[57] The opening of the Amiens offensive.
[CHAPTER XIII]
Back to the Messines Ridge: July to September 1918
The new sector was at the north-west corner of the great salient made by the Lys offensive. It ran from Fontainehouck, a hamlet north-east of Meteren, which was in the hands of the enemy, to the high ground south of the Croix de Poperinghe. It was about a mile and a half north of Bailleul. Here, as all along the line of hills, the enemy was at heavy disadvantage. His territory was overlooked. Every movement, every gun-flash, could be noted from Mont Noir and the other hills. Bailleul crumbled away before the eyes of our men. St. Jans Cappel, for so long Divisional Headquarters in days that now seemed very far away, was not far behind the front line. It was to a great extent destroyed. Many of the isolated farms, with which that countryside is bestrewn, were, however, undamaged, right up to the front line. The country was deep in crops, the wheat having to be cut round the outposts to prevent surprise attacks and provide a field of fire. As for vegetables, the men had all the potatoes and green peas they could eat without walking a hundred yards from where they slept. After Ypres, it was a very agreeable position. German artillery fire was not as a rule severe, owing to the fact that the battery positions were overlooked from the hills. The worst disturbance was caused by night bombing, assiduously practised by the enemy. Casualties were low. They would have been lower had our troops been as circumspect in following the hedges, and confining their movement to the night, as their predecessors, the French, had been. But the lesson of "lying low," so well learnt by Frenchman and German, never had been mastered by the British soldier, nor ever was.
On July the 19th the 9th Division, in line on the right, captured Meteren, the Artillery of the 36th Division co-operating in the attack. The 36th Division did not at first strive to improve its position in a similar way, but contented itself with raids on a large scale. One, by the 109th Brigade, resulted in very heavy fighting, the enemy being on the alert. Though the enemy's casualties were estimated at thirty, and a prisoner was taken, the raid hardly ranked as a success, since our casualties were seventeen, including four men missing. The 107th Brigade, on the left, had a more satisfactory venture. A strong patrol of the 2nd Rifles surrounded a farm in which there was an enemy garrison of ten. Two of these were taken prisoner, the rest killed. The patrol had not a casualty, despite heavy machine-gun fire. Further prisoners were taken by the 107th Brigade on a later occasion, while the only raid attempted by the enemy, from Haagedoorne, where his troops held the old railhead, was beaten off by rifle fire, even though the Germans got within twenty yards of the outposts before being seen.
An interesting event of this period was the visit of His Majesty the King to the area. On August the 6th, at Oxelaere, a little village on the slopes of Cassel Hill, he presented to Lieutenant Knox, 150th Field Company, R.E., the Victoria Cross won by him during the March retreat in circumstances that have been described. On the following Sunday His Majesty attended a parade service at Terdeghem, where were Divisional Headquarters.
The 36th Division, being in the Second Army, was not destined to take part in the early great counter-offensives that raised all men's spirits and showed the world that at last the tide had turned. The first of these had been French, though four of the best British Divisions had played their part in it. In what is now known as the Battle of Tardenois, beginning on July the 18th, the salient of the great German advance to Château-Thierry had been crushed in, and the enemy routed, with great loss of prisoners and booty. Then, on the 8th of August, came a second mighty blow. The Fourth British and First French Armies began a great offensive down the Amiens-Roye Road. The quality of the resistance with which it was met showed that German discipline and German steadfastness were weakening at last. On the 21st the British Third Army, and a little later the First Army, launched still greater attacks, sweeping swiftly across the waste of the old Somme battlefield, and once more approaching the Hindenburg Line. Before that was reached the 36th Division, up in Flanders, was again in action.
Various local offensives had been planned, to take from the enemy what little good ground he held near the point of his salient. The 9th Division's capture of Meteren has been mentioned. At the end of July, the 1st Australian Division, further south, had retaken Merris. On August the 18th the 9th Division carried out a further successful operation, capturing the important Hoegenacker Ridge, south-east of Meteren. It was now the turn of the 36th Division to improve its position. On August the 22nd an attack carried out by the 15th Rifles, on the right of the line, advanced it a quarter of a mile on a front of half a mile. Twenty-two prisoners and two machine-guns were captured. A curious and vastly effective ruse was employed in conjunction with this operation. The demoralising effect of the Livens projector upon the enemy was well known, but its use, charged with gas, would have prevented any immediate attack by our troops upon the area bombarded. The drums were therefore filled with a scent which resembled the smell of gas. Many of the enemy had run back before our men advanced, while others were caught wearing their respirators.
Two days later an attack on the left by the 1st and 9th Irish Fusiliers, under a barrage of smoke and shrapnel, advanced the line to the Haagedoorne-Dranoutre Road on a front of upwards of a mile. So great was the surprise and so swift the assault, that the enemy was "smothered," and did not make a serious resistance. Sixty prisoners and eleven machine-guns were taken here. An enemy counter-attack in the evening was brought to a stop by rifle and machine-gun fire, though the 108th Brigade lost one small post. The line was now a thousand yards only from Bailleul, and the defences of the town were pierced. An attack upon the salient would now have resulted in a great German rout. The enemy did not await it. Under the skilful leadership, that was never more apparent than in the months of defeat and humiliation which were to follow, he flitted in a night.