Chapter 17
No one could say with certainty who first proposed that General Foch should be invited to co-ordinate the command of the Allied armies. Doubtless the seed was planted and the idea slowly grew in the course of various meetings between the interested parties on Monday 25 March. But it was blindingly obvious to all concerned that something would have to be done, and when he reached Montreuil at 11.30 that morning Sir Henry Wilson made no bones about it. Nor did he hesitate to say ‘I told you so’ at his meeting with Sir Douglas Haig.
Extract from the diary of General Sir Henry Wilson
I could not resist reminding him that it was he [Haig] … who killed my plan of a General Reserve, nor could I resist reminding him of what I had both told and written to him on the 6th March – that without a General Reserve he would be living on the charity of Pétain.
These observations could not have delighted Haig; nor were they necessarily true. The French were already contributing a greater number of troops than had been mooted by the Supreme War Council earlier in the year. The difficulty was, in Haig’s view, that it was not great enough and that, given the state of mind displayed by General Pétain, it was unlikely to increase soon enough to affect the Allies’ fortunes in the battle. The British Commander-in-Chief was genuinely perturbed by Pétain’s apparent change of outlook and, consequently, by the change in the strategy he seemed likely to adopt.
But Pétain’s stance had not changed overnight, although there was little doubt that the realistic view he had previously held had swung to a mood of downright pessimism. Pétain was no fire-eater. With regard to military matters his mind was cold and calculating, and, in the aftermath of the costly Franco-British campaign on the Somme, and in the wake of the failed Nivelle offensive of the previous year and the disenchantment which had brought about his own appointment as Commander-in-Chief, his view had crystallized. By eschewing the old tenets which had held a sacred place in the French military mind and imagination since time immemorial, by careful preparation and the overwhelming support of artillery, Pétain had restored the situation at Verdun in 1916. With cold, objective assessment he had analysed the fatal weaknesses which ran deep within the hierarchy of the French Army. Single-handedly he had imposed the reforms which restored discipline after its near-collapse and had set about the task of restructuring and retraining which would enable the Army to take the offensive when the time eventually came. Until then – and until the Americans were in a position to add the weight that would tip the scales – Pétain’s policy was to stand on the defensive. This had been his policy in May 1917, when he was given the post of Commander-in-Chief and the task of picking up the pieces in the wake of the mutiny, and neither the result of Haig’s Passchendaele offensive, which he had reluctantly supported, nor the outcome of the Battle of Cambrai at the fag-end of the year had given him cause to change his mind.
He was not alone in his approach. For more than a decade before the war there had been a new school of thought in the upper echelons of the French Army Command, and Pétain had been one of a handful of high-ranking officers at the École de Guerre who were reassessing the value of the nineteenth-century death-or-glory tactics which still dominated the Army and were beloved by France. But in the present war they had cost the country dear. In its first six weeks the casualties had amounted to almost half a million, and the dead alone outnumbered the whole of the original British Expeditionary Force. Now, four years later, with casualties compounded, with a weakened conscript Army whose morale had been badly shaken, reeling under the weight of an overwhelming assault which he doubted that the Allies could defeat, Pétain’s instinct was to draw in his horns, to retrench, to defend the French capital, and to save his army to fight another battle another day.
But the French Government ministers, who less than a year ago had hailed Pétain as a saviour, were less in sympathy. General Foch was now Chief of the French General Staff, military representative at Versailles and technical adviser to the French Government. He had the ear of the politicians, and the vigour of his offensive spirit – that untranslatable élan, that rebellious, revolutionary spirit of brotherhood and patriotic fervour which had toppled thrones and sent troops wild-eyed into battle – was seductive. At this crisis of the war the political masters found Danton’s stirring cry of ‘L’audace, l’audace, et encore l’audace!’ more attractive by far than the sober pronouncements of Pétain. Foch was the Danton of his day, and to Georges Clemenceau, who had become Prime Minister in November, he was a man after his own heart. His forceful temperament was in fiery contrast to that of Pétain – stoic, cold, impassive. The ringing words of his famous message to General Joffre in 1914 were already legendary and would ring on through the annals of military history: ‘Hard pressed on my right. My centre is yielding. Impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent. I am attacking.’
Foch’s star had waned after the Battle of the Somme, but it had risen again by the sheer power of his magnetic personality, and under the present circumstances his influence was great. He was on good terms with General Sir Henry Wilson and the two men, each Chief of his respective General Staff, had kept in close touch. On Saturday evening, as the Germans had advanced and the crisis had deepened, Foch had telephoned Wilson in London. No record was made of their conversation, but now, according to Wilson’s own account of his interview with Sir Douglas Haig at Montreuil, after discussing the necessity for united action, Wilson proposed that Foch should be invited to co-ordinate the action of both Haig and Pétain. ‘In the end,’ he added, ‘Douglas Haig agreed.’
Haig was not a man who either quickly or impulsively adopted new ideas and, although he was a courteous listener, he was not readily inclined to attribute new ideas to others. He suggested, in an entry in his diary, that a similar thought had occurred to him. It hardly mattered. In the light of the impasse with Pétain, Haig was not slow to realize that such a move might well be in his interest. The seed took root – and it was nurtured by the news from the front of the Fifth Army that the Franco-British counter-attack on which General Gough had placed so much reliance had not come off.
Haig was disappointed, Gough was perturbed, but, at XVIII Corps Headquarters, General Maxse was fuming. Beyond the western bank of the Somme, now in the hands of the Germans, there was a gap of nearly a mile between his XVIII Corps and the XIX Corps north of it, commanded by General Watts. It was tenuously covered by the battered remnants of the 24th Division, in reserve three miles in the rear. Immediately to the south, a weak and badly mauled brigade of the 61st Division had been extended to cover no less than one and a half miles of front. It was a precarious position. Although Péronne itself was now in German hands, in front of the town and south of it Watts was clinging firmly to six miles of the Somme round the wide curve that sent the river looping to the west immediately south of the gap which separated him from the Third Army on his left flank. On the right, where his line had been pushed back at Béthencourt and Pargny in front of Nesle, another gap now lay between his force and the line held by Maxse’s XVIII Corps and the French troops who extended it. Unless the situation could be immediately retrieved it was plain to see that the Germans would easily brush aside the handful of men strung out behind the gap, and the French and British armies would be irrevocably separated. The situation was more than critical: it was potentially catastrophic. Only the French could save the day, and from the early hours of Palm Sunday the French 22nd Division had been arriving at Nesle.
The plan was that the French would attack from south to north towards the river on Maxse’s side of the gap, while parts of the British 8th and 24th Divisions would simultaneously attack from west to east. Thus, between them, they would close the gap and retain the line of the Somme. The plan had been devised by General Gough in conjunction with his Corps Commanders, Watts and Maxse, and with General Robillot in command of the French, and it had been agreed with General Fayolle. Zero hour was fixed for the morning of 25 March, and during the night the 24th Division was moved forward. After their exertions and losses during the past few days the men could not accurately be described as fresh, but they had had a little rest, for they had been in reserve since Saturday and, although they had been digging trenches for most of Sunday, they had at least had a chance to sleep and a respite from the fighting. General Maxse had no small difficulty in collecting sufficient troops for his part in the assault, because the men in the actual line were all he had, and the line must still be held and manned when the assaulting force advanced. With no supporting troops, no reserves of infantry at his disposal, he had to do the best he could with what he had – one battalion of pioneers (22nd Durham Light Infantry) and one field company of Royal Engineers, newly arrived that morning. They moved into the line to replace the two brigades, or more precisely to replace the remnants of the two brigades, which were to make the assault.
It had been arranged for 8 a.m. and, since the French troops as yet had no artillery, the guns of XVIII Corps were to back up their attack. But, at the request of the French commander, zero hour was postponed until eleven o’clock, because his troops were not yet ready in position. But the Germans were. They attacked ferociously, and they attacked all along the line. By eleven o’clock, when Maxse still had hopes that the combined effort might halt the enemy – or at least enable the divided force to keep in touch if it must fall back – General Robillot’s force had already begun to retire. It was retiring in a south-westerly direction, it was carrying XVIII Corps artillery with it, and the space between the armies was swinging wide.1
No assistance had come from the French, and it was unfortunate that the front-line troops of the 24th Division did not know it. When the first enemy parties appeared, they progressed for some distance before so much as a single shot was fired to stop them: in the misty light of early morning the Tommies assumed that the grey-clad figures half-seen in the distance were French troops who had managed to get a head start. When they realized their mistake they fought back – and fought hard all morning, holding the enemy in check and causing so many casualties that again and again the Germans hesitated and stopped. It was not until after one o’clock that the line was forced to retire and the Somme line was irrevocably lost.
In front of Libermont, where Désiré Wavrin and his comrades were holding Hospital Wood, the battle had started at 6.30 in the morning.
Capitaine Désiré Wavrin, 22nd Coy., 6th Bn., 307th Regt., 62nd [French] Division
It was such a violent attack right across our front that it was impossible to withstand it. During the night the enemy had infiltrated all through the wood and my company was cut in two. I managed to get out of the wood with a group of men and, splitting up and shooting all the time, we managed to reach the edge of Libermont, which the 4th Battalion was defending. Here the resistance hardened up, although the shells were simply pouring down on us, causing terrible losses.
When it was coming on for four o’clock in the afternoon, long columns of enemy soldiers poured out from Esmery-Hallon and massed in front of Libermont for an assault. I counted sixteen waves of them at least. Very soon it became impossible to hold out any longer, and we had to fall back a long way to the other side of the canal. It was at that moment, after ten hours’ fighting, that I began to feel completely washed out. I had managed to send back the remains of my company, and only Quéfille was still with me. The whole ground and the shallow trenches were thick with dead bodies, and the Boche were only about fifty metres away. I felt limp as a rag. I said to Quéfille, ‘I give up! I can’t go on any longer. Let them capture us and be done with it.’ He shouted back, ‘What are you saying! Let them capture us? What if they do us in instead! We have to clear off!’ He was some man! He grabbed me by the sleeve, and I let him pull me along, crawling across the rough grass and under bushes, and we ended up out of breath on the bank of the canal.
We managed to go across it on a little bridge, although we were being swept with bullets. There were some scraped-out trenches on the other side, and to get our breath back Quéfille jumped into one and I jumped into another. Three machine-gunners got there at the same time, and at that very moment a volley of shots came over and killed every single one of them. I think my guardian angel must have been there, because I wasn’t touched, but I didn’t hang around. The bridge must have been mined, and just then it went up. My only thought was to get out of there as soon as possible. But then something absolutely farcical happened with dire results: the buttons of my braces burst, and my trousers tumbled down to my ankles so that I was hobbled like a goat! I could neither stand up nor walk forward, so I had to crawl like a worm for about a hundred metres before I was able to throw myself into a ditch at the side of a road. When I’d fixed my trousers as best I could, I started off again – still of course with the faithful Quéfille. Somehow or other we managed to get back to the regiment – or what was left of it.
We went back to Ognolles, l’Abbaye-aux-Bois. Then we crossed Champien Wood, carrying our colonel, who was wounded there, and took up position on the outcrops of rock at Amy. The Regiment regrouped somewhere towards Crapeaumésnil, and there we defended first the east side of the Bois des Loges, then the west. It was there that I was reunited with the other part of my company – or with the rump of it, as you might say. At last the Regiment reached the village of Roye-sur-Matz, where there was a firm line which allowed us to reorganize under the protection of the artillery, which had at last arrived. So, fighting all the way, outnumbered ten to one, we had pulled back fifteen kilometres. We had kept the enemy from getting through with nothing but our rifles and machine-guns, but it was terribly sad to have to retreat!
Matters were not much better on the front of the Third Army. The men were tired, and, if they were not wholly dispirited and still philosophically trusting to luck and the wisdom of Higher Command to get them out of trouble, it was disconcerting to be giving up ground which had cost so much soul-destroying effort to attain. Delville Wood, Guillemont, High Wood, Bazentin, Mametz – the very names rang like a knell as they plodded back, cold and hungry and weary. Even the men of the divisions which had arrived only in time to fill the gaps and stiffen the line as it fell back fighting were exhausted by two days and nights of continuous exertion, and the business of preparing to depart had been so frenetic that they had been tired before they started.
Major Harrison Johnston of the 15th Cheshires found it difficult to believe that the officers had been hosting a fancy-dress party when the summons reached them near Ypres on the night of 21 March. The party was not the most glittering of social occasions. The room was bravely, if sparsely, decorated with greenery, but the ‘fancy dress’ owed less to the art of the costumier than to the ingenuity of the guests – turbans contrived from khaki scarves; beards and moustaches daubed on with charcoal; eyepatches manufactured from scraps of tarpaulin. There were a few ‘ghosts’ draped in tablecloths borrowed from the officers’ mess, and some unlikely representations of the Kaiser, liberally adorned with cardboard medals and helmets painted silver with camouflage paint. The evening was enlivened by a contingent of nurses from local casualty clearing stations, who made congenial dancing partners (although they wisely had not adopted fancy dress), and mess servants, encouraged by a liberal supply of beer or tots of port and whisky, took turns to wind the gramophone and keep the music going. The signal from Divisional Headquarters put an end to the festivities and, looking back on that happy evening only five nights ago, it seemed to Johnston, now trudging along the road from Maricourt, that it had all been an illusion.
It was his third night without sleep. The Battalion had marched eight miles to the railhead near Ypres, and a wearisome journey – twelve hours of jolting and stopping and starting – had brought them to Méricourt l’Abbé, on the Somme, at four o’clock in the morning. They had then started right away to march the seventeen miles to the front, sustained by the promise that breakfast would be waiting when they got there. They had hardly swallowed it before men of the 21st and 9th Divisions had come streaming back with the news that the Germans were on their heels, and the Cheshires were plunged into the fight.
They were far from fresh, but they were a good deal fresher than the divisions they went to support. But they did more than support them. Together the Cheshires and the 15th Sherwood Foresters counter-attacked and regained the Cléry Ridge, south of Marrières Wood. They advanced more than a mile, and there they held on, drove the enemy back, and held up the advance all day. And when the enemy attacked in a mass which far outnumbered them, when the gap between the Cheshires and the Sherwoods widened and they were almost surrounded, they fought their way out, carrying their wounded, and fell back to Battalion Headquarters in a sunken road just west of Hem Wood. And there they stayed until finally they were ordered to withdraw.
Major Harrison Johnston, 15th (Service) Bn., The Cheshire Regt., 35th Division
I left the sunken road feeling pretty done in. I found a boy of nineteen lying in a ditch at the roadside and a man trying to persuade him to get up. He was shot through the mouth, which had swollen terribly. The poor kid had been shouting all day, and I’d spoken to him many times. Now I tried to get him up, but he didn’t want to come and had chucked up the sponge. I told him he must make an effort or fall into Boche hands. I told him how brave he’d been all day, and that he must stick it and come. At last we got him up, and practically carried him for half a mile to the next position we were to take up. Here one of our cookers was waiting with hot tea. The General met me and told me to line the road from the junction to the river – a frontage of about 1,000 yards. Ye gods, I had about 150 men then! However, I met some South African stragglers and put them in position – they didn’t want to be roped in, but I snaffled all I saw, no matter what regiment.
As I got back to the top of the road, the General blew me out by the roots, because late arrivals were having tea near the cooker instead of lining the road. Of course the poor lads were famished, but the General was right, as the Germans followed us up quickly. We got patrols out in front, and mounted our Lewis-guns in good positions and so on. Night had fallen now, and there was a strong hoar frost. I had no overcoat and felt the cold, but I had to walk up and down my line to keep the lads awake. If I sat down I slept too. Doran brought me the CO’s coat and I put it on. The poor old sportsman was missing, and I felt it looked a horrible thing to wear his coat, but I was starved and I was glad of it.1 We lost fourteen officers and over 300 men in that day’s work, and we could see there was more coming, but everybody was splendid.
In the morning, 25 March, we were shelled heavily from dawn. At first we thought we were getting a few shorts from our own heavies, but it became evident very soon that the shells were Boche and that he was getting the range of our position accurately. Casualties increased, and it soon became evident that we could not stay. Our W Company, who had missed the previous day’s fighting, had come up to reinforce us during the night. I therefore sent Milne with his whole company to take up a position on a high ridge and cover the retirement of the rest of the troops.
The retirement was orderly and our men were easily rallied outside the village of Maricourt. I am very sorry to say that these remarks do not apply to all units, and I was roped in to assist some staff officers in stopping the rot and making men return and reinforce our new position. Revolvers had to be produced, and it was extremely difficult to hold the mob.
The new position was a strong one, with a splendid field of fire. The enemy followed up quickly, and it was strange to see him moving up and occupying the position we had left. I saw some Boche approaching a hut I’d had my breakfast in. Here I had left the CO’s coat with my flashlight in the pocket. We got a few Boche during the day, but they did not make a definite attack on our new position. At about 9 p.m. that night a Boche patrol of two officers and sixteen men met one of our patrols who were just going out. Our patrol was only half their strength, but our fellows killed nine and captured two of the other fellows. About 10 p.m. we were relieved by the 17th Lancashire Fusiliers and we proceeded towards billets at Suzanne, where hot food was provided in huts.
As we came along that road I saw in the darkness many things that did not exist. I saw distinctly heaps of women and children, also umpteen animals, lying dead by the roadside, and as I came along with Binks, who had come up that morning early to act as adjutant, I had to ask him at last if he could see some of the horrible things. He said, ‘No.’ I stuck it for a while longer, then I saw a large building with a big green flag hanging in front of it and a large red cross on the flag. I said, ‘This looks like a possible billet.’ He took my arm and said there was nothing bigger than a grassy bank in sight. It seems strange that such things can happen – but take it from me they can.
After my hot drink and food I was quite all right again and very thankful. I feared I was going barmy!
The guns too were retiring, and with no little difficulty along the congested roads. Notwithstanding his hair-raising adventures in the forefront of the German assault, it was only the previous evening that Major Ward had appreciated the full gravity of the situation.
Major Ronald Ward, C 293 Bty., Royal Field Artillery
We got to Ligny-Thilloy and it was just like all the other villages: it was a pile of rubbish. Just outside the village and to the north of it are three crossroads on the top of a little hill, and here there was a sight that made one think a bit. A battery of six-inch howitzers was in action firing briskly, but the grim fact was that the two sections were in action almost trail to trail. In other words, two howitzers were firing due north, and the other two were firing in almost exactly the opposite direction, namely south-south-west. The peculiar disposition of these four howitzers made it rather painfully obvious that the situation was serious. We passed them and moved on a few hundred yards more to the north, and there came into action beside the road. In half an hour the howitzers had limbered up and left the position.
They had retired to the west of Grévillers, and now Major Ward was in a more optimistic frame of mind. For one thing, that morning he had at last had some food. It was only hot tea and bread and jam, but it was the first food he had eaten since breakfast on the first day of the battle, and it did him good. Soon afterwards his spirits rose even further.
Major Ronald Ward
At 10 a.m. on the 25th we got fresh orders and were pleased to find that they were of the cheerful kind, for we were to advance a mile to a position north-east of Irles. There the Battery came into action on open grass slopes. It was the sort of position that I liked – out in open country and on good soil where shelter trenches could be dug for the protection of the detachments, and of course the guns and their flashes were concealed from the direct view of the enemy by rising ground in front. From this position we did some good shooting at enemy infantry advancing against Loupart Wood, for Grévillers was taken by noon.
Soon after midday it became clear again that things were not going well, and, looking across the village on our left, we could see our infantry retiring from Achiet-le-Grand, one and a half miles away. The lines ran in the bottom of the valley, about 600 yards behind the guns, and I was presently startled by unexpected explosions from that direction. These proved to be due not to the enemy but to our own Engineers, who were blowing up sections of the railway track to prevent the Boche from using them. It was a further sign of the seriousness of things. A little later one of these men walked up to the Battery. He was a large American sapper, who had enlisted in the British Army. He carried outside him a rifle with the bayonet fixed and some cartridges, and inside him a large quantity of whisky plus a burning zeal to discover the enemy. I think it must have been the duty of burning the canteen the night before which had so fired his courage, for he asked me more than once just exactly where the Boche might be found, explaining that he was finding demolitions too dull. I gave him precise details, and, having shaken me warmly by the hand, he set off in the direction I indicated, though rather slowly. I saw him no more, but I fancy that discretion took control over valour before he had gone very far.
An hour later we were ordered to move back towards Puisieux-au-Mont. I remember that march of one and a half miles well, for it was terribly slow, the roads crowded with ammunition carts and with infantrymen, whom we gradually overtook. Infantrymen retiring after five days of such fighting were a sad spectacle. They were wandering along the road, wearily, in little groups, men of one regiment mixed up with those of another, and the confusion of battalions was particularly noticeable, because some were Highlanders in kilts and some were from English units. There was no sort of panic, and each man still carried his rifle and his kit, but they were dead beat, and utterly fed up. As I passed in and out amongst these exhausted men, toiling along the rough track, I felt ashamed to be riding a horse. I don’t think I saw an officer anywhere, except at one place where a young staff officer was rather excitedly trying to form a line. It was a useless task, for, though the men stopped at once and faced about, he could not give them any detailed orders about occupying positions, and as there was no enemy in sight they felt his efforts were futile. Presently, as more tired troops drifted up, they wandered on again towards the west. (It has to be said that there were by now very few infantry officers left, and that some units in actual contact with the enemy were quite out of touch with their own infantry brigade headquarters.)
At last we came into action near some deserted huts just to the east of the ruins of Puisieux-au-Mont. Having arranged the lines of fire towards Irles and arranged a telephone line between the OP and the battery, I gave the order ‘Stand Easy.’ A few moments later, looking at the Battery through my glasses from the OP, I could not see a man anywhere, except the signallers. They had all got into shell-holes in little groups of three and four, covered themselves over with blankets from the wagons, and were fast asleep. The men were by now utterly worn out. The gunners slept whenever there was a ‘Stand Easy’, and at night the drivers went to sleep in their saddles as soon as their teams got off rough ground and were travelling smoothly along anything resembling a road. I don’t think the men felt that they were in any way beaten, for the moment any call was made upon them – as, for example, when rapid and accurate fire was necessary – they became as alert as any battery commander could possibly wish. While they rested, I stood where I was, with my sergeant-major and two signallers, feeling rather like a father watching over his family. Soon the last of the retiring infantry had passed us by, and C Battery was once more alone.
A few miles to the south, where the open flank of the Third Army now rested on the River Somme, the position was even more hazardous. The Third Army’s front had swung back, pivoting on its left, and, although its line in the north had hardly moved and the divisions on its left flank were only a little way behind their original positions, the right of V Corps had retired as much as seventeen miles from the tip of the Flesquières salient to the old battlefield of the Somme. The 9th (Scottish) Division was at the end of the line, and beyond it the enemy was advancing through the gap which divided it from the Fifth Army.1
After their battering on Palm Sunday and the loss of the South African Brigade there was not a man in the fragmented ranks of the survivors who did not thank his lucky stars that the 35th Division had come in the nick of time to relieve them. Isolated at St Pierre-Vaast Wood, with both flanks open and the Germans closing in from either side, Alex Jamieson’s brigade had got away by the skin of its teeth. At Bray, when the roll of the 11th Royal Scots was called for the first time since the battle began, only thirty men of A Company were there to answer their names. ‘Blood Company’ Captain Will Darling had called it, and the name now seemed chillingly apt. The Division was a sorry sight. As they slogged along the road to Bray they passed the Divisional Commander watching from the roadside. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was in tears.
Now they were resting at Etinehem, a once idyllic village on the River Somme, much favoured by fishermen, who had spent long, leisurely hours on peacetime summer Sundays seated among the reeds and verdant willows casting their lines into the plentiful waters of the river. When the Division first arrived a few men had waded in to splash off the worst of the battle grime, but most had sought the shelter of barns and cottages, stretched out their weary limbs, and, before long, every man of the Brigade was fast asleep. Even the growl and thunder of gunfire growing ominously closer did not rouse them. They were utterly worn out.
42821 Private Alex Jamieson, MM, 11th Bn., The Royal Scots (Lothian Regt.), 9th (Scottish) Division
Even when we managed to get away the day before our troubles weren’t over, because we were shelled all the way back. In fact it seemed that we’d become a target for the German artillery! We moved up quite a stiff incline to some old British trenches of 1916, and my exhaustion had got to such a stage that I didn’t even attempt to drop to the ground, even when the shells were bursting quite close. But someone nearby did, and then he started kicking and yelling, so in spite of the state I was in myself I managed to drag him into a trench. He was only shell-shocked, but it was having such a bad effect on everyone that a sergeant ordered me to take him to a field dressing station we could see across the valley. By the time we got there it had moved on, so there was nothing for it but to follow. I was supporting this chap, and carrying his rifle as well as my own, because he was so shocked and his legs were just like jelly, but gradually I was getting to the stage of being as bad as he was, or even weaker. We found a medical aid post on the Combles road, and they wouldn’t take him in, but I asked the doctor to give me a note that I had reported, so that I wouldn’t be charged as a deserter.
Eventually we reached a casualty clearing station at Maricourt (this was the place where we had detrained a month or so earlier), and they took my casualty over and directed me to a compound for regimental stragglers. When I got there I was given some hot food, but as soon as I got the plate in my hand and sat down to eat it I promptly fell asleep. I was as hungry as could be, but I don’t remember if I ever ate that food at all. A few hours later I went off again – with another chit from the stragglers post, of course – and I joined up with what was left of the battalion at Bray. Then we moved back to Etinehem, and all the way along the road we were bombed and machine-gunned from a very low altitude by four aeroplanes with British markings. We couldn’t understand it. We wondered if they were planes that had been captured and were being flown by Germans. That was the optimistic view, but some of the lads thought not!1
The same aeroplanes had the temerity to fire vigorously at Brigadier-General Croft. It was the final indignity, and he was beside himself with rage.
General Gough spent the afternoon visiting the headquarters of his three Corps Commanders. He was deeply disappointed by the failure of the Franco-British counter-attack on which he had pinned such hopes. Although his Fifth Army had now passed from the jurisdiction of British GHQ and was under French command, as yet he had received no orders from General Fayolle. Nevertheless the situation as General Gough perceived it was now clear, and drastic action was called for. If the Germans were to be stopped, they must be confronted by an unbroken line; and, since it was plain that the men now stretched to the limit on a vulnerable line could not indefinitely stem the enemy’s march on Amiens, a strong line of defence must be formed well to the rear. Amiens was the key which, one way or the other, would turn the fortunes of the opposing armies, so the Amiens Defence Line must be manned. Such a line was already in existence fifteen miles in front of Amiens, where seven and a half miles of trenches had been constructed by the French in the first year of the war. Some were in a poor state of repair, and some had vanished altogether when the front moved eastward and French farmers returned to cultivate the land, but it was still a perceptible line of defence, and Gough was profoundly thankful that some precautionary fate had made him veto an earlier proposal that the remaining trenches should be filled in. His difficulty was to find a body of men to reorganize the line and help defend it. He turned to his chief engineer, Major-General Grant, and put him in command. Somehow Grant was able to collect 3,000 men, mostly engineers, including 200 Americans, and Gough himself diverted a brigade of new arrivals to join them in the task.1
It was the best, the only thing, that could be done. By late evening on 25 March the arrangements had been put in hand. At first light next morning, work would begin on the Amiens Defence Line, and with this comforting knowledge Gough was able to breathe a little more easily. His customary optimism had not deserted him, but now that he had scraped the bottom of the barrel he was well aware that, as a formation, the Fifth Army was fighting literally to the last man.2
Even in the light of reports from the Third Army front which were undeniably confused and sketchy, Sir Douglas Haig had not revised the orders which he had issued the previous evening, when visiting Sir Julian Byng. Instead, early in the afternoon of 25 March he sent a signal to General Byng confirming them. He was playing for time. Despite his misgivings after the night meeting at Dury, Haig had not given up hope that Pétain would be forced by French Government pressure to send him help, and his aim now was to hold on until more French troops could reach him. Accompanied by Sir Henry Wilson, Sir Douglas Haig set off at three o’clock to drive once more to Dury, where Wilson had arranged to rendezvous with General Foch and Prime Minister Clemenceau. But only Foch’s Chief of Staff was there to meet them. This was General Weygand, who made his chief’s apologies and explained that his absence was due to another, more pressing, engagement. The President of France, Raymond Poincaré, had taken a hand, and was travelling personally to meet Pétain at Compiègne, where General Foch’s presence was also required, as well as that of Monsieur Loucheur, the French Minister of Munitions, and Lord Milner, who would represent the British Government.
It was now too late for Haig to reach Compiègne in time for these proceedings, and his own discussion with General Weygand at Dury was brief. Haig handed Weygand a note to pass on to General Foch. It repeated his request for twenty French divisions to be sent as a matter of urgency. Haig then returned to Montreuil and his duties at GHQ, but Sir Henry Wilson, anxious to know what had transpired, left immediately to travel to Versailles, to await the arrival of Lord Milner at the headquarters of the British Mission.
It was nine o’clock before Milner returned, but the news he brought was good. Pétain had now agreed to release fifteen divisions. Of more interest and importance was the fact that all those present at Compiègne, from the President downwards, had favoured the appointment of General Foch to unify command of the French and British forces. In the absence of the British Commander-in-Chief and, more important, of the authority of the British Government, Milner had felt unable to accede on their behalf, but Wilson was not deterred. Although it was now 10.30 in the evening and he had risen at five that morning, he drove straightaway to Paris to visit Foch. It was after midnight before he got back to Versailles, but he was well content. Another meeting had been arranged, this time of all the interested parties. A signal was dispatched to British GHQ to inform Haig that it would take place at Doullens at eleven o’clock that morning. The Doullens Conference, as it would later be known, was destined to be historic.