The 2/4th K.O.Y.L.I. were relieved during the night by the 2/5th West Ridings, to whom we accordingly return. Their new orders were to take Orchard Alley and push outposts in the Sunken Road running from Puisieux to Achiet-le-Petit. At 8 p.m. on February 27th, the Commanding Officer advised the Brigadier that Orchard Alley had been captured; at an early hour the next morning, the outposts in Sunken Road had been established, and later in the day these positions had been consolidated, and touch had been obtained with the 2nd Royal Warwicks on the left and the 2/6th West Ridings on the right. The Brigadier wired his appreciation, and, later, the Military Cross was awarded to Lieut. P. R. Ridley in the following circumstances:—
‘On the evening of 27th-28th February, 1917, the Officer was in charge of a party of three Officers’ patrols, each of one Officer and fifteen other Ranks, detailed to rush Orchard Alley from Gudgeon Trench. Lieut. Ridley was responsible for maintaining the direction, marching on a compass-bearing for 500 yards across unknown and difficult country. This Officer led his party with great dash, shooting one German and capturing another on entering the trench. He showed considerable coolness and ability in the attack, and in organizing the defence of the trench.’
The Military Medal was awarded on the same occasion to Lance-Cpl. Herbert Priestley, who had been in command of a Bombing Section in that party, and who, despite a wound in the head, led his men in a most gallant manner. These were the first honours (first of a long list) in the 62nd Division.
There was to be an attack on Achiet-le-Petit. The course of the offensive indicated it, and it was indicated too, by attack-practices early in March, when 500 men of the 2/5th West Ridings were employed at Forceville in digging trenches similar to the German system at Achiet-le-Petit. On March 15th, after completing sundry exercises, the Battalion proceeded to Miraumont, where they took over a line from the 2/5th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, half a mile south-east of Achiet-le-Petit. They found the 2/4th of the same Regiment on their right and the 2/7th on their left during this tour. On the 17th, the 2/4th reported that they had occupied an enemy trench 300 yards in advance of their line without meeting opposition; at the same time patrols of the 2/5th found 300 yards in front of them free from the enemy. Hopes rose, as the country began to open out. B Company was promptly ordered to push on through Achiet-le-Petit, and to occupy Sunken Road, north of that village. The remaining Companies also moved forward, and occupied the support-trenches. Later on the same day, a further push was made to Achiet-le-Grand; gaps were to be cut in the wire to let the Cavalry through, and D Company was to push on to Gomiecourt. The wire proved a formidable obstacle; but just before midnight on the 17th the Brigadier was informed that the orders had been carried out. By 4-30 a.m. on March 18th, D Company was in occupation of Gomiecourt. They had encountered only slight machine-gun fire, and five hours later the Cavalry went through. Thenceforward to the end of March, the Battalion stood fast on the ground occupied. There was plenty to do in consolidating it, and plenty of German material left behind which served that purpose. But all existing accommodation had been destroyed, the majority of trees had been killed, several dug-out entrances had been mined, and important road-junctions had been blown up.
We may read a part of this story in more detail. Little exploits fully related illuminate the history which they helped to make. What part was borne by B Company (above) in this adventure? They were commanded by Captain Joseph Walker, whose orders were to hold Resurrection Trench south of Achiet-le-Petit and to capture that village. For three days and nights they came in for a very heavy bombardment, in which the trench was obliterated in parts and severe casualties were suffered. On March 17th, an hour before dawn, two battle-patrols were sent out to the flanks of the village. The rest of the Company followed under Captain Walker, and, despite some machine-gun fire, they took the village and passed through it. They dug-in on the north side and threw out a defensive flank, which drove off the enemy rearguard. Achiet-le-Petit was promptly blown to bits by ‘a terrific barrage of heavy stuff,’ but B Company had not waited for it. At mid-day the Corps Pigeoner arrived with a basket of birds, and reports were sent back to Headquarters. In the evening, instructions came for the whole of the line to move forward and attack Achiet-le-Grand and Gomiecourt. Before this could be done, the German wire had to be cut to allow the Cavalry to pass through. ‘The wire was nearly a hundred yards in depth in three broad belts, and so thick that it had to be dug up in parts.’ The task was completed before daylight by B and C Companies. B Company then advanced to their objective and occupied the western side of Achiet-le-Grand, and A Company cleared Logeast Wood: a good day’s work, it will be admitted.
This narrative may still be expanded: the day’s work is typical of what was happening throughout the district. From Achiet-le-Grand to Gomiecourt, two villages otherwise insignificant, the distance is under two miles. At 1 a.m., March 18th, 1917, there was a heavy mist, and it was difficult to find the road; so ‘we struck across open country on compass-bearing,’ say the records, ‘and arrived in the trenches west of Gomiecourt at 3-30 a.m., occupied these, and then sent out two patrols through the village, but they did not find a soul’: a deserted village, but from other causes than Oliver Goldsmith’s. ‘The junction of every road in the village had been mined and blown up, and everything of value had been destroyed. All fruit-trees had either been cut down, or an incision made round the bark so that the sap would not rise.[71] All wells had been blown in, and one had been poisoned with arsenic,’ so the R.E. Officer reported to our diarist. The R.E.’s took 700 lbs. of unexploded charge out of the cellar of the only village château, where the front stairway had fallen in and there was a big hole in the floor of the entrance hall. We read an interesting note, too, on March 26th: ‘Walked with Lieut. Ridley’ (we watched him win his M.C.) ‘across country to Bapaume’ (the eleven miles had been cleared at last). ‘Noticed the Hôtel de Ville still standing; most other buildings had been blown up. Then went south of the town towards the trenches, but, as these reminded one too much of Beaumont Hamel, had lunch and then came back. Walked along the Bapaume-Arras’ (B, Aa) ‘main road as far as Ervillers’ (a third of the way from Bapaume) ‘and then struck across country to Gomiecourt. Bapaume Town Hall and Sapignies Church had both been mined and left by the enemy and blew up during the night.’ So, the deserted villages bore traces of their late inhabitants.
If a straight line be drawn from Bapaume to Douai, bisecting the Cambrai-Arras road (C, Aa, of our quadrangle), and if that straight line be divided into three equal parts, the village of Bullecourt will be found at one-third of the way from Bapaume and two-thirds from Douai. It is thus well within our quadrangle, yet well on the further side of the road from Bapaume to Arras, along which we just now walked to Ervillers. We shall be occupied with Bullecourt for some time: on April 11th in a snowstorm, when ‘an attack was made against the Hindenburg Line, in the neighbourhood of Bullecourt,’ and again on May 3rd and following days, when ‘it was advisable that Bullecourt should be captured without loss of time.’[72] For the German retreat was at an end.
Bapaume had fallen on March 17th, Péronne on the following day. South and east of Péronne, on the 21st, the Fourth Army had captured forty villages. French troops reached the outskirts of St. Quentin, and counted their villages by the score. The Cavalry, mounted and dismounted, had come in for a bit of their own, and a fine exhilaration of open fighting had been blown like a freshening breeze along the east wall of the shell-torn quadrangle. But after the third week of March the pace of the retreat began to slacken; and, as soon as the first days of April dispelled the cover of the mist, and the wind and the sun dried up the mud from which the Germans had been retiring, their slower pace stiffened into resistance, and their resistance hardened into battle. All along the Hindenburg Line, so much advertised, yet in places so elastic, which was to guard the ridges of observation, the Battle of Arras was engaged in April, May and a part of June, and during the course of that Battle, Bullecourt was won and lost and won again.
No more need be said about the retreat. The precise ratio between initiative and compulsion, precisely how far, that is to say, it was carried through according to plan and directed by forces under German control, will not be settled till the official war-histories of both belligerents have been published, and may even be disputed thereafter. Certainly, it was admirably executed; less certainly, it was voluntary in all its parts; most certainly, it was accompanied by incidents which indelibly stained the reputation of the German Military Command. That ‘the systematic destruction of roads, railways and bridges in the evacuated area made unprecedented demands upon the Royal Engineers,’ or that in four and a half days, for example, from the morning of March 18th the Somme at Brie was rebridged for our troops,[73] were facts of warfare as legitimate for the enemy as they were creditable to his pursuers. What was illegitimate and irreparable was the not less systematic destruction, forbidden in the Pentateuch, as Mr. Buchan[74] notes, of ‘trees for meat’ and water for drinking. We have remarked these features in petto: the single trees felled or slashed, the single wells poisoned or blown in, the single monuments gutted or mined; and France knows the full tale of her own wrongs.
So we come to the Battle of Arras, which opened definitely on April 9th and rolled in thunder along the northern ridges to its renewed flood in the Third Battle of Ypres.