It proved a long day’s work, and the beginning of an exacting time. We are back again now in the old, shell-ridden quadrilateral: Doullens-Arras (north), Doullens-Albert (west), Albert-Bapaume (south), Arras-Bapaume (east). Bucquoy, to which the Division was to move at once, lies just to the east of the centre of the diagonal Arras-Albert, and the south-west road from Bucquoy to Albert passes through Thiepval and Auchy, where the 49th Division from the West Riding suffered so severely in 1916. We remember how, a little more than a year ago, in January, 1917, when the 62nd had just arrived in France, some Officers of the 2/5th Duke of Wellington’s made ‘a tour of the trenches in an old London General omnibus. The party visited Acheux and Warlencourt, and then drove along the Doullens-Arras road, which was closed to traffic at one point owing to shelling.’[107] The problem then was to push the Germans back, back between Arras and Bapaume, always nearer to Douai and Cambrai. A year’s hard battles had been fought, and now, in March, 1918, Bapaume had fallen, Albert was to fall (March 26th-27th), and the problem was to prevent the enemy’s ‘double hope of separating the French and British Armies and interfering with the detraining arrangements of our Allies by the capture of Montdidier.’[108] In this effort the now veteran 62nd was to bear a conspicuous part.

CHAPTER XII
WITH THE 62nd AT BUCQUOY

General Braithwaite, then Commanding the 62nd, has said to the present writer that he regards the action at Bucquoy as, perhaps, the finest achievement of his Division. They were hurried to Ayette as early as March 25th, and there, as stated, the Staff Officer who had been sent on to IVth Corps Headquarters brought Orders for the Division to proceed at once to Bucquoy. Divisional Headquarters reached it at about 8-30 in the morning, and the General went forward to the Headquarters of the 40th and 42nd Divisions, just West of Bucquoy, in order to learn the tactical situation. (The 40th had been in reserve on March 21st till it was pushed into the line near Bullecourt; the 42nd had arrived since that date). The leading Troops of the 185th Brigade began to reach Bucquoy about 10 o’clock, but the roads were so much blocked with transport of all kinds that concentration was not completed till 11-30. Meanwhile, Corps Orders had been received for the men to have a meal and to get rested, and for the Division, which had been up all night and had already marched twelve miles, to hold itself in readiness for a move at short notice. The General also paid a visit to the Headquarters of the 41st Division (in reserve at Albert on March 21st, and also pushed into the line), now likewise stationed at Bucquoy, and shortly afterwards Lieut.-General Sir G. M. Harper, Commanding the IVth Corps, arrived.

The situation, as it revealed itself, was simple and serious. Briefly, with or without Albert, which fell on the night of March 26th, the urgent, essential task was to stabilize a line. The Germans had thrust, and thrust again, here, there, wherever they found an opening. They had driven us back in five days (March 21st to 25th), on the front of the Third Army, right up to the line of the old trenches at Achiet-le-Grand, Miraumont, Pozières. More ground might still be yielded ‘under great pressure,’ but the vital danger lay further south, where, still to the north of the River Somme, at the junction of the Third and Fifth Armies, withdrawals on the night of the 26th were to reach a line from Albert to Sailly-le-Sec. What this meant to the French forces nearer Paris, to the important centre at Montdidier, and to the railway from Amiens to the capital, was coming very insistently into view; and the severe strain on the 62nd Division, among other gallant Divisions, on March 25th and following days, was due above all to the necessity of arresting the advance about the Ancre, and of preventing the German hope of breaking through the receding British line. Once broken, it could never have been mended, and our real triumph in defeat was our disappointment of Ludendorff’s design of cutting off one force from another. The line went back, irregularly, unsteadily. Perilous salients were bulged out, to be straightened by retirements on the wings. Troops were pushed from place to place, or assembled by spontaneous conglomeration, to stop a dangerous gap. Different units became hopelessly mixed, and sorted themselves out into novel formations. Platoons, Companies, even Battalions improvised barriers of their own dead. But still Ludendorff was disappointed. Still his weary men, flung in desperation, however magnificently led, spent their last ounce of strength in vain. Still, in retreat after retreat, touch was maintained between Brigades, between Divisions. Still fighting the enemy to a standstill, dog-tired, attenuated, unconquerable—still a line held.

It was to a patch of that line, covering, roughly, the centre region in the Doullens-Albert-Bapaume-Arras quadrangle, to which we have frequently referred, that the attention of Major-General Braithwaite was directed by the IVth Corps Commander at their anxious conference in Bucquoy about noon on March 25th.

The 186th Brigade was now arriving at Bucquoy, and the two Brigadier-Generals (185th and 186th) were ordered, as soon as they would be ready, to move to Achiet-le-Petit, and to cover that village, the 186th on the right and the 185th on the left. The object of this move was to prolong the front of the 62nd Division (at Logeast Wood, due East of Bucquoy, and midway between Ablainzevelle and Achiet-le-Grand), so as to enable other Divisions which had been heavily engaged, to withdraw and re-organize. The Brigades reached their positions between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon, with two Battalions each in line and one in reserve, and with one Company of the Machine-Gun Battalion attached to each Brigade. It is to be observed that these were the first operations, since the Machine-Gun re-organization, in which that Battalion had taken part, and, in ideal country for that weapon, and with the improved moral of the Companies under new conditions, the results fully justified the change. During the early evening of March 25th, the various Divisions affected (19th, 25th, 41st, 51st) gradually withdrew behind the line held now by the 62nd with the 42nd, and at 7 o’clock Major-General Walter Braithwaite, Commanding the 62nd Division, took over Command of the front, with Headquarters at Bucquoy, and the Headquarters of the gallant 41st were removed to Souastre in the rear. At 9-30, General Braithwaite’s Headquarters withdrew to Gommecourt, to which a line had been run during the afternoon, but, owing to the heavy traffic on the roads, the move was not completed till 11 p.m. About that hour, the Corps Commander sent a telephone message to say that it would be necessary to withdraw not later than next morning to the line Puisieux-Bucquoy-Ablainzevelle, and to ask the Divisional Commander if he preferred to make the move sooner, while still under cover of darkness. We should note that a trench East of Bucquoy had been dug during the afternoon by the Pioneer Battalion of the 62nd (9th Durham Light Infantry), in order to cover that place in the event of our Troops being driven in, and that about 8 p.m. the 187th Brigade was ordered to concentrate on Bucquoy in Divisional Reserve, and to move forward a Battalion into the new trench. Meanwhile, the Divisional Artillery had arrived, and went into action, covering the withdrawal, during the night of the 25th.

General Braithwaite decided to take advantage of the darkness, but, though a Staff Officer was sent back at once to communicate his decision to the Brigadiers, the Order did not reach them till after 2 o’clock next morning (March 26th), so heavy was the congestion in the roads; and the actual start was made in early daylight. In the night, the 186th Brigade was subjected to enemy fire, and some changes in the dispositions had to be made, but the successful withdrawal of the Division was completed about 8 a.m., when the 185th Brigade took up a position on the high ground East of Bucquoy. The 186th were in touch with them, and extended to a point about five hundred yards North-east of Puisieux, with two Battalions in the front line, and the third and Pioneer Battalions in support. The 187th were in Divisional Reserve in the neighbourhood of Biez Wood, with two Battalions East of the Wood, and the third in the trenches South and South-west.

This was on March 26th, and another heavy and difficult day ensued. The Germans were advancing all the time in a westerly direction, which developed during the day into a determined north-westerly attack from the neighbourhood of Puisieux and Serre against the right flank of the 186th Brigade. Two Battalions of that Brigade (5th Duke of Wellington’s and Pioneers) were accordingly withdrawn a short distance, so as to face more directly to the South, with their right resting on Rossignol Wood (between Bucquoy and Hébuterne), so as to cover the exits from Puisieux. Three Companies of the 2/4th Duke of Wellington’s (in Reserve) were moved forward to prolong this line, and a Battalion of the 187th Brigade (Reserve) was further used to extend their flank on the high ground West of Rossignol Wood. This occurred in the late afternoon, when five heavy attacks by the Prussian Guard on Bucquoy, and between Bucquoy and Puisieux, had been repulsed; and the causes why the German advance in this area had shifted slightly to the North (roughly, in the direction Serre to Hébuterne) were, briefly, two: (1) To the South of Puisieux and Hébuterne, early on March 26th, there was a gap in the line of three or four miles between the 62nd and 12th Divisions. About a thousand men from various units of the 19th Division were holding the defences round Hébuterne, and it was known that the New Zealand Division was well on its way to fill the gap. Their leading Brigade, however, could not arrive till the late afternoon, and it was actually about 10 p.m. before it filled the southern half of the gap, with its left resting on Colincamps. Meanwhile, about 7 p.m., the 4th Brigade of the Australian Division, which had been put at General Braithwaite’s disposal, relieved the elements of the 19th in the defence of Hébuterne, and got in touch during the night of the 26th and early morning of the 27th with the second Brigade of the New Zealanders, to the South of the village. This gap, then, and the delay in filling it, were one main cause of the concentration on the West of Bucquoy. The second (2) was subsidiary, and arose from the fact that, during the morning of March 26th, constant reports were received of mounted enemy troops seen in Hébuterne and even to the West of it. Possibly, isolated patrols had reached the edge of the village, but, as the result of these rumours, ‘unauthorized orders were issued by persons totally unknown, in a more or less excited state,’ to clear all transport westwards, and some valuable hours were lost in collecting and bringing back those units.