The gap had formed, and in the early hours of the morning the enemy poured through Roye from the north-east, scarcely checked by the efforts of a French Cavalry Division, flung out upon a front of six miles. New French Divisions were about to detrain upon the Amiens-Montdidier Railway. If the Germans should strike home at that, a disaster far greater than any which the Allies had yet suffered would ensue. To close the gap there remained nothing but the remnants of the two original southern Divisions of the XVIII. Corps, the 36th and the 30th.
At 8 a.m. on the morning of March the 26th, the 36th Division received orders to take up a line from the neighbourhood of l'Echelle St. Aurin, on the Avre, where it was to obtain touch with the French, to the main Amiens-Roye Road, north of Andechy, linking up with the 30th Division. The 109th Brigade was ordered to take up a position from the river to Andechy, with the 108th Brigade on the left; the 107th Brigade remaining in reserve at Guerbigny. North and south of the western outskirts of Andechy ran a good trench, covered by a certain amount of wire, the second French line of 1916. Some three hundred yards north of the village, however, this line bent north-eastward, and could not be occupied. The advanced troops of the enemy were already at hand, and it was a matter of minutes whether the troops would be able to take up the position. The suddenness of the advance may be gathered from the fact that farmers from Guerbigny were yoking their horses to ploughs on the ridge north of the village when they were informed of the situation by troops moving forward. The present writer well remembers the gallant and dignified, "Eh bien, monsieur, il faut partir alors," of one old man about to hitch in his team, when informed that the Germans were about a mile away.
By the time the troops of the 109th Brigade were in position the enemy was in Andechy. Those of the 108th were actually prevented from reaching their station on the Roye Road by machine-gun fire on their left flank. Touch with the 30th Division was never obtained here, but later on it was discovered that its right was at Bouchoir, a mile further back on the main road.
All through the morning small parties of the enemy attempted to work their way forward, but were held up by the fire of Lewis guns. The 122nd Field Company, under the orders of General Griffith, had been posted in echelon to protect the left flank. At 1 p.m., as the enemy appeared to be progressing slightly on the left, General Nugent ordered the 107th Brigade to hold the old French line following the road from Erches to Bouchoir. The 107th Brigade, to which was attached the 121st Field Company, the 16th Rifles, and the 21st Entrenching Battalion, as well as the personnel of its own Trench Mortar Battery, contained now the remnants of seven units. It was accordingly formed into three groups, the largest, under the command of Colonel McCarthy-O'Leary, 1st Rifles, consisting of its own three battalions. It was in position by 4 p.m., later pushing forward a line to gain touch with the left of the 108th Brigade.
The troops had now been in position for six hours; six hours of time the value of which no standard can measure. When their physical state is considered, the steadiness they showed on this occasion is equal to any of their achievements through the week that had passed. Every German attempt to advance was frustrated by their fire. No artillery was supporting them. Even a single battery of 18-pounders would have been of great service, and would have had many splendid targets round Andechy. The Germans, for their part, were now heavily bombarding the village of Erches, which the 108th Brigade Headquarters were obliged to quit, moving into the open fields behind it.
At dusk the enemy launched an attack in strength upon Erches, preceded by a bombardment. By eight o'clock he was in the village. The 108th Brigade Headquarters was attacked at close quarters, and General Griffith slightly wounded in the hand fighting his way clear of the German patrols. Colonel Place, the G.S.O.1 of the Division, going up from Guerbigny in a car, with Colonel Furnell of the 1st Irish Fusiliers, and Major Brew of the 9th, to ascertain the position, ran into a party of the enemy. A bullet stopped the engine of the car. Colonel Place jumped out, but before he could draw his pistol from under his coat was hit in the leg, and fell in the roadway. Instantly a German sprang upon him and stabbed at him with his bayonet. Fortunately for Colonel Place, the thickness of his "British Warm" saved him. The little party had no alternative to surrender. The car was subsequently recovered, towed back, and served the Division well in after days.
Colonel Place had been G.S.O.1 of the 36th Division for more than two years. As a staff officer he was far more than merely able and efficient. His sympathy and imagination enabled him to grasp all points of view, and to understand those which were different to his own. He never seemed to require, as do so many men engaged on difficult tasks, an hour free from interruption, but could switch his mind on to each new problem presented to him, and return to his own where he had left it. His loss in this unlucky fashion was much regretted.
Lieutenant Cumming, whose reconnaissance on the 21st has been mentioned, led a patrol of six men into Guerbigny, to see if the enemy had yet entered it. They had not, but on his way the patrol was attacked by a German patrol of five. As a result of the fight every single German was killed.
The remnants of the 108th Brigade had taken up a line west of Erches, putting themselves under the orders of General Hessey, as their own Brigade Staff had been cut off from them by the German patrols which had burst through. There was now heavy shelling and trench-mortaring of the British positions, the enemy having moved up guns and mortars into Andechy. A patrol sent out at 1-45 a.m. on the morning of the 27th by the 121st Field Company, saw long columns of the enemy; infantry, transport, a troop of cavalry, and a battery of artillery, moving into Erches. Captain Miller's company of 15th Rifles, west of the village, was pounded with artillery and mortar fire, the trenches being obliterated and heavy casualties suffered. He had with him one machine-gun, and, as light appeared, this gun began to obtain many targets in Erches, inflicting considerable loss upon the enemy. At 8 a.m. the enemy entered a sap in front of his trench and began to bomb his way up. Lieutenant Young, with a handful of riflemen, promptly drove him out.
Meanwhile, clinging to a trench on the Erches-Guerbigny Road, was Captain Densmore Walker of the Machine-Gun Battalion, whose diary has previously been drawn upon in the course of this narrative, with a handful of men of his company, armed with rifles. Behind him was a party of the 107th Brigade with one machine-gun. Captain Walker had with him a rifleman of the old 14th Rifles, now in one of the Entrenching Battalions, named Gilmour, one of those curious individuals who, when all seems to be melting about them in moments of great emergency, suddenly display resource and coolness which amaze all who have known them. Together they had already carried out a patrol into Guerbigny, into which some of the enemy had been seen to move, in the course of which, Captain Walker cheerfully confesses, Rifleman Gilmour, rather than he, had been the leader. The counter-attack which followed may be described in Captain Walker's own words, because it succeeds, as no official account ever can, in picturing the exact details for the mind's eye.