During Armistice week a further reduction of Home Cadres involved the amalgamation of the 1st and 3rd (Reserve) Battalions, under the title of 1st (Reserve) Battalion, so that the one reserve unit was made responsible for supply of drafts (few of course were needed) to the whole Fusilier Brigade. The combined unit was commanded by Col. Vickers Dunfee, V.D., until his demobilisation early in December, when command was given to Lieut.-Col. A. Mather (Leinster Regiment).
Shortly after Christmas 1918 demobilisation began to thin the ranks of the Battalion, while further ravages were made by the transfer of most of the "A IV" boys to Young Soldier Battalions, preparatory to their despatch to join the Army of the Rhine. In February 1919 the Battalion moved to Shoreham-by-Sea, and by the end of the month its disbandment was completed.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FINAL ADVANCE
I. The 2/4th Battalion in the Battles of Amiens and Bapaume, 1918
The middle of 1918 witnessed the veritable low watermark of the Allied fortunes. All the protracted sledgehammer offensives of 1916 and 1917, which had indented the enemy's line at such ghastly cost of life, had within a few short weeks been swept aside as if they had never been, and the advancing tide of the Germans' offensive had carried their eagles forward to the furthest positions they had ever reached in 1914. In Italy the laborious advance of our Allies towards Trieste had been turned, when the coveted goal seemed almost within their grasp, into a defeat which was almost decisive. Roumania had long been utterly overrun, Austria given a new lease of life, and Russia's debacle completed. Scarcely anywhere was there a ray of light on this very gloomy horizon.
We have endeavoured to show that, bad as the situation was, the Allies by no means accepted the crushing blows which had been inflicted on them as decisive, and week by week the position was gradually improving, and the numerical superiority of the enemy was being overcome. In July so great was the British recovery that offensive operations on a small scale were undertaken with a view to local improvement of our positions. Among these the capture of Hamel and Meteren may be mentioned.
The bulk of the fighting, however, was on the French front, where the enemy was endeavouring to enlarge the salient which he had driven down to the Marne. On the east side at Rheims and on the west in the Forêt de Compiègne his pressure was great but weakening. The French powers of resistance were gradually becoming more equal to their task and the German progress correspondingly slower till at last, on the 15th July, the enemy received a definite check. Three days later Marshal Foch had brought forward the reserves which he had jealously conserved through these trying days, and the enemy was in retreat on a front of 27 miles from the Oise to the Marne. Of the French offensive we can say nothing, for our task lies with the British Fourth Army under Rawlinson.
Immediately Marshal Foch had set his own armies in forward motion he ordered the British and American armies to open the offensives they had prepared. The first object of British G.H.Q. was to disengage Amiens, and the vast offensive movement therefore began in Rawlinson's army, which was on the right of the British line from its junction with the French near Moreuil to the north of Albert.