For the next two days all roads leading from the battle area back towards the Army Cage at Poulainville, where railway trains were waiting to receive them, were congested with column after column of German prisoners, roughly organized into companies—tangible evidences to the civilians of the district, as to our own troops, that a great victory had been won.
The tactical value of the victory was immense, and has never yet been fully appreciated by the public of the Empire, perhaps because our censorship at the time strove to conceal the intention to follow it up immediately with further attacks. But no better testimony is needed than that of Ludendorff himself, who calls it Germany's "black day," after which he himself gave up all hope of a German victory.
Ludendorff in his "Memoirs," republished in the Times of August 22nd, 1919, writes:
"August 8th was the black day of the German Army in the history of the war. This was the worst experience I had to go through.... Early on August 8th, in a dense fog that had been rendered still thicker by artificial means, the British, mainly with Australian and Canadian Divisions, and French, attacked between Albert and Moreuil with strong squadrons of Tanks, but for the rest with no great superiority. They broke between the Somme and the Luce deep into our front. The Divisions in line allowed themselves to be completely overwhelmed. Divisional Staffs were surprised in their Headquarters by enemy Tanks" [sic, our armoured cars were meant].... "The exhausted [sic] Divisions that had been relieved a few days earlier and that were lying in the region south-west of Péronne were immediately alarmed and set in motion by the Commander-in-Chief of the Second Army. At the same time he brought forward towards the breach all available troops. The Rupprecht Army Group dispatched reserves thither by train. The 18th Army threw its own reserves directly into the battle from the south-east.... On an order from me, the 9th Army too, although itself in danger, had to contribute. Days of course elapsed before the troops from a further distance could reach the spot.... It was a very gloomy situation.... Six or seven Divisions that were quite fairly to be described as effective had been completely battered.... The situation was uncommonly serious. If they continued to attack with even comparative vigour, we should no longer be able to maintain ourselves west of the Somme.... The wastage of the Second Army had been very great. Heavy toll had also been taken of the reserves which had been thrown in.... Owing to the deficit created our losses had reached such proportions that the Supreme Command was faced with the necessity of having to disband a series of Divisions, in order to furnish drafts.... The enemy had also captured documentary material of inestimable value to him.... The General Staff Officer whom I had dispatched to the battlefield on August 8th, gave me such an account that I was deeply confounded.... August 8th made things clear for both Army Commands, both for the German and for that of the enemy."
A hole had been driven on a width of nearly twelve miles, right through the German defence, and had blotted out, at one blow, the whole of the military resources which it had contained. The obligation which was thereby cast upon the enemy to throw into the gap troops and guns hastily collected from every part of his front, imposed upon him also an increased vulnerability at every other point which had to be so denuded.
It was no part of our programme to rest content upon our oars, and allow the enemy time to collect himself at leisure. The resources of the Australian Corps had suffered scarcely any impairment as the result of that glorious day. Such small losses as had been incurred were more than counter-balanced by the elation of these volunteer troops at this further demonstration of their moral and physical superiority over the professional soldiers of a militarist enemy nation.
On that very day all necessary measures were taken to maintain the battle without pause. But, in order not to interrupt the continuity of the story of subsequent developments, it will be convenient to mention, in this place, two events which cannot be dissociated from the great battle, and which will be memorable to those who participated in them.
The first was an accidental meeting together of a number of the most distinguished figures in the war. On August 11th, the Commander-in-Chief was to come to congratulate the Corps and to thank the troops through their Commanders. I called the Divisional Generals together at the Red Château at Villers-Bretonneux to meet him that afternoon. In the meantime General Rawlinson invited his Corps Commanders to meet him in the same village for a battle conference, and chose the same hour and a spot in the open, under a spreading beech, where his Generals sat informally around the maps spread upon the grass. At this meeting were Rawlinson, Currie, Kavanagh, Godley, myself, Montgomery and Budworth. The Field Marshal, with Laurence, the Chief of his General Staff, on their way to the Red Château, soon arrived. Shortly after Sir Henry Wilson, happening to pass in his car, also joined the party; and not many moments afterwards there arrived, again entirely without previous arrangement, Clemenceau and his Finance Minister Klotz.
Villers-Bretonneux, only three days before reeking with gas and unapproachable, and now delivered from its bondage, was the lodestone which had attracted the individual members of this remarkable assemblage; and the more serious business in hand was perforce postponed while Rawlinson, Currie and I had to listen to the generous felicitations of all these great war leaders.
The second event was the visit of His Majesty the King, on August 12th, to Bertangles, when he conferred on me the honour of Knighthood, in the presence of selected detachments of five hundred of the men who had fought in the battle, a hundred from each of my Five Divisions. A representative collection of guns and other war trophies had been hauled in from the battlefield to line the avenues by which the King approached. His Majesty was particularly interested in the German transport horses, expressing the hope that they would soon learn the Australian language; a pleasantry which he well remembered when I had the honour of an audience with him, on the anniversary of that very day.