Next morning (March 29th), progress was made with the urgent work of re-organizing the 187th Brigade. It had performed magnificent service in exceptionally difficult circumstances, which included the absence through illness of its Brigadier-General. Lt.-Col. Barton, D.S.O., who had been temporarily in Command, had also fallen ill, and was replaced on March 28th by Lt.-Col. C. K. James, D.S.O., the Officer Commanding the 2/7th West Yorkshires. The Brigade had been almost continuously in action since its hurried departure from Ayette in the early hours of March 25th, and the V.C. awarded posthumously to the Commanding Officer of the 5th K.O.Y.L.I. is an indication of the splendid resistance which it offered time after time to the enemy assaults on its front. The Brigade was now located in the trenches North and West of Rossignol Wood, in touch with the 186th on its right and with the 41st Division on its left. One Battalion of the 185th was moved up in close support during the afternoon. Bombing fights between the Australians and their assailants about Gommecourt and Hébuterne were the chief incidents of the day which proved the growing exhaustion of the enemy. March 30th and 31st were spent, too, in comparative quiet: an important document captured by the Australians showed how heavily the Germans had suffered. But the 62nd had suffered too. We referred above to Colonel Watson. Two other Commanding Officers, who fell at the head of their respective Regiments, may also be mentioned here, as splendid types of fighting Officers, first beloved and then mourned by their men. These were Lieut.-Colonels A. H. and C. K. James, of the 7th and 8th West Yorkshires, known, of course, as James the Seventh and James the Eighth, who, though not related to each other, were firm comrades in life and death. On the night of March 31st-April 1st, a Brigade of the 37th Division relieved the 186th, which withdrew to Souastre and Henu, and next night the remainder of the 62nd Division (less Artillery) was relieved by the 37th, and moved back into the Reserve area.
It will be admitted that they had earned their relief. The Field Marshal’s summary runs, under date March 27th: ‘A series of strong attacks commenced all along our front from about Bucquoy to the neighbourhood of Hamelincourt, in the course of which the enemy gained possession of Ablainzevelle and Ayette’ (which was re-taken by the 32nd Division on April 3rd). ‘Elsewhere,’ it continues, ‘all his assaults were heavily repulsed by troops of the 62nd Division, under Command of Major-General W. P. Braithwaite, and of the 42nd and Guards Divisions.’[110] And, under date March 28th: ‘The 42nd Division drove off two attacks from the direction of Ablainzevelle and the 62nd Division with an attached Brigade of the 4th Australian Division also beat off a succession of heavy attacks about Bucquoy with great loss to the enemy.’[111] We have filled in some details in this outline, which is sufficiently effective in its statement of duty done and of local successes achieved. If we go behind it at all, it is rather to point to some lessons that were learned than to gild the laurels of renown which the Division earned during those fiery days.
BUCQUOY: STREET.
BUCQUOY: MARKET PLACE.
We have already mentioned the work of the newly-organized Machine-Gun Battalion, and the comparative lack of Rifle bombs and Stokes Mortars. Another fact worth noting is the renewed confidence reposed in the Rifle and the Lewis Gun. In the face of effective fire from these weapons the enemy never succeeded in pushing home an attack across the open. Communication between the Division and Brigades was maintained with very little interruption, and the two Brigade Headquarters being kept together enabled the admirable Signal Service to devote all their attention to one main route. Under these novel conditions of open warfare, it was found that special training was required for the Power Buzzer operations of Brigade Sections, and in other technical details the experience at Bucquoy was to prove valuable.
Most valuable of all was the knowledge that, with nearly all the chances against them, they had fought the enemy to a standstill. Despite a perilous gap in the thinned line of British troops, and despite the delays in filling it, the enemy had not broken through. The line was threatened on March 25th. It was constantly, almost continuously, assailed from the East, and, where disclosed, from the South. It still held on March 31st. Mistakes unavoidable in the medley were heroically repaired. Odd pockets of men, as we have seen—a thousand from the 19th Division behind Hébuterne, another thousand from the 41st about Gommecourt—showed incomparable resourcefulness. Sudden orders were given in emergency, and were carried out unerringly under darkness. Troops confidently expected in the afternoon arrived short of their destination after nightfall, and the intervals of time and place were filled up. The whole story of these days is a lesson in how not to yield, and the whole moral of it is contained in the fact that the end of the first phase of the Second Battle of the Somme was, at best, an incomplete German victory. They had not achieved what they had hoped, and, losing hope, they would lose all.
So, Bucquoy is a name that shines in the war record of the 62nd Division. We leave them now, at the beginning of April, in Divisional Reserve, with their Headquarters at Pas, enjoying a well-earned respite from active operations, though under two hours’ notice to move: and we turn next to another part of the wide field, where the 49th Division, the First Line of the West Riding Territorials, bore its separate part in the grand defensive.