[CHAPTER XVII.]
THE CAPTURE OF GREENLAND HILL.
On 4th August 1918 Divisional headquarters opened at Villers Chatel, and the last of the trains conveying troops of the Division from Champagne began its journey. By this time the brigades had almost completed concentrating in the familiar country north-west of Arras—the 152nd Brigade at Caucourt, the 153rd Brigade at Chateau de la Haie, the 154th Brigade at Berles, and the Divisional artillery at Acq and Aubigny.
About this time Brigadier-General E. Segrave, D.S.O., H.L.I., who had been brigade-major to General Harper when commanding a brigade in the 6th Division, was appointed to the command of the 152nd Infantry Brigade. General Segrave had already gained a considerable reputation as a gallant battalion commander. His was one of the many happy appointments in the higher ranks of the Division.
The Division, now in G.H.Q. reserve, continued in this area until 14th August, when it returned to the command of the XVIIth Corps, and began to take over the line. Between 14th and 18th August the 154th Brigade relieved a brigade of the 52nd (Lowland) Division in the trenches east of Bailleul, of which many had been dug by the Jocks in May and June of the same year; the 153rd Brigade relieved a brigade of the 57th Division between that village of ill repute, Fampoux, and the right of the 154th Brigade, and the 152nd Brigade relieved a second brigade of the 57th Division in the Fampoux sector. At the same time the 170th Brigade, 57th Division, south of the Scarpe came under orders of the 51st Division, so that General Carter-Campbell was commanding a front of some 7600 yards extending from Tilloy les Moufflaines (exclusive) on the south to Bailleul (exclusive) on the north.
The Division had thus had less than ten clear days in which to rest, refit, and recuperate since its return from the second battle of the Marne, before it was again facing the enemy on what came to be an active front.
It was hoped that after its experiences and heavy losses in Champagne a longer period of rest would be vouchsafed to the troops. The days of rest in this period were, however, becoming fewer and fewer, and the whole of the British line was becoming agitated preparatory to uprooting itself and beginning its three months advance towards Germany. This uprooting, as far as the Highland Division was concerned, began gradually. It developed from the repeated testing of the enemy’s lines, resulting in the occupation of portions of them, and finally culminating in the overrunning of the whole of the German front system, and in the capture of the main tactical features behind it—Greenland Hill and Hausa and Delbar Woods.
The results of this advance were far-reaching, for as long as Greenland Hill and the two woods on its southern slopes remained in enemy hands, they stood as a menace to any attack delivered south of the Scarpe; and the plan was to deliver the British counter-stroke in a few days’ time, which was to extend from the south of the Scarpe down to the right of the British line.
Greenland Hill can be described as the point on which the great forward move to the Canal du Nord hinged.
It was fitting that the Highland Division should begin its final advance from the Arras country. Bailleul it had known in May 1916 from intelligence summaries as a place behind the long ridge in front of it, in which German reserve battalions rested, and through which they passed during their reliefs. Almost a year later, in April 1917, the big ridge was captured, and the Division saw Bailleul for the first time, and its patrols entered it. On relief it saw the 2nd Division occupy it unopposed. Again a year later it had occupied Bailleul itself and reconstructed its defences. Fampoux it knew in April 1917 as a village that shells were just beginning to destroy; it watched the hamlet change into a heap of brick dust, and learnt to avoid it like the plague. Farther to the right lay Roeux and the chemical works—“the comical works” that “made one windy even when it wasn’t shelling,” in which all units of the Division had experienced the bitterest infantry fighting and the most infernal shelling. In rear lay Greenland Hill, which in 1917 men of the 7th Gordon Highlanders had reached, but which the Division had never captured—the treacherous hill marked on the map on the wrong side of the railway. To the south of it lay those two woods, Hausa and Delbar, which throughout the fighting of April and May 1917 had looked down on the forward trenches, and from which the Germans saw every movement and signalled it to the gunners.