The advance was continued successfully by the XVII. Corps between 27th September and 1st October, the 52nd doing particularly well, not only at the crossing of the Canal du Nord but in the capture of the heavily wired defences on either side of it.
The designation of the fighting 27th September-1st October, has been altered by the Nomenclature Committee and is now the “Battle of the Canal du Nord.” They have fixed the dates of the “Battle of Cambrai, 1918,” to be 8th and 9th October.
Early in October the Division left the XVII. Corps and later that month took over from the 12th Division in the VIII. Corps, Fifth Army.
With short intervals of rest the Division continued in the line of the advance until Armistice Day. They crossed the Belgian frontier south of Péruvelz, and moving eastward by Sirault, were about ten miles north of Mons on 11th November. During these last few weeks there was frequently stubborn opposition which involved sharp fighting.
The 5th King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 8th Scottish Rifles, and 5th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of the 52nd served during the last five months in the 34th Division (Major-General Nicholson), which after suffering heavy losses in the German offensive of March and April was reconstituted largely with battalions from the Palestine Divisions. It served with the French Tenth Army, south of Soissons in July 1918, and was highly complimented by General Mangin, the Army Commander. The battalions from the 52nd seem to have done exceptionally well both south of Soissons and at the capture of Gheluwe in Belgium, 14th October, and Anseghem, 31st October, when the 34th was advancing as part of the X. Corps, Second Army. The 34th Division reached Halluin.
The 5th and 6th battalions, Scottish Rifles, and 9th Highland Light Infantry lost their places in the Division through going to France early in the war. Indeed the 5th Scottish Rifles was one of the first Territorial battalions to be employed in that theatre, the 5th and 6th were eventually amalgamated. The fine work of all three battalions when in the 33rd Division was very frequently praised by unofficial historians.
These three units were replaced by the 4th and 7th Battalions, The Royal Scots, and the 5th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, all from “Army Troops.”
The following units were selected for the Armies of Occupation on the Western Front: the 5/6th Royal Scots, which served as separate battalions in the Near East, the 5th Battalion landing at Helles with the 29th Division, and, after amalgamation, in France with the 32nd Division; the 1/4th Royal Scots Fusiliers; the 1/5th King’s Own Scottish Borderers; the 5/6th Scottish Rifles; the 1/8th Scottish Rifles; and the 1/9th Highland Light Infantry.
The 32nd Division formed part of the Fourth Army throughout the “Advance to Victory.” In Major-General Montgomery’s Story of the Fourth Army there are several flattering references to the work of the 5/6th Royal Scots, as at p. 178, 3rd October, where he refers to their capture of Sequehart and its retention after the third time of capture—“partly also to the stubborn manner in which the 5/6th Royal Scots clung to the village it had three times captured.”