Now, however, the advance, which for three days had been so brilliant, began to be checked. On April 12th the 29th Division on the right and the 9th on the left tried to advance their line, but were beaten back. Hostile artillery, so comparatively silent since the 9th, began to show increasing activity in barraging our troops and in carrying out counter-battery work. It was manifest that the enemy, after two days of disaster, was pulling himself together, and after losing the majority of his artillery on April 9th and 10th, had now rushed up fresh guns to stiffen the support of the front.
This opinion was strengthened on the 13th, when every battery and wagon-line was heavily shelled, the enemy fire being directed not upon any particular unit, but in a great shell storm over different areas in which the guns and horses were congregated. It was clear that a determined resistance was going to be offered to any further attack, and accordingly the order was circulated that on this part of the front the line should be held until the flanks had made further progress. Since this course removed the possibility of any sudden need of teams for a quick advance, the wagon-lines were ordered to return immediately to the eastern outskirts of Arras, only a small number of animals for pack-work being maintained by each battery in forward wagon-lines at the Railway Triangle. With a sigh of relief battery commanders saw their teams wind their way down Battery Valley to Arras again; the neighbourhood of Orange Hill was no place for horses.
The wisdom of thus removing the horses was very soon put beyond all manner of doubt. All through the early morning and day of the 14th the batteries were heavily bombarded with gas shell and high explosive, especially heavy punishment descending upon the area where the horses had been. Serious casualties would inevitably have been suffered if they had remained there, but as matters stood the only casualties sustained were those in the gun positions themselves, and even these did not prevent the batteries from opening a smashing fire upon the enemy when in the evening he delivered a violent counter-attack upon Monchy, a counter-attack which was broken up under our fire, melted away and failed completely.
The batteries now settled down to what was to be temporarily a "holding" job, and from the 12th until the 23rd nothing more than the usual harassing fire and registration was carried out. The brigades were placed under the administration of the 17th Divisional Artillery and were ordered to dig themselves in, for heavy casualties had of late been suffered amongst the detachments, and it was vital that no more wastage should occur. Digging in was, in the present surroundings, extremely difficult; two feet below the surface thick solid chalk was met with, and every shovelful thrown up offered an unmistakable mark to the keen eyes of the enemy aeroplanes which were now actively patrolling the front. Not to dig in meant casualties from the usual shell-fire to which the batteries were inevitably subjected; digging in meant increased safety for the men but also, despite the fullest use of camouflage, the attracting of further bombardment by the enemy. Surely a choice between the devil and the deep sea!
In front of the batteries, on the forward slopes of Orange Hill and in Monchy, excellent O.P.'s were obtainable and were made full use of. The weather—hitherto bitterly cold with snow and icy blizzards—began to improve, and visibility got consequently better. Greenland Hill, Roeux, the Chemical Works and the Scarpe were clear targets on the left, while on the right Pelves Mill on the cross-roads, with the ruins of the little cottage beneath it, showed up clearly as a datum line for the enemy trench system south of the river. Jigsaw Wood, Hatchet Wood and Bois du Sars, all on the sky-line, blocked further view, but sufficient was visible west of them to enable accurate registration to be carried out on all the enemy forward zone; his actual fire trench could always be observed from our own front line or even, in the case of the trenches near the river, from the commanding slopes of Orange Hill.
On Monday, April 23rd, a fresh attack was made by the 17th Division, with the 29th and 15th on the right and the 51st on the left, the objectives on the batteries' zone being Bayonet Trench north-east of Monchy, together with a small enemy salient which had been formed on this part of the front. Three attacks in all were made, and all failed; enfilade machine-gun fire from Roeux and from both sides of the river cut down our men, and eventually the operation had to be called off. On the 24th the attack was renewed and this time slight progress was made, but no advance of any account was effected and the losses amongst our troops were enormous. The battle was indeed becoming costly, and the gunners, as well as the infantry, were showing the effects of it. Every day the usual harassing fire took its toll of the detachments, and on the days when heavy bombardments were carried out on the battery positions (as on the 22nd when B/162 lost Major Benett-Stanford and Captain Body wounded, with two out of the three subalterns, Bostock and Neate, killed) numbers were cut down to an alarming minimum.
On April 28th the battle was again resumed on a grand scale. The 12th Division assaulted on the front of the batteries, this time with the 3rd Division on the right and the 34th on the left; at 4.25 A.M. the infantry attack was launched under cover of a very heavy artillery barrage, the objectives being those portions of Bayonet and Rifle trenches which still lay in the hands of the enemy. Three minutes after the attack began the enemy put down a light barrage of 10·5 cm. and 77 mm. shells, which became heavier on Bayonet Trench itself at about 7.30 A.M., but generally speaking the hostile artillery fire was slight. In the main the enemy appeared to depend upon his machine guns to ward off attacks, and in this he was fairly successful. Mist and smoke shell rendered observation very difficult, but by six o'clock the objective was reported to have been gained; from here, however, machine-gun fire began to tell and, although the right battalion of the brigade covered by the 33rd Divisional Artillery advanced according to plan, and was reported to have reached the second objective, the left battalion was held up by machine guns and could not advance.
At half-past six in the morning a smoke barrage was put down along the south bank of the Scarpe to try and help the left battalion, while at the same time the field howitzers turned on to the troublesome machine guns. All day long the batteries kept up a protective barrage in front of the infantry, increasing at times to intense rate when an enemy counter-attack showed signs of being launched. At 11.30 A.M. the infantry endeavoured to consolidate their positions under a now heavy enemy barrage which had been increasing in intensity upon Bayonet Trench since ten o'clock, but it was of no avail. Heavy machine-gun fire from across the river Scarpe prevented them from achieving anything, and not until nightfall was the position clear.
It was then found that Bayonet Trench had been captured in its entirety, but that only a portion of Rifle Trench had been wrested from the enemy; all along the infantry had been greatly impeded by machine-gun fire from which they suffered heavy casualties. From observation and reports received it would appear that the enemy had concentrated in considerable force upon this front, and it was probably due to the work of Forward Observing Officers from the batteries that the many hostile counter-attacks attempted had been smashed before they came to fruition. On the early morning of the 29th the infantry established a line of posts and generally consolidated the ground captured on the previous day, but no further gains were possible. A final effort at 3.0 A.M. on the 30th to capture the remainder of Rifle Trench from the enemy proved a failure, and the infantry, suffering heavy losses, were forced to return once more to their trenches.
Thus ended April, which had opened so brilliantly, and with the arrival of May a less cheering period was destined to begin. Thursday, May 3rd, in fact, marked the last great effort which was made to continue the advance along the whole of the front; on the 1st an unsuccessful attempt to capture the remainder of Rifle Trench had been tried, but this was purely a local operation, and on the 3rd all three Armies pulled themselves together and launched a combined assault stretching from Arleux-en-Gohelle on the left to east of Bullecourt on the right. On the immediate front of the batteries of the 33rd Divisional Artillery, with whom were also the 12th Divisional batteries and the VIth Corps Heavy Artillery, an intense barrage was put down on the enemy front line for three minutes before zero. At 3.45 A.M. the infantry assaulted, while the barrage crept on at the rate of thirty-three yards per minute; intense machine-gun fire was immediately encountered, together with a heavy barrage which fell upon infantry and gunners alike, but the front wave of assaulting infantry by keeping close up to our curtain-fire succeeded in reaching the line Pelves Mill-Gun Trench. Here the situation became very obscure; owing to the fact that zero hour had been fixed for an hour of darkness, all communication between the front and succeeding waves was lost, while a heavy machine-gun barrage put down by the enemy prevented our second wave from getting beyond Scabbard Trench. At ten o'clock a party of Germans entered Scabbard Trench and bombed our men out as far as the junction with New Trench, with the result that the infantry forming the first wave were left entirely cut off.