The German machine-gun barrage from the east bank of the canal rendered the road from St Simon to Ollezy decidedly unsafe, forcing the chaplain to reroute through Flavy-le-Martel and Annois before he finally made contact with the battalion:

‘The battalion had Lewis guns placed in the woods close to the canal. Further back the main body had dug itself in on a line of rough half-finished trenches running parallel with the canal. A few hundred yards behind this line was the village of Annois, which consisted of a pack of tumbled down ruins with a few wooden shacks among them. Across the canal were the Boches and towering over us was the stately spire of St Simon’s Church not half a mile away and from this tower the enemy’s watchmen could see every little thing we did.’²⁷

The Somersets had three companies deployed along the canal with battalion headquarters a little under a mile further back on the D431- some 600 yards north of the railway line. Westerdale remembered the battalion headquarters dug-out being constructed after dark, ‘near an old private tomb between the village [Annois] and the canal and screened from St Simon by a few trees’.

All through 22 March 1918 the battalion had been plagued by swarms of German aircraft flying low over the trenches and machine gunning anything that moved; ‘How low their airmen came!’ wrote Westerdale. But enemy aircraft were the least of their worries as German gunners began the ‘softening up’ process before the infantry delivered its attack across the canal. Westerdale was at the battalion aid post on the D431 when the barrage began:

‘Over came the shells a dozen at a time. All night long until 7.00am he systematically shelled every part of the canal bank, roads and village. At every spot he had seen us during the previous day he made new craters. The Doc and [I] sat huddled together with the orderlies in the flimsy aid-post waiting for the direct hit which would end all – the direct hit which by the mercy of providence never came. Ten yards away they fell, then nearer and nearer, five yards, then one at the entrance three yards away, the strong blast of it sweeping across us and bringing the dirt down upon our heads.’²⁸

The barrage continued, searching out the nearby battalion headquarters before moving onto the back areas of Annois, Flavy and Cugny. ‘His shooting was amazingly accurate,’ recalled Westerdale, who was delighted to see the face of Troyte-Bullock appear in the doorway of the aid post just before dawn on 23 March and ‘cheerily enquire if we were all safe’.

Safe they may have been for the moment, which was more than the surviving men of the three companies of Somersets along the canal found themselves, now very much on their own and awaiting the imminent German attack from across the canal. At some point in the early morning, Captain James Scott, the transport officer, along with Quartermaster Sergeant Cox and Sergeant Betty limbered up and delivered much-needed small arms ammunition to the canal by riding straight through German units who had by this time advanced on both flanks from the direction of Jussy and Tugny. Unbelievably they successfully repeated the drama on the return trip. For their audacity under fire Scott received a bar to his Military Cross and Cox and Berry the Distinguished Conduct Medal. But despite their efforts in re-supplying the battalion, the end was close.

The regimental historian tells us that the Somersets, after finding themselves surrounded, attempted to fight their way back to the railway line but it appears that it was only A Company under Captain George McMurtrie – which was not deployed along the canal – which managed to escape by falling back onto the 7/ DCLI west of Annois. McMurtrie was at battalion headquarters when they came under attack:

‘[The] Huns attacked us and for about an hour we kept shooting at them and kept them at bay. The CO was shot through the neck by a rifle bullet, and Berry, [Captain Samuel Berry the battalion Adjutant] who was next to me firing away, got up to look over the bank, over which we were shooting. He got a bullet right through the head and was killed instantly, falling on top of me with a groan. I was very upset to see him killed. I now had to take command of battalion headquarters. Ammunition was given out and the Germans were gradually working round us and threatening to surround us at any minute. I considered it would be a waste of life to hold on any longer, having done all we could to delay the enemy for as long as possible … I decided it was time to withdraw.’²⁹

Thomas Westerdale had by this time left battalion headquarters on his bicycle to try and reach the transport lines. It is likely that Troyte-Bullock was well aware of the possibility of capture at this point and sent him back before the serious fighting began. Westerdale’s account confirms the extent of the German encirclement on that foggy March morning but also records a remarkable journey as he inadvertently repeated James Scott’s epic drive by cycling clean through enemy lines under the cover of the fog that was still clinging to the landscape:

‘Then [I] realized that the battalion must be practically surrounded, in fact less than an hour later it had suffered terribly, many men and officers being killed and soon was retiring forced back by impossible odds over the railway … The Boches outnumbered us by twelve to one, and nearly every one of their men seemed to have a machine gun. The enemy had got across the canal somehow in the mist and had come in via Ham and Flavy, cutting through the outskirts of Annois they had jumped out of the mist right onto battalion headquarters. The CO and Adjutant and many others having fallen.’³⁰

The battalion war diary only provides casualty details for the whole of March 1918 and even these are at variance with other figures. However, the CWGC database does provide a total of forty-one officers and men killed between 22 and 23 March, of which only two – Captain Samuel Berry and Lance Corporal David Jennings – have been positively identified. At least another seven died of wounds in the succeeding days, a register which included 19-year-old Second Lieutenant Marcus Hayward who is buried at Mezieres Communal Cemetery, Second Lieutenant Wilfred Guy, attached to 61/Trench Mortar Battery, and 21-year-old Captain Grahame Willstead who is buried at Grand Seraucourt British Cemetery with Berry and Jennings. Cecil Troyte-Bullock was wounded during the attack on battalion headquarters and managed to escape capture but nine of his officers were taken prisoner. We can only assume that any of the surviving other ranks from the three companies deployed along the canal were also taken prisoner.

But it wasn’t quite over yet for George McMurtrie. Moments before the battalion was surrounded he and the remaining men from A Company and battalion headquarters escaped captivity to fall back on 7/DCLI behind the railway line west of Annois. Here the positions were held until 10.00am the next morning when Lieutenant Colonel Burges-Short, commanding the DCLI, gave the order to retire. Captain Frederick Allam, the DCLI adjutant had good cause to remember that day:

‘Lt.Col. Burges-Short divided his command (which consisted of parties of other units as well as his battalion) into two portions. One half under myself withdrew under cover of the remainder of the battalion – the enemy at once attacked the right flank of the rearguard and heavy fighting ensued, D Company suffering many casualties. The battalion eventually took up a position on a ridge NE of Villeselve which afforded excellent fields of fire … We were shelled in the afternoon by field guns and trench mortars and eventually outflanked. I was wounded at about 4.40pm but Lt.Col Burges-Short with a few men held on until finally, when practically surrounded, he was seriously wounded and taken prisoner.’³¹

McMurtrie and his Somersets were part of the rearguard referred to by Allam;

‘Almost immediately they started withdrawing and after they had got clear I gave orders to withdraw too. I was determined not to let the men start running, for once they did in such a situation it was impossible to hold them. I had my revolver out and anyone who tried to run I immediately threatened to shoot. This stopped all running but it was the worst hour I had been through. The enemy was lining the right ridge and pouring a deadly fire into us, shells and shrapnel were bursting everywhere. German aeroplanes started flying over us and firing into our midst. Men were dropping everywhere, some were wounded and calling out for help, others were dying and groaning in their pain. It was a ghastly situation. Second Lieutenant [Stanley] Butler was killed. The Colonel had given me no place where we were to withdraw so I steered a course straight to our rear.’³²

That course took McMurtrie slap-bang into what he describes as ‘a huge number of German artillery and transport’. Quite how many of McMurtrie’s men were captured with him remains vague although some sources suggest as little as nine of his company joined him into captivity. There is no doubt that 7/Somersets along with 7/DCLI and 12/King’s had suffered enormous casualties, 61 Brigade had been reduced to a composite battalion of just four companies with a total strength of nine junior officers and 440 other ranks.