General Congreve was brief and to the point. What he said amounted to this: "At four o'clock to-day my Corps was holding a line from Albert to Bray, when the line gave way. The enemy is now pushing westwards and if not stopped to-morrow will certainly secure all the heights overlooking Amiens. What you must try and do is to get your Division deployed across his path. The valleys of the Ancre and the Somme offer good points for your flanks to rest upon. You must, of course, get as far east as you can, but I know of a good line of old trenches, which I believe are still in good condition, running from Méricourt-l'Abbé towards Sailly-le-Sec. Occupy them, if you can't get further east."
At that juncture General Maclagan arrived and received similar crisp orders to bring his Division into a position of support on the high land in the bend of the Ancre to the west of Albert. I gleaned further that the Seventh Corps was now the south flank Corps of the Third Army, and that as the Fifth Army, south of the Somme, had practically melted away, while the French were retiring south-westerly and leaving an hourly increasing gap between their north flank and the Somme, General Byng had resolved to make every effort not only to maintain the flank of his Third Army on the Somme, but also to prevent it being turned from the south, while the Commander-in-Chief was taking other measures to attempt next day to fill the gap above alluded to.
It was already 1 a.m. of March 27th, and I had left my Division twenty miles away. Everything depended now on quick decision and faultless executive action. It was fortunate that a telephone line to G.H.Q. had been found in good working order, and that the services of three large motor bus convoys could be arranged for to proceed at once to the Doullens area, in order to transport my Infantry during the night to the place appointed. I worked with my Staff till nearly break of day, considering and settling all detailed arrangements, and we then separated in various directions to our appointed tasks.
I proceeded myself a little after dawn, with one Staff Officer, to Franvillers, which had been decided upon as the point for leaving the buses. There was yet no sign of any Australian troops, and the village was being hastily evacuated by the terror-stricken inhabitants. But there were ample and visible signs, far away on the high plateau beyond the Ancre Valley, that the German line of skirmishers was already on the move, slowly driving back the few troops of British Cavalry who were, most valiantly, trying to delay their advance.
The next hour was one of intense suspense and expectancy; but my anxiety was relieved when there rolled into the village from the north, a motor bus convoy of thirty vehicles, crowded with good staunch Australian Infantry of the 11th Brigade, and bringing also Brigadier-General Cannan and some of his Brigade Staff. It was not the first time in the war that the London motor-bus—after abandoning the population of the great metropolis to enforced pedestrianism—had helped to save a most critical situation.
Almost immediately after, there arrived McNicoll, with a battalion of his 10th Brigade. Hour after hour a steady stream of omnibus convoys came in. No time was lost in assembling the troops, and in directing the Infantry—company after company—down the steep, winding road to the little village of Heilly, and thence across the Ancre, to deploy on the selected line of defence indicated in the orders above recited.
The spectacle of that Infantry will be ever memorable to me, as one of the most inspiring sights of the whole war. Here was the Third Division—the "new chum" Division, which, in spite of its great successes in Belgium and Flanders, had never been able to boast, like its sister Divisions, that it had been "down on the Somme"—come into its own at last, and called upon to prove its mettle. And then there was the thought that they were going to measure themselves, man to man, against an enemy who, skulking behind his field works, had for so long pounded them to pieces in their trenches, poisoned them with gas, and bombed them as they slept in their billets.
That, at any rate, was the point of view of the private soldier, and no one who saw those battalions, in spite of the fatigue of two sleepless nights, marching on that crisp, clear spring morning, with head erect and the swing and precision of a Royal review parade, could doubt that not a man of them would flinch from any assault that was likely to fall upon them. Nor was there a man who did not fully grasp that upon him and his comrades was about to fall the whole responsibility of frustrating the German attempt to capture Amiens and separate the Allied Armies.
By midday, the situation was already well in hand, and by four o'clock I was able to report to the Seventh Corps that no less than six Battalions were already deployed, astride of the triangle formed by the Ancre and the Somme, on the line Méricourt—Sailly-le-Sec, distributed in a series of "localities" defended by rifles and Lewis guns. As yet no Artillery was available.