THE DEFENCE OF AMIENS
ON A DAY towards the end of April the colonel and I, riding well ahead of the Brigade, passed through deserted Amiens and stopped when we came upon some fifty horses, nose-bags on, halted under the trees along a boulevard in the eastern outskirts of the city. Officers in groups stood beneath, or leaned against, the high wall of a large civil hospital that flanked the roadway.
Reinforced in guns and personnel, and rested after the excitements and hazards of the March thrust-back, our two brigades of Divisional Field Artillery, and the D.A.C., were bound again for the Front. These waiting officers formed the advance billeting parties.
“We’ve been obeying Sir Douglas Haig’s Order of the Day - getting our backs to the wall,” growled the adjutant to me, after he had sprung up and saluted the colonel. “The staff captain met us two hours ago at ——; but they were shelling the place, and he said it wouldn’t be safe for waggon lines; so we came on here. He’s inside the building now seeing if he can put the whole Divisional Artillery there….
“I’ll bet we shan’t be ready for the batteries when they come in,” he went on gloomily - and then added, like the good soldier that he is, “My groom will show you where the horses can water.”
A long-range shell, passing high overhead and exploding among the houses some way behind us, showed that Amiens was no health resort. But horse lines were allotted, and in due course the long corridors of the evacuated building resounded with the clatter-clatter of gunners and drivers marched in to deposit their kits. “You’ve got a big piece of chalk this morning, haven’t you?” grumbled the adjutant to the adjutant of our companion Brigade, complaining that they were portioning off more rooms than they were entitled to. Still he was pleased to find that the room he and I shared contained a wardrobe, and that inside the door was pinned a grotesque, jolly-looking placard of Harry Tate - moustache and all - in “Box o’ Tricks.” The discovery that a currant cake, about as large as London, sent a few days before from England, had disappeared from our Headquarters’ mess-cart during the day’s march, led to a tirade on the shortcomings of New Army servants. But he became sympathetic when I explained that the caretakers, two sad-eyed French women, the only civilians we ourselves met that day, were anxious that our men should be warned against prising open locked doors and cupboards. “Tell ’em any man doing that will be shot at dawn,” he said, leaving me to reassure the women.
Twenty-four hours later, after another march, our guns were in position. With pick and shovel, and a fresh supply of corrugated iron, the batteries were fortifying their habitations; Brigade Headquarters occupied the only dwelling for miles round, a tiny café that no shell had touched. The colonel had a ground-floor room and a bedstead to himself; the adjutant and myself put down our camp-beds in an attic, with the signalling officer and the American doctor next door, and H.Q. signallers and servants in the adjoining loft that completed the upper storey. It was a rain-proof comfortable shelter, but the C.R.A. didn’t altogether approve of it. “You’re at a cross-roads, with an ammunition dump alongside of you, and the road outside the front door is mined ready for blowing up should the Boche advance this way,” he said grimly, when he visited us. “In any case, he’ll shoot by the map on this spot immediately he starts a battle…. I think you ought to have a retiring headquarters in readiness.” So I put in two days superintending the erection of a little colony of houses, built of ammunition boxes and corrugated iron, half a mile from the main road. I camouflaged the sloping roofs with loose hay, and, at a distance, our “Garden City” looked like a bunch of small hay-stacks. We got quite proud of our handiwork; and there was a strained moment one midday when the regimental sergeant-major rode hurriedly to the café with a most disturbing report. Riding along the main road he had observed a party of men pulling down our huts, and piling the sheets of corrugated iron into a G.S. waggon. When he cantered across, the driver whipped up his horses, and the G.S. waggon bounded over the open fields for half a mile before the sergeant-major got sufficiently near to order it to halt. “They belong to the ——st Brigade, sir,” the sergeant-major informed the adjutant, “and I’ve told the sergeant in charge of the party to consider himself under arrest until you have seen him.”
The adjutant, eye flashing, nostrils dilated, was already out of the café walking hard, and breathing dire threats against the servant who had been posted to guard our new home. Apparently he had gone away to complain that the cook was late in sending his dinner.
The sergeant and his assistant “pirates” were restoring the dismantled huts by the time the adjutant and myself drew near. The sergeant was plainly a disciple of the “It’s all in the same firm” school. He submitted, with great respect, that he was innocent of criminal intent. There was nothing to show that the huts were in use… and his battery wanted iron for their gun-pits.
“None of your old soldier talk with me,” blustered the adjutant, shaking a ponderous forefinger. “You knew you were doing wrong…. Why did you send the waggon off when you saw the sergeant-major?”
“I went after it and stopped it when he told me to, sir,” returned the sergeant.
The sergeant-major admitted that, strictly speaking, this was a correct statement. There was a ten seconds’ pause, and I wondered what the adjutant’s next thrust would be.
“The waggon was trotting away, was it?” he demanded slowly.
“Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant.
“And you made no attempt to prevent it trotting until the sergeant-major told you to stop it?”
“No, sir.”
“And you know it’s forbidden for waggons to be trotted except in very exceptional circumstances?”
“Ye-s, sir.”
“Very well, I put you under arrest for contravening G.R.O. by trotting draught-horses.”
“Artful beggar - I know him of old,” chuckled the adjutant, as he and I returned to the café. “He was a gunner in my battery when I was sergeant-major of —— Battery, R.H.A.”
The Boche was expected to attack on St George’s Day. Our Brigade was defending a reserve line, and would not fire unless the enemy swept over our first-line system. Fresh trenches were being dug, and new and stout rows of wire entanglement put down. Corps orders were distinct and unmistakable. The fight here would be a fight à outrance. On March 21 our retirement had been a strategic one. But this Front had to be held at all costs, and we should throw in every reserve we had. Only once during our stay in the café did the adjutant and myself sleep in pyjamas. “These walls are so thin one 5·9 would knock the whole place out; if we have to clear we may as well be ready,” he said meaningly. The ridge, three-quarters of a mile in front of us, was shelled regularly, and every night enemy bombing planes came over, but, strangely enough, the Boche gunners neglected our cross-roads; we even kicked a football about until one afternoon a trench-mortar officer misdirected it on to the main road, and an expressive “pop!” told of its finish under the wheel of a motor-lorry. St George’s Day, and still no Boche attack! We began to talk of the peaceful backwater in which we were moored. Manning, our mess waiter, decorated the stained, peeling walls of the mess with some New Art picture post-cards. I found a quiet corner, and wrote out a ‘Punch’ idea that a demand for our water-troughs to be camouflaged had put into my head. Major Bullivant, who had succeeded poor Harville in the command of A Battery, and Major Bartlett of C Battery, dined with us that night, and the best story told concerned an extremely non-military subaltern, newly attached to the D.A.C. When instructed to deliver an important message to “Div. Arty.” - the Army condensation for “Divisional Artillery” - he pored long and hopelessly over a map. Finally he appealed to a brother officer. “I can’t find the village of ‘DIVARTY’ on the map,” he said, and, of course, sprang into immediate fame throughout the Division.
April 24: About 4 A.M. a shell burst that shook the café. Then the steady whistling scream of high-velocity shells going overhead. I lighted a candle and looked at the adjutant as he poked his red face and tousled grey hair from under his blankets. “They’ve started,” he muttered solemnly. “The old Hun always shells the back areas when he attacks.”
We got up slowly, and fastened boots and leggings. “I suppose we ought to put on revolvers,” he went on dubiously, and then added with sudden warmth, “I hope he gets it in the neck to-day.”
Our telephone pit in the cellar below the café was alive with industry. Our batteries were not firing, but the colonel had already asked the battery commanders whether any shells, particularly gas shells, had come their way. A couple of 4·2’s had landed close to C Battery, but they seemed to be stray shots; it did not seem likely that the enemy knew where the batteries were sited. The Boche bombardment continued.
After breakfast, a 5·9 exploding 200 yards from our café, blew out the largest pane in the unshuttered window. Shells had dropped by now in most spots around us; but the cross-roads remained untouched. A cyclist orderly from our waggon line, two miles back, brought news that a direct hit had blown the telephone cart to bits; fortunately, neither man nor horse had been touched. The adjutant was outside exhorting four infantry stragglers to try and find their units by returning to the battle line. A Royal Fusilier, wounded in the head, had fainted while waiting at the cross-roads for an ambulance; our cook had lifted him on to a bench inside the café and was giving him tea. The colonel, who remained in the mess, in telephone touch with the brigadier-general, C.R.A., and the brigade-major, had never seemed so preoccupied. Days afterwards, he confided to me that when the Hun bombardment started he feared a repetition of the overpowering assault of March 21.
“They had tanks out to-day,” a boy captain of infantry, his arm in a sling, told me, as he climbed into a motor ambulance. “By Gad, I saw a topping sight near Villers Bretonneux. The Boche attacked in force there and pushed us back, and one of his old tanks came sailing merrily on. But just over the crest, near a sunken road, was a single 18-pdr.; it didn’t fire until the Boche tank climbed into view on top of the crest. Then they let him have it at about 100 yards’ range. Best series of uppercuts I’ve ever seen. The old tank sheered off and must have got it hot.” I learnt afterwards that this was a single gun detachment belonging to our companion brigade, who had been pushed forward as soon as news came that the enemy was being held.
By tea-time we ourselves had been ordered forward to relieve a brigade that had suffered considerably in the opening stages of the assault. And, after all, we didn’t occupy the “Garden City” headquarters I had been at such pains to build. We handed it over to the brigade we were relieving, and their colonel congratulated our colonel on his forethought.
The colonel decided that only the doctor, the signalling officer, and myself should go forward. The adjutant could settle at the waggon lines and occupy himself with reinforcements, clothing, and salvage returns, Army Form B 213, watering and forage arrangements, and suchlike administrative duties. My task would be the “Forward” or “G” branch - i.e., assisting the colonel with the details of his fighting programmes.
The colonel and I lay down that night in a hole scooped out of a chalk bank. The corrugated iron above our heads admitted a draught at only one corner; as our sleeping-bags were spread out on a couple of spring mattresses, moved by some one at some time from some neighbouring homestead, we could not complain of lack of comfort.
April 24 was the last day on which our Brigade awaited and prepared to meet a Boche attack of the first magnitude. But it was not until the month of July that any of us conceived, or dared to believe in, the possibility of his mighty armies being forced upon the defensive again.
During May and June we accepted it that our rôle would be to stick it out until the Americans came along en masse in 1919. The swift and glorious reversal of things from August onwards surprised no one more than the actual fighting units of the British armies.