-Cambrai Road was consolidated at the same time as the final objective of the 36th. On the III. Corps front Noyelles had been reached. But the failure of the 51st Division to capture Flesquières constituted a serious menace to the whole scheme of the attack. It would have been greater had the village been strongly held by the Germans, for then the troops of the 62nd Division could never have advanced past it as they did. The fact seems to be that it was the supreme gallantry of one German officer, aided by the merest handful of men, that withstood the attack. The attack was renewed with fresh tanks during the afternoon without success, that one heroic officer, it is said, firing his last gun with deadly effect with his own hands upon the tanks, the wreckage of which, horribly twisted and maimed, strewed the steep slope at nightfall. A patrol of King Edward's Horse, attached to the 62nd Division, had early in the afternoon ridden into the village from the north-west, and reported it clear as far as the Marcoing Road. An attack from this direction by quite a small force would probably have overcome what opposition there was.
The fact that Flesquières remained untaken caused some alteration in the employment of the cavalry. The 1st Cavalry Division was to have been passed through Marcoing, but at 4-30 p.m. the 2nd Cavalry Brigade was ordered instead to occupy Cantaing, which should have been already captured had all proceeded according to plan. But the village was strongly held and the cavalrymen were beaten off. The Brigade therefore remained that night in Noyelles. Just before dusk a company of the 186th Brigade[45] and two squadrons of King Edward's Horse made an attack upon Anneux, but were unsuccessful, owing to wire about the village and machine-gun fire from within it.
At 1-30 the 107th and 108th Brigades moved forward, the former to the northern slope of the Grand Ravin about Square Copse, the latter to Yorkshire Bank and the old British trenches south of it. It had now begun to rain heavily, and these troops, particularly those of the 107th Brigade, which were without any shelter, were drenched to the skin. At 8 o'clock the 107th Brigade was ordered across into Havrincourt and the trenches and dug-outs about it. The men were not finally settled with an opportunity for rest till 3 a.m. the following morning. The 10th Inniskillings of the 109th Brigade, which had carried out the first stages of its attack, was moved across the Canal to Kangaroo Alley, south of and parallel with the Bapaume-Cambrai Road. Patrols pushed forward on the west side by the 11th Inniskillings got within five hundred yards of the southern outskirts of Mœuvres, where they encountered resistance enough to compel them to withdraw. There is no reason, however, to suppose that Mœuvres was at this time strongly held, or that a determined attack would have failed to take it. The progress east of the Canal did not appear to warrant such an attack. The Engineers meanwhile had progressed excellently with their bridge-making. By 4 p.m. their bridge for infantry and pack transport, about a thousand yards north of the Hermies-Havrincourt railway line, was available. Half an hour later a still more important task had been accomplished; the existing causeway on the Demicourt-Flesquières Road having been repaired to enable field-guns and wagons to cross. The 36th Division would have been glad to have had at this stage its Pioneer Battalion to work upon its own roads, now being churned up by heavy traffic, but it was employed upon a similar task between Havrincourt and Ribécourt.
The Signal Service, admirably organized by Major Vigers, who on this occasion excelled, if that were possible, his successes at Messines, had opened up telephone communication, utilising the Canal bed to lay its wires. So good was this that it was a matter of no difficulty to speak from Divisional Headquarters, which still remained at Ytres, to Lock 6, just south of the Bapaume-Cambrai Road.
When dusk came down to bring operations to a halt, the situation was as follows. The 36th Division held a general line five hundred yards north of the Bapaume-Cambrai Road, in touch with the 56th on its left. East of the Canal the 62nd Division held the trench north of the road and the factory. Thence their line curved down just west of Anneux, with a long flank running east of Graincourt to the west of Flesquières. The line of the III. Corps ran well to the north of Noyelles. This left, as will be seen from the line roughly marked on the map, an extraordinary little German salient, in the midst of which there were still apparently German guns in action in Orival Wood.