The overwhelming nature of the success can best be realized by the following almost incredible analysis of the material results of the day's fighting. The First Division attacked with a total strength of 2,854 Infantry. They suffered only 490 casualties (killed and wounded). They captured 1,700 prisoners, apart from the large numbers who were killed, and the wounded enemy who made good their escape.
The Fourth Division had a total assaulting strength of 3,048 of all ranks, of whom 532 became casualties. Their captures of live prisoners amounted to 2,543.
In addition, the Corps gathered in upwards of 80 guns, which had been overrun, and had to be abandoned by the enemy.
There is no record in this war of any previous success on such a scale, won with so little loss.
The Corps on either flank of me had successes of varying quality. The Ninth Corps on the south had reached the red line, but the exploitation phase of the operation was not pressed until a later day. The Third Corps, on my left, however, made indifferent progress. Their line still bent back sharply from my left flank, and none of the enemy's outpost system had been gained. This portion of the Army front was that which lay square opposite the Bellicourt tunnel, and the fact that in this part of the field the Fourth Army had not yet mastered the Hindenburg outpost system was to be fraught with very serious difficulties for me, not many days later.
The general plan propounded by General Rawlinson on September 13th had been realized in part, although not in its entirety. The successes gained on September 18th were nevertheless sufficiently important and decisive to justify immediate preparations for working out the plan for a great, combined and final effort to sweep the enemy out of the remainder of the last lines of defence which he had established in France.
The First and Fourth Australian Divisions had, however, as it turned out, fought their last fight in the war. Their long and brilliant fighting career, which had been opened three and a half years before, the one on the cliffs of Gallipoli, and the other in the desert of Egypt, thus ended in a blaze of glory. Although a number of the officers and non-commissioned officers of both these Divisions were called upon, very shortly after, to render one more valuable service to the Australian Corps, the Divisions themselves were destined, because of the termination of hostilities, not again to make their appearance on any battle front. Their labours ended, the troops were taken by motor bus and railway to a coastal district lying to the south-west of Amiens, there to rest and recuperate in the contemplation of a noble past devoted to the service of the Empire.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] See Map H.