[49] Lord Haig's Despatches.
[51] Four of the six batteries of this Group moved on the night of the 20th. It is reported that their evacuated positions were assailed with destructive fire so heavy that they would have been completely neutralized from the first had they remained in them.
[CHAPTER XI]
The German Offensive on the Somme (II):
March 23rd to 30th, 1918
In the account which follows, it is scarcely to be hoped that all the confusion arising from reports that often conflicted can be eliminated. The resistance made by the 36th Division and its attached troops was one in which a large number of units, some existing, some hastily improvised, took part. But, for the most part, they were very small units, except for the battalions of the 61st Brigade, less depleted and less wearied by the morning of March the 23rd than those of the 36th Division. This chapter opens with events occurring forty-eight hours after the beginning of the great German bombardment. In that period the troops of the Division had been constantly engaged in fighting, or, when not fighting, on the march, or upon the alert for a fresh attack. On the nights neither of the 21st nor the 22nd had more than a couple of hours' sleep been snatched by any of the infantry. Many units had had absolutely none. The men were already wearied out. The 1st Rifles, to take one example, after fighting all day on the 22nd in the neighbourhood, first of Le Hamel, then of Happencourt, had marched by night to Pithon, there crossed the Canal de la Somme, then continued its march to Eaucourt, which was reached at three in the morning. The distance covered was nine miles. Even on arrival there was not rest for all, as piquets had to be posted round the village.
It is hard for those who have not seen a great retreat of this nature to imagine how depressing are the circumstances and the sights which he sees about him to the soldier entrusted with the fighting of delaying actions, how great his mental and moral, apart altogether from his physical, strain. The flood of civilians pouring out of towns and villages was in itself a pathetic and depressing sight. At three o'clock on the afternoon of the 22nd the nurses of the C.C.S. in Ham were walking down the Guiscard Road, carrying bundles, some of them assisting wounded men. Lorries and ambulances had already taken the worst cases, but at this stage there was not transport enough for all. Such sights as these were calculated to prey upon the mind and react upon the moral of the stoutest hearted. Allied with great physical fatigue and the sensation of being three or four times outnumbered, their effect was even more dangerous.