Arrangements had been carefully made by the Divisional Signal Company to establish signal communication as the attack progressed. The tanks, however, made small work of the ground lines as they were laid, and recourse had to be made to a poled cable route on each brigade front, which was successfully established in due course.
Meanwhile at 10.30 A.M. the 91st Field Artillery Brigade was ordered forward to the north-east of La Vacquerie. Good positions were found along the track from Banteux to Ribécourt between the roads leading from La Vacquerie to Bonavis and Masnières. Batteries were held up by tanks which had stuck in the sunken road, but managed to come into action during the afternoon.
Starting from Gouzeaucourt at zero the 59th Brigade moved forward, and led by the 10th and 11th R.B., with a troop of the 1/1st Northumberland Yeomanry under Captain the Hon. C. F. M. Ramsay, left the old front line at 9.10 A.M. to follow the assaulting battalions.
By 11 A.M. this advanced guard was passing through the second objective. The 11th R.B. (Lieut.-Colonel Cotton) advanced in open order along the north-west slope of the La Vacquerie valley to seize the crossings over the canal; the 10th R.B. (Lieut.-Colonel Troughton), to whom the two troops of yeomanry were attached, deployed on the south-east slope before moving on to form the defensive flank. In rear of these two battalions the 10th K.R.R.C. (Lieut.-Colonel Sheepshanks) formed up in the valley on either side of the sunken road and the 11th K.R.R.C. (Lieut.-Colonel Priaulx) took up a position about the crossing of the sunken road and the track from Banteux to Ribécourt.
The 11th R.B. advanced on a two company front. They came under a certain amount of shelling, but parties of the enemy who tried to hold them back by long-range fire, seeing the tanks and infantry coming on, either withdrew or gave themselves up. “B” Company on the left, moving towards a bridge east of Marcoing, encountered an enemy strong point about 800 yards south of the canal, but an outflanking movement by Lewis guns and bombers soon brought about the surrender of the garrison, which was estimated at 150 men. The bridge-head was then occupied and troops of the 29th Division crossed unopposed. “C” Company on the right had little difficulty, except from a machine gun which for a time delayed its progress; the gun was silenced by a tank, and the company then entered Les Rues Vertes. Here between 12 and 1 o’clock a certain amount of street fighting took place, but the village was cleared as far as the canal.
The Broken Bridge, Masnières
About 12.40 P.M., when the 11th R.B. were held up at the main bridge in Masnières, a tank arrived on the scene and prepared to move across, carrying a small party of the 11th R.B. to bomb the houses on the opposite side. Owing to a mechanical breakdown the tank was unable to move for an hour, by which time two more tanks had arrived and began to fire their 6-prs. into the houses across the canal. It is probable that the bridge, though apparently intact, had been partially destroyed, for when the tank eventually moved across, the centre of the bridge collapsed and the tank became wedged between the two ends, effectually blocking the crossing at this point. The Canadian Cavalry Brigade arrived in Les Rues Vertes about 2 P.M., but finding the bridge broken retired, although Lieut.-Colonel Cotton pointed out several other bridges close by, one of which was not marked on the map. Lieut.-Colonel Troughton, 10th R.B., who was holding two bridges intact to the south of Masnières, gave the same information. Only one squadron passed over, and in a brilliant engagement captured a battery of the enemy’s guns.
The town of Masnières, where the arrival of British troops was naturally most unexpected, was full of civilians, mostly women and children. It was an amazing and a most pathetic sight to see women with babies in perambulators in the streets under the fire of the enemy. Many of them were evacuated at once, and good work was done by Lieut. Duval, the interpreter of the brigade. The civilians showed great courage under shell-fire.
By 4.30 the 11th R.B. had handed over the canal crossings to the 29th Division and were established in the northern part of the defensive flank.