We have to record that the operation, as planned, could not be fully carried out. Briefly, it had been devised as follows: unless, as seemed improbable, the Hindenburg Line should be found to have been evacuated, the Australian Division, supported by Tanks, was to push forward to Riencourt and Bullecourt. As soon as their work rendered it possible, the 185th Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General V. W. de Falbe, C.M.G., D.S.O.) was to push one Battalion into Bullecourt from the south-west, with another Battalion in support. The Tanks (two, followed by four), after clearing Bullecourt, were to move out of the village, and clear the Hindenburg Line up to a stated position, where they would come under the orders of General de Falbe, in command of an Advanced Guard, detailed to capture Hendecourt and to move forward as indicated above. This formed the operation, as planned. The operation, as executed, starts with Battalion reports to the Brigade, at 5-15 a.m., 6 a.m. and 7-10 a.m., to the effect that not a Tank was in sight. We may imagine the anxiety at Headquarters. Reconstruct the surroundings on that April morning: the immense line of British Troops stretching right away beyond Vimy, the noise of guns, the open country on the other side; remember the significance of Bullecourt, not merely as the objective of the 62nd Division, but as the last stronghold of the enemy in that sector before he retired to the Quéant switch behind the real Hindenburg Line; multiply every missed appointment and its consequent inconveniences in civil life to the nth power of calculation; add a responsible sense of the great issues depending on prompt action; and then conceive what it meant to Lt.-Col. John H. Hastings, D.S.O., the Officer Commanding the 2/6th West Yorkshires (to return for a moment to this unit), to have to report three times in two hours that, so far as he was aware, the conditions precedent to his pushing on to Bullecourt still remained unfulfilled. Item one: the Tanks had not arrived. Item two: there was still no news of the Australians having entered Bullecourt. Colonel Hastings went forward to make enquiries, and to discuss matters with the Australian Division. On his return, he advised the Brigadier that the situation was ‘very obscure.’ His patrols, he said, had not reported, but there was no sign of the Australians clearing Bullecourt, and several enemy machine-guns had been located on the south-east fringe of the village. This report crossed a message from the Brigade (through the 2/8th Battalion, West Yorks.), stating that Tanks had been seen at a factory between Bullecourt and Hendecourt, and adding: ‘Please take immediate action, without waiting for Tanks to arrive, to clear up situation in Bullecourt and seize Hindenburg Line to the west of the village.’ (This message in original was received an hour later.) A reply was sent through the 2/8th Battalion to the effect that the instructions seemed to be ‘based on faulty and erroneous information’: the main point was that the Australians had not entered Bullecourt, and that reports from the patrols were still awaited. While this reply was on its way, the Brigadier visited the Battalion Headquarters, and ‘was evidently dissatisfied with the want of progress.’ He admitted to Colonel Hastings that the conditions laid down as preliminary to the advance still appeared incomplete (which means that the Tanks had not operated), but he was anxious that the push should be attempted, and Colonel Hastings went up again to investigate.
Meanwhile, what about the Tanks? Major W. H. L. Watson, D.S.O., of the Machine-Gun Corps, Heavy Section, writing in Blackwood’s Magazine, June, 1919, stated that, ‘of my eleven Tanks, nine had received direct hits and two were missing.’ He pointed out that the sudden change of plans between April 10th and 11th had proved somewhat upsetting, that the crews were composed of tired men, that a blizzard was blowing, and that the snow proved bad cover. He added that the Australian troops were turned distrustful of Tanks for some months, and that a British Brigadier, to whom he was paying a farewell visit, told him, ‘with natural emphasis, that Tanks were “no dammed use.”’ Further than this, we need not pursue the question. A day was to come very soon when the new weapon would outpace the Infantry, and help effectively to win its battles. At Bullecourt, on April 11th, the co-operation was not adequate.
At 11 o’clock that morning, Colonel Hastings, ruling out the Tanks, expressed his deliberate conviction that the village could not be captured by daylight, except by very great sacrifices. The wire was uncut, the snipers were active, and there was very little cover. Three hours later, Brigade orders arrived to withdraw the patrols, and at dusk the Battalion relieved the 2/7th Battalion of their own Regiment in the right sector of the front facing Bullecourt. The relief was completed at 1 a.m. on April 12th, and another long and trying day was spent in tapping the Bullecourt defences, which were found to be still formidable. By 5 a.m. on the morning of the 13th, the relief of the Battalion in its turn by the 2/7th West Ridings was completed, and they returned to Ervillers on the Bapaume-Arras road.
They had suffered badly during this experience. On the 11th, Lieut. C. F. R. Pells, 2/Lieut. A. G. Harris and 31 other Ranks were killed, and the wounded amounted to 30. Fine work was done by the 174th Tunnelling Company, R.E. (Major Hutchinson, M.C., Commanding), in digging out the victims of a collapsed house in which two Officers were killed: they worked thirty hours continuously and rescued nine men alive.
Meanwhile, Bullecourt had not been captured. If a detailed map be consulted again, it will be seen that the British lines of April 16th and 24th both met at their southern extremity on the wrong (north) side of the River Sensée, and formed a dangerous salient, or inward bulge, with the British line running south from Croisilles. The Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt still guarded the switch-line at Quéant; and this failure was the more disappointing in view of the easterly advances along the River Scarpe behind Arras, and, further north, behind Vimy and its woods and hills. Tanks had shown fine capacity during that fortnight. The gallant Infantry had accomplished by their aid what it took them nearly as many months to accomplish with much worse casualties on the Somme in 1916. For the missing weapon had been found, though its full use was still to be discovered, and obstacles even more formidable than had held up the 49th Division at Thiepval were levelled or reduced.
We pass at once to the renewed assault on Bullecourt between May 3rd and 17th.
The 62nd Division was once more engaged. The new weapon was brought again to the attack, and, though further experience was still wanted before its masterly employment at Cambrai in November, the last phase of the Battle of Arras clearly demonstrated to all those who chose to see the immense value of co-operation between Infantry and Tanks. That the brunt of the Infantry fighting in these experimental days fell on the troops from the West Riding, will find a place in military history as well as in Yorkshire records.
