At Laventie no startling events had filled our absence. But after our return—Junction Post had not yet fallen, so that the outpost line was still in front of Rouge de Bout—developments began. On September 30 the enemy lost Junction Post to a spirited attack by the Gloucesters, the line that he had been holding for three weeks was broken, and his retreat became fast and general. After relieving the Gloucesters our companies were hard put to it to advance rapidly enough to keep touch. At last we stood upon the Aubers Ridge itself. Lille was almost in view; but at this point the Division was relieved by the 59th and sent southwards to join our armies before Cambrai, where the final issue between British and German arms was destined to be decided.
Out of the closing phases of the war I feel there must be material from which historians will find that climax which so grand a conflict deserves as its termination. But I confess that I find scarcely any.
After its dramatic and sinister opening the war seemed almost belittled by its tame conclusion. Years of nerve-racking experiences, the hardships, and the immutable association which towns like Ypres, Arras and Albert, and the trench-dwellings of Flanders and the Somme possessed, had indisposed the mind to receive new impressions from the last battle of the war. Patient from a hundred moves from trench to billet, from billet to trench, the British soldier accepted with characteristic resignation moves which were sweeping him to Victory. By gas, liquid fire, night-flying aeroplanes, and long-range artillery, the war had in four years demonstrated the incredible. The mere collapse, on one side, of the agencies military and political which lay behind, was in itself commonplace.
The Battalion joined the XVII Corps half way through October, 1918, and was soon put into important fighting. The enemy, who had lost Lille, Douai, and St. Quentin early in the month, was now in full retreat between Verdun and the sea. To preserve his centre from being pierced and his flanks rolled up, rear-guards eastward of Cambrai were offering the maximum resistance. Most villages, though they passed into our hands nearly intact and in some cases full of civilians, had to be fought for. The German machine-gunners rarely belied their character of fighting to the end. In an attack on October 24 from Haussy, the Battalion, advancing rapidly in artillery formation, captured the high ground east of Bermerain; and the next day B and D Companies (the latter now commanded by Cupper) again attacked, and captured the railway south-east of Sepmeries. For these operations the weather was fine, the ground dry, and the leadership excellent. A period followed in reserve at Vendegies and afterwards at Bermerain, villages which were liberally bombarded by the German long-range guns. Moving up again on November 2, the Battalion made its last attack of the war. A fine success resulted. The objectives—St. Hubert and the ridge east of it—were captured, together with 700 prisoners, 40 machine-guns, and 4 tanks, recently used by the enemy in a counter-attack. The fruits of this victory were well deserved by the Battalion, the more because so often in the course of the war it had been set to fight against odds in secondary operations. It was a good wind-up.
Of some battalions it was said that on November 11, 1918 they found themselves standing within a mile or two of where they first went into action in 1914. We, naturally, could claim no such coincidence; yet a dramatic touch was not wanting when the telegram, which bore the news of the cessation of hostilities, was read out by the Colonel to a parade formed up at Maresches upon the very ground whence the Battalion had started in its last attack.
The Battalion was never in the Army on the Rhine. After time spent at Cambrai we travelled back to Domart, a village mid-way between Amiens and Abbeville. In duration the journey surpassed all records. Three days we spent impatiently waiting for a train, and two more patiently waiting in the train itself; and we arrived at the destination faced with a ten-mile march in rain and pitch darkness. Happily the war was still sufficiently recent for such delay to pass as comedy. At Domart the one real topic was Demobilisation. I could set myself no harder task than a description of the workings of this engine. Few people understood how they were themselves demobilised, and fewer cared how others were. That the scheme worked on the whole well and justly was in great measure due to Symonds, whose zealous energy, though the Battalion was lessoning daily, never flagged. For two months Battalion drill and the 'Education Scheme' occupied our mornings, football our afternoons. Christmas was a great festival. The 'Frolics' pantomime visited the village, in which the Battalion pioneers, under the direction of Cameron, the Brigade signalling officer, had transformed an empty building into a capital theatre. General Thorne, who had so successfully commanded the 184th Infantry Brigade in its last battle, was unstinting in his efforts to give the men's life in the army a happy and useful conclusion. He secured visits from all the best concert parties and raised a fund to finance the department of Brigade entertainments, of which Nicholas, the Brigade Major, was chief minister. A weekly magazine was started, which ran to its fourth number. Truly the arts flourished.