From early dawn on Saturday, August 31st, until the evening of September 3rd, three Divisions of the Australian Corps engaged in a heroic combat which will ever be memorable in Australian history.
At its conclusion we emerged complete masters of the situation. Mont St. Quentin, the Bouchavesnes spur, the large town of Péronne, and the high ground overlooking it from the east and north-east, were in our possession. A wide breach had been driven into the line of defence which the enemy had endeavoured to establish on the series of heights lying to the east of the Somme and of the Canal du Nord.
From the edges of this breach, the flanks of that portion of his line which were still intact were being threatened with envelopment. For him there was nothing for it, but finally to abandon the line of the Somme, and to resume his retreat helter-skelter to the hoped-for secure protection of the great Hindenburg Line.
The extraordinary character of this Australian feat of arms can best be appreciated by a realization of the supreme efforts which the enemy put forward to prevent it.
The shower of blows which he had received on the front of his Second Army from August 8th onwards, had wrought upon it a grievous disorganization. The battered remnants of his line Divisions had been reinforced from day to day by fresh units, scraped up from other parts of his front, and thrown into the fight as fast as they could be made available.
Sometimes they were complete Divisions from Reserve, often single reserve Regiments of Divisions already deeply involved, and sometimes even single Battalions torn from other Regiments—Pioneer Battalions, units of the Labour Corps, Army Troops, Minenwerfer Companies had all been thrown in, indiscriminately.
This brought about a heterogeneous jumble of units, and of German nationalities, for Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons and Würtembergers were captured side by side. The tactical control of such mixed forces, during a hasty and enforced retreat, and their daily maintenance, must have presented sore perplexities to the Headquarters of the German Second Army in those fateful days.
To meet the crisis with which Ludendorff was now confronted, he determined to throw in one of the finest of the reserve Divisions still left at his disposal. The Second Prussian Guards Division was sent forward to occupy the key position of Mont St. Quentin, and to hold it at all costs.
This famous Division comprised among its units, the Kaiserin Augusta and the Kaiser Alexander Regiments, almost as famous in history and rich in tradition as are our own Grenadiers and Coldstreams. There is no doubt that this celebrated Division fought desperately to obey its instructions.
For the defence of Péronne, the enemy command went even further, and called for volunteers, forming with them a strong garrison of picked men drawn from many different line Regiments, to man the ramparts which surround the town. Dozens of machine guns were posted in vantage points from which the approaches could be swept.