Chapter 12

At the Army School in the village of Caix, almost thirty miles from the battle line, Tom Witherow and his friends had listened all day to the distant sound of the guns. News was scanty but rumour was rife, and in the evening no one was surprised when the course was abruptly abandoned and the officers were ordered to pack up and prepare to return to their battalions at the front. With a fair idea of what was in store, Witherow donned his old shabby uniform and carefully folded his dapper new tunic into his valise. He never wore it again.

Very early in the morning of the second day of battle, they set off for the station, passing farmworkers on their way to the fields, where swathes of green shoots predicted a bountiful harvest and the war seemed very far away. It was more than an hour’s tramp, and a chilly one, but to fit young men it was invigorating, and Witherow was enjoying it. After a while they came to a barn where a military band had mustered for early practice. They were playing ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, and the melody followed them through the still morning air as they marched on.

Although the murky dawn had broken a long while earlier, Major Ward was still out and about. He had been on his feet for more than twenty-four hours, but he would not allow himself to give in. The teams had rescued all their guns, but as they were dragging them away one sank into a shell-hole and Ward could not bring himself to abandon it. Having escorted the first four along the first mile of the road to safety, he returned to his old battery position, where the gun still lay, drunkenly askew, where he had left it. The gun team, however, was no longer there, and without hefty manpower Ward could do nothing. But he was not entirely despondent. The Battery had done well. They had retrieved four of their guns, and, cheered by the thought that he still had an active unit, Ward rode back in reasonably good spirits, satisfied with the night’s work. This pleasant sensation lasted until he reached Vélu and was met by the sight of his four guns parked, abandoned and forlorn, beside a wall.

Major Ronald Ward, C 293 Bty., Royal Field Artillery

To this day I don’t know what happened, but somehow my orders had been misunderstood and the NCOs had thought that the guns were to be left there ready for detachments to come up from the wagon lines. It was a bitter disappointment. Once again the guns seemed as good as lost, for by now it was obvious that another great attack was developing. Shelling was becoming more intense, and I could hear rifle fire too. I hurried back towards the advanced wagon lines near Frémicourt, two and a half miles away, and collected four teams and limbers and two gunners. No one else was available!

The Germans were now firing on the village of Lebucquière only half a mile away, but we reached the guns safely and limbered up. The route between Lebucquière and Vélu was under heavy shell-fire, and the road was very much damaged. The only certain way of getting out of the village was to go down a road not more than four yards wide, with the wall of the chateau on the left and a bank over five feet high on the right. Fortunately, a hundred yards down the road, there was a depression in the bank where the height was only about four feet. Over this part of the bank the guns must go. There was no other way.

I explained carefully to the drivers what they had to do and then sent the best team at it, telling the others to follow in turn. I knew very well that, if any horse jibbed, failure would inevitably follow. A leg over a trace, the wheel-round made too late, or the turn up the bank made too sharply, and the gun would stick there and possibly overturn. Shells were falling in the wood and on the level crossing. The first team started off at a trot, then broke into a canter and then to a gallop. Down the narrow road they went, and as they reached the place where the bank was lowest the lead driver held back his hand-horse for an instant, swung his ride-horse hard round to the right, and up the bank they sprang with the centre horses following them. The traces had been left just slack enough to allow the wheel-driver to keep the gun and limber well against the wall on his left, and at exactly the right moment he made a fair turn, the limber and gun took the bank squarely, and the gun bounced up the bank and into the field of grass beyond. The other three eighteen-pounders followed in perfect style. It was a great moment – and I was happy! So I got back to the advanced wagon lines with all four guns. Things could have been worse.

Things could have been a good deal worse. It was true that in one or two places the enemy had a foothold in the battle zone, but along most of its length the Third Army had given little ground and most of its battle zone and even parts of the outpost zone further north were still intact. On the Fifth Army front, where the enemy had struck hardest, the situation was worse, but by no means did it seem to be catastrophic. In places where the enemy had scythed deep into the line, the troops on either side of the breach had swivelled on some steady point and swung round to form defensive flanks, while the men who faced the brunt of the attack counter-attacked where they could or, in the last resort, fell back fighting for the vital time that would enable supporting troops to form a line behind them. Men clung to forward positions in sharp, uncomfortable salients or were pushed back into deep re-entrants which stretched their original frontage to twice its previous length. Frequently, in places where a diminished force of survivors extended to join hands with their neighbours in front or behind, there were fewer men to defend far more ground than they had held at the start of the battle. But they were ‘in touch’. Nowhere had the retirement been a rout. The line had yielded. It had been bent – but it had not been broken.

Long before daylight the remnants of the 14th and 18th Divisions were safely across the Crozat canal and the bridges were blown up behind them.

There had hardly been time to count the cost or estimate their losses, but when the 10th Essex assembled in Frières Wood, behind the canal, Major Tween was not surprised to learn that, diminished though it was, the Battalion was the strongest remaining unit of the 53rd Brigade. The Buffs and the Berkshires had been almost decimated. While the weary Essex and the remnants of the Buffs and Berkshires snatched what sleep they could, the 54th Brigade and some dismounted cavalry, with a hotchpotch of pioneers, spread out in a thin line to stand sentinel along the canal.

The Germans had already begun to filter forward. They started off at dawn in the early mist. By sunrise, when the mist began to lift, Reinhold Spengler’s company had reached Montescourt – although not without difficulty. A handful of British soldiers were still clinging to positions in the one-time outpost zone. They were isolated, and far from help or rescue, but they continued to harass the enemy for the rest of the day.

Leutnant Reinhold Spengler, 2nd Coy., 1st Bavarian Infantry Regt., 1st Bavarian Division

Again and again we encountered English machine-gun nests, but the field battery accompanying us gave the battalion considerable support. Its guns often fired at the enemy from only 200 or 300 metres away.

In Montescourt the enemy had been totally surprised by our attack. The place was a perfect picture of headlong flight. Even the wounded in an English field hospital had been left behind. With great pleasure we discovered an enormous food depot nearby. Unimaginable treasures were found inside, but we could only pick up a few things to carry along – bacon, ham, corned beef, chocolate, cigarettes and real tobacco. (Our own smokes were terrible!) We did not have much time to be choosy, because the progress of the march was more important.

Towards noon, when we neared Jussy, a terrible enemy machine-gun fire met us. The English had thrown infantry and artillery reserves into the village. Jussy lies along the Crozat canal, and some 500 metres behind the town runs a railroad embankment. The canal and embankment were very convenient for the defence of the village. Repeated attacks were stopped short of Jussy with heavy losses. The artillery battery with us could help little, because the English machine-gun crews behind the embankment constantly changed position.

All day the remnants of the British divisions, augmented by an entrenching battalion, by pioneers and by amorphous groups of survivors, continued to beat the Germans off and hold the line of the canal.

The River Somme, rising in the high ground east of St Quentin, runs south-west before looping north to Péronne, and it described a wide arc round the critical sector held by the British Army, until it turned sharply west of Péronne to carve a meandering course through Amiens to the sea. The river was important to the economy of northern France. In the places where it was narrowest and least navigable, canals had been constructed in Napoleonic times to allow barges to ply along the Somme and to link it to the River Oise, a mile or so to the east.

North of St Quentin the River Omignon ran south-west to join the Somme. The previous day, as the line was thrust back and the Germans filtered along the valley of the Omignon, the left flank of the 61st Division was dangerously exposed along the depth of its battle zone and even behind it across the Holnon plateau. The danger was that the enemy might filter round it and capture Holnon Wood from the rear. A thin defensive line flung back south of the valley was hard-pressed to hold it. By mid morning on 22 March the enemy were pushing hard against the northern edge of Holnon Wood. They were also attacking its long frontage from the east. Holnon village had been captured, Manchester Hill had gone, and just behind it the enemy had a foothold in the village of Savy. The 61st Division had retired, but only a short distance, and the line had been reformed round the perimeter of Holnon Wood and behind the village of Etreillers to the south of it. They had good artillery support, there was no shortage of machine-guns, and during the morning the Germans made little progress. But it was not for want of trying. Their casualties were immense, a second division had already been sent in as reinforcements, and that morning Walter Bloem’s reserve battalion was ordered forward.

After their day of anxious waiting, it came as a huge relief, and his men were only slightly subdued by their march through the old No Man’s Land past the scattered bodies of comrades cut down in the first assault the day before. Passing through ruined villages, they tramped in open order up the slopes of a hill above Holnon Wood to the left of the captured village and halted to wait in a sheltered position just below its brow while Bloem sent his orderly officer to make contact with the battalion in front. Almost two hours passed.

Machine-gun bullets were spurting and spluttering over the crest, but from time to time Bloem crawled to the summit to see what he could of the fight in front. But it was hard to make sense of the confusion.

Eventually, as the tumult ahead began to ease, a report was thrust into his hands. It had been scribbled in haste by the young officer, and the wording of his note was quite unmilitary: ‘Infantry which can storm like this are unconquerable. Without a doubt Holnon Wood is ours.’ Bloem could hear for himself the hurrahs of the triumphant troops, and shortly afterwards he was ordered to move his own men forward towards the south-east corner of the wood.

Hauptmann Walter Bloem, 12th (Brandenburg) Bn., [German] Grenadier Regt.

I deploy the Battalion and we pass obliquely over the crest quite unopposed. Before us is a wide plain; on the right the captured wood, full of mystery. Not a shot. We march quietly on. Suddenly infantry and machine-gun fire opens from the left! Some Tommies have ensconced themselves as snipers in a group of trees. I order my leading company to take up a position and open fire. Good Lord! The Grenadiers of 1918 do not shoot like those of 1914, especially at long ranges – practically all they know about is fighting in trenches. The scoundrels in the treetops continue to loose off merrily, and the advance of the whole division is held up by that score of men. My companies have had to dig in. I send back word for a Minenwerfer section to be brought up. We wait half an hour. We smoke and curse.

At last the Minenwerfer arrives, and hardly has the first bomb burst in the treetops when the impudent snipers jump to the ground. I order the Battalion to advance, then out of the group of trees a single Tommy approaches. Is he fed up with the war? We wave to him to come into our shell-hole. He grins and makes a face. He actually picks up a clod of earth and throws it at us! One of my runners, very annoyed, raises his rifle to shoot him, but he runs off. I take the centre of Holnon Wood as direction – we enter it without hindrance.

It was a relief to be on the move and in action at last. It seemed an eternity since the reserves had set off on their slow crawl forward and an age since the leading wave of the assault had punched through the British line the morning before. Although there was no formal announcement, the news of the breakthrough spread like wildfire through the ranks of the reserve battalions. Excited and exhilarated, the German soldiers braced themselves for battle and the orders that would send them forward to share in the victory. But they kicked their heels for many weary hours before the orders came. They came a good deal later than their army commander had intended, for the progress of his troops had been slower than General Ludendorff had meant. Given their strength, which far exceeded the strength of their British opponents, they should have advanced miles, with the back-up troops following on their heels within hours of the first assault. According to the original plan, the reserve battalions now penetrating Holnon Wood were almost a day late.

Notwithstanding Bloem’s officer’s rapturous praise of the invincible German soldiery, their conquest of the wood had not been quite such a glorious feat of arms as the ecstatic report had suggested. The 61st Division had put up an obdurate defence, and, when the Germans finally succeeded in pressing into the wood, the bulk of the British force had voluntarily retired. It was a deliberate and disciplined retirement. Only the rearguard was left to oppose the Germans’ passage through the wood, and they had opposed them bitterly every yard of the way – lying in ambush in dense undergrowth, firing Lewis-guns from makeshift positions behind uprooted trees, fighting hand to hand in clearings, denying the progress of the enemy along rough forest tracks, and, at the last, fighting to exhaust the enemy and to gain time for their comrades to take up the position where they were to stand fast behind the battle zone. The position was clearly drawn on the Army map. It was shown as ‘the Green Line’, the last line of defence.

Running through the western outskirts of the village of Attilly on the far side of the forest, the Green Line curved north across open ground a few hundred yards beyond Holnon Wood and south in the other direction to skirt behind the village of Etreillers. It was not much of a line. The trenches were sketchy and shallow, in places they were only a few inches deep, and, even if much more time had been available, even if the situation had been less critical, the fighting soldiers were not equipped with enough spades and pickaxes to improve them. On other parts of the XVIII Corps front some men were still fighting on the forward edge of the battle zone, but they could hardly be left there when neighbouring battalions had retired. General Sir Ivor Maxse saw no alternative but to order the whole Corps front to retire to the Green Line. The order was issued shortly after midday, but even then Maxse was having second thoughts, and a short while later he issued another order. His better judgement told him that the Green Line was no place to stand and fight, and if his men remained there, weakened as they were, his line would soon be broken and overwhelmed. It seemed to him that there was nothing for it but to swing back in a south-westerly direction and to take up a line on the banks of the River Somme. Here they would stand, and here they would fight – and here, surely, the reserves that must now be on their way would reach him. The loop of the Somme did not run parallel to the original line, and the front would be a long one for his depleted force to hold. But it could not be helped.

The 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers were disposed round Etreillers in the sector of the 30th Division south of Holnon Wood. When the battle began Etreillers had been well behind the forward line of the battle zone, and Second Lieutenant Pat Hakewill-Smith was with his platoon in a small redoubt in a field north-east of the village. This was their battle-station, and the previous morning they had moved through the bombardment to reach it. Directly ahead, and between them and the enemy, the Bedfords were defending the village of Savy. The Royal Scots Fusiliers had had a comparatively peaceful day on 21 March. Occasionally Hakewill-Smith’s platoon had helped out with long-range fire from their solitary machine-gun, and, although Etreillers behind them was being gradually reduced to ruins, his platoon in the field ahead were only slightly troubled by shelling. They had watched repeated attacks on the Bedfords, and applauded their own artillery when they repulsed them. They had cheered on the battalion on their right as they counter-attacked, and cheered louder still when they returned with a haul of prisoners. With rations and water for forty-eight hours, and plenty of ammunition, Pat felt reasonably secure.

Night fell, the mist gathered, and they could no longer see what was happening in front. From time to time there were scattered bursts of firing or a salvo of explosions nearby. None of them slept, and the night seemed very long. The morning brought no comfort. Sheltering from a fearsome bombardment, they guessed, correctly, that the enemy was making a final bid for Savy. Not far to their left they could see the fierce fight for Holnon Wood, and on their right it was clear that the village of Roupy was now in the hands of the enemy. It was equally clear that, apart from a thin and scattered line beyond them, they were now in the front line. The hours dragged on.

Second Lieutenant E. (‘Pat’) Hakewill-Smith, 2nd Bn., Royal Scots Fusiliers, 30th Division

I collected some odd men coming back, and this brought the strength of the platoon up to about sixty. I was lucky enough to get hold of a stray Vickers machine-gun and its team, and I also got another Lewis-gun off one of our aeroplanes, which was forced to land near my trench. This meant that I now had three machine-guns and about sixty rifles and, but for the fact that my trench was unwired, I should have felt very confident. But our position by then was like this:

Shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon the enemy began to push on again. There were simply swarms of them – line after line, coming about five paces apart. I counted thirty lines and then got tired of counting, there were so many of them. Just at this time we got a very nasty enfilade machine-gun fire from our left, which I didn’t like a bit, but luckily we spotted the gun, fired at it like billy-o, and managed to make it shift. The Boche came slowly plodding along, simply thousands of them! I waited until they were 600 yards away and then opened up with machine-guns and rapid rifle fire. There were so many of them that we couldn’t miss! We simply mowed them down, and they weren’t making much ground. But suddenly we saw more Boche behind us, coming through Etreillers and working round our rear. I turned a Lewis-gun on them and this held them up, but only for about two minutes, and then I saw the Boche on our right flank pushing on, so the situation was like this:

I hadn’t liked the situation in the least for the previous fifteen minutes. None of our field guns had been firing, and I heard no rifle fire either from the rest of my battalion or from the battalion on my right, and I knew that if they had still been in position they would have been fighting hard. But my orders were to hold on to the last.

In the sunken road at Beaumetz, the former Brigade Signals dugout was only superficially damaged, although Dick Gammell had done his best to destroy it. But even by the evening of 22 March no curious enemy soldiers had set foot in it. The Germans had got no further than Doignies. The two Brigade Headquarters had long ago moved back, but the left flank of the 51st Division was still holding a line in front of Beaumetz. Their numbers were few now, and they were thankful for the troops who had been rushed up from the rear line to help them defend it.¹

As long ago as the previous evening the 8th Gloucesters and 10th Worcesters had made a brave attempt to storm Doignies. They had not been able to budge the enemy – but they had more effect than they realized. Towards the end of the second arduous day the enemy was more shaken still. During the night eight German divisions had been rushed up opposite the IV Corps front. They were far from fresh. They had been fighting all day and had had little sleep, but, although they had suffered many casualties and their numbers were far fewer than twenty-four hours previously, they still greatly outnumbered the remnants of the stricken British force in the line they were intended to break. It was held by only eight weak brigades, and the Germans had every reason to suppose that their task would be a walkover.

At dawn on the second morning of the battle, the German heavy artillery began to pound the British lines and the first of many infantry assaults was launched. Again and again the Gloucesters and the Highlanders in the trenchline east of the old sunken road beat them off. Between Morchies and Vaulx–Vraucourt, north-west of Beaumetz, and therefore actually behind it, the supply of ammunition had almost run out, and as the front wavered and the Germans filtered through the widening cracks a six-mile gap was gradually opening in the line between Beaumetz and Mory. If it were not filled, the arrow-straight road from Cambrai would be wide open and there would be nothing to stop the Germans walking straight through to Bapaume. The tanks were ordered up from Haplincourt to plug the gap and stop them. It was the last and only chance.

The 2nd Battalion Tank Corps was more than five miles behind the tenuous line, and when their section commander hurried along shortly after lunch the subalterns of Robert Watson Kerr’s section were lounging in shirtsleeves near their tanks, enjoying a postprandial snooze in the afternoon sun.

Lieutenant R. Watson Kerr, MC, 2nd Bn., Tank Corps

He shouted, ‘Look slippy! You’re going into action at once!’ That made us jump, and in a moment or two we had got our tunics and Sam Browne belts on, pocketed our loaded Colts, and crossed the road to our tanks. ‘Here!’ I shouted to the reconnaissance officer when I had got my tank under way – ‘where’s the front line?’ ‘There isn’t one,’ he replied. ‘Well, where’s the Boche, then?’ He pointed over the sunny fields ahead. ‘Just walk right on and you’ll find them soon enough!’

We set off walking beside our tanks, with our crews inside them, but after we had covered some distance across country there was a slight tension in the air. Guns were firing somewhere near. Then suddenly, to our right, about a hundred yards or so away, we caught sight of a battery of British field guns firing in the open.

We stopped. So did the battery. Then to our amazement we heard the artillerymen shout, ‘The tanks! The tanks!’ and they followed this up with enthusiastic cheers, led by the officer waving his cap above his head. We waved back – a little embarrassed – thinking that the gunners must have been feeling pretty desperate to cheer us like that.

Pipsqueaks were now dropping unpleasantly around and beyond us, and so we separated to our own tanks. It was safer there, and any minute now we might come on the infantry who were supposed to support us. But that was where we made a mistake! There were no infantry ahead of us. We were on our own, and the battery of artillery had apparently been the front line. No wonder they had cheered!¹

Apart from some scattered clusters of infantry, the tanks were on their own. The roar of the powerful motor, the crashing of gears, the rattle of vibrating ammunition racks as the tank lurched along its ponderous course made it quite impossible to hear anything but the loudest of explosions outside its armoured walls. It was also difficult to see, for a narrow steel flap gave only a limited view of the ground ahead, and it was some time before Watson Kerr realized with some trepidation that the rest of their section had disappeared.

Lieutenant R. Watson Kerr, MC

There was a knoll ahead, with hillier ground on the left, and I decided to leave the valley and take to the slopes. The tank began to mount it gently. Then suddenly I saw what looked like a whole German Army, in full marching order, with banners flying and the harnesses of horses sparkling in the sun. They were coming towards us over the crest of a grassy slope several hundred yards away, battalions of them against the distant skyline, a swarming mass marching towards us in open country in full marching order, in brilliant sunlight, and with nobody apparently to stop them but ourselves. And what a target! My driver and I couldn’t believe our eyes at first!

After the first shock of surprise we quickly got our guns going, and in the concentrated fire the huge host ahead melted back over the horizon.

It seemed fantastic, incredible. And it was all over in a moment. There was only the bare hill ahead now.

The tank crew were dumbfounded. It seemed to them in the elation of the moment that they had single-handedly driven off the cream of the Kaiser’s Army. They whooped and cheered, grinning with delight. They could hardly believe it. But just as Watson Kerr was about to close the flap he saw with dismay that, in their blind plunge forward, they had blundered into a maze of trenches swarming with enemy infantry and machine-gunners. The enemy soldiers were even more disconcerted by the sight of the tank. They began to run, scrambling towards the shelter of a wood on the slope above. The tank thundered after them in pursuit.

With the aid of fascines – those weighty bundles of tight-packed faggots which could be automatically dropped to form a bridge – a Mark V tank could travel across trenches as it lumbered straight ahead, but manoeuvring the bulk of its twenty-seven tons among such a labyrinth of earthworks was a very different matter. It was perilous going. Peering through the flap, holding his position with considerable difficulty, thrown from side to side as the tank jolted and juddered across the uneven ground, Watson Kerr could see nothing but a crazy jumble of crumbling earth, scrambling legs, gaping holes. Inside, as the engine strained to haul the monster up steep slopes, the noise, the fumes, the heat mounted. Above the roar of the tank’s engine and the grind of its revolving tracks, streams of machine-gun bullets rattled against its outer walls. They bounced off the heavy casing as harmlessly as hailstones, but, as the metal lining flaked beneath the impact, flurries of red-hot splinters showered down on the crew. They cursed and dodged them as the tank roared on, hoping with every buck and plunge that their luck would hold, gambling on the chance that they would not bog down, dreading the next shuddering jolt that might herald disaster. Watson Kerr soon decided that it was high time to make for home.

Lieutenant R. Watson Kerr, MC

I shouted to the driver, and we turned carefully so that our nose faced the steep side of a trench. The tank began to mount, slowly, slowly, its tracks biting into the loose soil and its tail dipping dangerously low. Slowly the earth in front crunched away, the tank’s engine roaring itself out. Then something terrible happened. Suddenly the engine stopped, and there was silence. A grim, hellish emptiness after all that bedlam!

I think all our hearts stopped with that engine. Then I scrambled back from my seat. ‘Come on!’ I shouted. ‘Get her going again.’ Our voices sounded hideously loud!

We got the starting handle, fixed it, and, crouching down, prepared to turn it. ‘Now!’ I said, and we swung it round – and the miracle happened. The engine spluttered into life, and in a moment or two we were out of the treacherous ground, careering down the valley, knowing that we had done all that one tank could.

We eventually got back to camp in the twilight, and my crew of six and myself, feeling very exhausted, went in search of food.

Despite their first, delirious impression, Watson Kerr and his crew had not quite defeated the entire German Army. They had not been on their own, though of the twenty-five tanks which went into action only nine returned. But they had panicked the leading companies of the German 24th Reserve Division and, as the panic spread to the companies behind, the whole division retired in a disorderly rabble, and it was some considerable time before it was reorganized. By then it was far too late to try again to advance that night.

Between them, the tanks and the gunners had closed the gap in the Third Army front. Had there been enough infantry to follow through, they might have closed the line and stood their ground. As it was, they had gained precious time – long enough to form a new and stronger line behind, and long enough for the guns to be moved back to support it. The heavy guns of the German artillery inadvertently assisted by firing short and shelling their own troops, and when they scattered in confusion for shelter more than 200 enemy soldiers ran into the eager arms of 153rd Brigade, who delightedly took them prisoner. The situation was still critical, but it was a heartening episode in a long, grim day.

On the Fifth Army front, Pat Hakewill-Smith and his men were still ‘holding on to the last’ in their isolated position in front of Etreillers, and by five o’clock he had no doubt that ‘the last’ had already come and gone. He was right. The order to withdraw had never reached him, and it was a long time since the rest of the Battalion had begun to make their way back.

Now the enemy was closing in. It was clear that they would very soon be encircled and, without so much as a strand of wire to protect their position, there was no chance of holding back a force which outnumbered them many times. Reluctantly Pat Hakewill-Smith alerted his small force and prepared to withdraw. He gave the order calmly, but he was very much afraid that he might have left it too late.

Second Lieutenant E. (‘Pat’) Hakewill-Smith

The Boche had nearly joined up around us. We couldn’t withdraw to our rear, so we slipped off to our right rear. Naturally, as we left the trench, we came under rifle fire and machine-gun fire, and they also got a couple of guns on to us and sprayed us with high shrapnel, but by a miracle we got across the open only dropping about a dozen men, who most unfortunately had to be left.

After covering 200 yards of open ground, we got under cover of a hedge round an orchard, but it was only just out of view and we still got it fairly hot. Fortunately I knew the ground, and we worked our way into a shallow railway cutting where we were fairly safe. The enemy didn’t follow us up, and five minutes later we were out of sight and out of trouble. I only had about thirty men left by this time, and two of my machine-guns had been put out of action. About a quarter of a mile further on we came into the rear zone and ran into a battalion of the Rifle Brigade, to whom I attached myself. They told me that the order to evacuate had been given at three o’clock and everyone else had gone by 3.30, whereas we did not leave until 6 p.m.

We went on down the railway line and cut across country when we were out of sight. We were now in some trenches on a small incline in a shallow valley on the right of a village called Vaux. Here we got a generous dose of eight- and ten-inch shells, and then, just as it was getting dark, the enemy attacked in force. As our wire was uncut and we had a good field of fire this was easily stopped, but shortly after we had beaten off this attack a hostile aeroplane flew over us very low down. As it was now dark we couldn’t see it, but when it was directly over us it dropped a phosphorus bomb that burst in the air with a great shower of ‘golden rain’. Although it was very pretty to look at, we did not like it and, sure enough, about two minutes later we came in for fairly accurate shelling from the rear! We knew then that the enemy was past us on both flanks, so at 9 p.m. on the second day the situation was like this:

Plodding on, keeping just a step or two ahead of the Germans, they skirted the village of Foreste, which was already in enemy hands, and, keeping to lanes and cart tracks, struck out across country. It was hard going in the dark, but they knew very well that the Germans were at their heels.

By evening on 22 March, Reinhold Spengler’s regiment was still stuck at Jussy on the northern bank of the Crozat canal. The Germans had tried repeatedly to get across, and Spengler’s regiment had been in the thick of the fighting. At dusk they braced themselves for one final effort. The attack failed.

The men cut off at Vendeuil fort had given up all hope of a rescue. It was a long time since the last encouraging message had been flashed from the fort at Liez, they had fired their last bullet, and Captain Fine knew that the time had come to surrender. He intended to do so in military style. The men had already trickled down from the ramparts, and, when they had piled their useless rifles and formed up, they swung open the heavy gates and marched out. The Captain took his place at the head of the bedraggled column, carrying a white rag nailed to a stick – but he carried it like a banner. The Germans held their fire and rounded them up in an almost comradely manner. Then they marched them up the road to St Quentin. It was a long way for hungry, exhausted men, but they marched with backs straight and heads held high in a final gesture of defiance. They were disappointed, bone-weary and thoroughly fed up, but they had given the enemy a run for his money.