THE KAISER’S OFFENSIVE
21 MARCH-25 APRIL 1918
St Quentin to Villers Carbonnel/
**Nearest Point to Amiens
Please Note. Inevitably when so much happened in the same areas over a period of four years, there will be overlap between itineraries. We have managed to avoid 99% of such inconveniences, but here the reader will need to exercise a certain amount of mental agility because, although the beginning of this tour travels the battlefield in the same direction that the Germans did (i.e. from St Quentin) as far as Villers Carbonnel, at the latter it joins with part of Itinerary Three which is coming from the opposite direction (i.e. from Amiens)! However we do of course continue this Kaiser’s Offensive tour in the direction of the German advance up to the Nearest Point that they reached towards Amiens.
** We list the complete tour, but navigation from Villers Carbonnel onwards is by GPS supported by map references, plus references to the pages in Itinerary Three where the relevant background and historical information can be found.
The German attack took place along a broad front east to west. Here we concentrate on the axis of the D1029, St Quentin-Villers Bretonneux road which heads directly towards Amiens. We begin at the German start line and follow their rapid advance to the point where it was stopped.
• Itinerary Six starts at St Quentin and from there moves to the German jump-off trenches and Memorials at Fayet, past the Enghien Redoubt and Manchester Hill. It returns to St Quentin and then follows the retreat of a typical British infantry battalion to the Somme at Pargny and there traces the details of an action which led to the winning of a VC. The tour ends at Villers Carbonnel French Cemetery just over the Somme towards Amiens.
•The Route: ((St Quentin – Centre, (but see Note below)) French National Cemetery; Fayet – German Jump-off Trenches, Memorial Water Tank, Town Memorials; Enghien Redoubt; Francilly-Selency – 2nd Manchesters & French Memorials, Manchester Hill; St Quentin German Cemetery; Pargny – Site of Maj Roberts’ VC, Bridge, Brit Mil CWGC Cemetery; Bethencourt German Cemetery; Villers Carbonnel National Cemetery; thence, using GPS, map and page references to the Nearest Point to Amiens.
•Extra Visit: St Quentin Northern Cemetery.
• [N.B.] The following sites are indicated: 1944 Memorial to Fusillés; Vraignes 1944 Memorial; Memorial to racing drivers, Bouriat Quinot and Trintignant.
• Planned duration, without stops for refreshments: 3.5 hours.
• Total distance: 43.2 miles.
NOTE: The map references to ITMap 6 throughout this Itinerary refer to the In-text Map 6A/B & C above as this section does not appear on the main Holts’ Battle Map, to which all other itineraries make reference.
Note: It must be said that St Quentin town centre is extremely difficult to negotiate and to park in. Therefore the main Itinerary starts at the French National Cemetery on the outskirts. If you nevertheless wish to visit this interesting town first, it is described between ((…))
((Follow signs to Centre Ville and then ‘i’ for Tourist information to the
Tourist Office 3 Rue Emile Zola, 02100. Tel: + (0) 3 23 67 05 00. www.saint-quentin-tourisme.fr
There you can pick up a town plan and leaflets about restaurants, hotels and other attractions. They also produce an interesting booklet in English Saint Quentin and The Great War, which lists the sites in the city with connections to the Great War. The most important ‘14-18 Memorial is found by crossing the ornate bridge over the St Quentin Canal, built between 1927 and 1929, to the Place aux Monuments aux Morts/Square de Souvenir Français. It was designed by Paul Bigot in the shape of a triumphal portico whose ten pillars bear the names of the missing. At either end two bas-reliefs designed by Landowski and Bouchard recall the heroic defence of the town which was for many years the frontier between the French and Austrians. On the right the siege of 1557 and on the left the siege of 1870 are represented whilst in the centre the Great War struggles of the city are vividly depicted.
At first occupied by the British (who had their HQ in the Grammar School, Place du Lycée Henri Martin, which was used as a hospital for the wounded from Le Cateau, the town was also the HQ of the RFC from 25 August 1914.) St Quentin was attacked by the Germans on 28 August 1914 and the next few days saw bitter combat in the outskirts as the French 1st Army Corps counter-attacked. They were rebuffed, however, and from September 1914 to February 1917 the town was under German occupation. On 15 February the Kaiser visited St Quentin as part of his grand inspection of the German lines to celebrate his fifty-sixth birthday. Many bronze memorials from the Franco-Prussian War were demolished and sent to Germany for melting down to make munitions.
On 28 February the civilians were evacuated as the town became one of the most important bastions of the German Hindenburg Line. It was then systematically pillaged and heavily bombarded. From its ruins the German offensive of 21 March was launched. It was finally retaken on 1-2 October 1918 by the French when it was almost completely destroyed. Capt H.A. Taylor in his wonderful 1928 book, Goodbye to the Battlefields, revisited the city and remembered that in 1917 and 1918, ‘In those days distance lent enchantment. For all its broken roofs and riddled gables, the city was fair to the eyes of the trench-bound soldier. When, ultimately, in the autumn we came this way again, and St Quentin fell, the city was a sorry picture of ruin and desolation, and one wondered how many decades must elapse before it could recover its former neatness. On my last visit to St Quentin I was astonished at the progress that had been made. There are streets and boulevards in which one might walk observantly without guessing that war had devastated this city so recently… On the whole the rebuilding of St Quentin has been done tastefully.’
After the war St Quentin was adopted by Lyon and the long reconstruction began. Many of the main buildings were rebuilt in the popular Art Deco style (notably the main post office in rue Vesoul) and today it is an elegant and interesting town.
The famous Basilica received its first damage on 1 July 1916 when some of the precious SGWs were blown in by the explosion of a munitions train in St Quentin station. German wounded from the Somme battle were treated here until it was deemed too dangerous as more windows collapsed. On 4 April 1917 the French Gen Humbert ordered French troops to try to avoid the Basilica when shelling the city hut on 17 August it caught fire and the vaulting caved in. After the war there was a notice in the Basilica, ‘Visitors, do not forget that before they left the city in October 1918 the Germans drilled ninety holes for explosives in the pillars and structural elements of the Basilica. This was clearly intended to blow up the building, which would have been completely destroyed if the French had not arrived twenty-four hours earlier than expected by the enemy’. In 1941 the Germans ordered the holes to be filled in.
It was not until October 1956 that the rebuilt Basilica was inaugurated and the belfry was not completed until 1976. Today guided tours can he arranged from the Tourist Office (qv).))
Exit from the A26 motorway at the St Quentin on Exit No 10. Continue direction St Quentin on the D1029 to the second roundabout (GPS: 49.85900 3.24729). Turn left and then immediately right and stop in the small parking area for the French Military Cemetery. Set your mileometer to zero.
• Nécropole Nationale de St Quentin/0 miles/10 minutes/ITMap 6C/l/GPS: 49.85528 3.26215
This vast French Cemetery contains 4,947 WW1 French burials, 1,319 of which are in two ossuaries, plus two Rumanians and 117 Russians. There are also 207 French burials from the 39-’45 War. It was started in 1923 with burials from the 1914-1918 Aisne battlefield. It was enlarged in 1934-5 with exhumations from cemeteries around St Quentin and the Aisne. In 1954 the WW2 burials were brought in from the Aisne. At the entrance there are Information Panels, one describing the Battle of Guise, 1914 which took place some 15 miles east of here.
Return to the roundabout and continue towards St Quentin to the next roundabout. Turn left, signed Cambrai on the D1044. Continue over one or more roundabouts and traffic lights to a T junction signed left to Cambrai (GPS: 49.85756 3.27826).
Entrance to the French Nécropole Nationale, St Quentin with Croix de Guerre emblem on the gate.
CWGC headstones of Rfm Hughes & Pte Hand, St Quentin Nord Cemetery. Behind is the 1870 Monument
Extra Visit to St Quentin Northern Cemetery (GPS: 49.85795 3.28975) Round trip: 2 miles. Approx time: 25 minutes.
Turn right signed Centre Ville and at the next roundabout turn left signed Cimetiere Saint Jean on the Rue Georges Pompidou. Continue to the cemetery on the right.
In the huge St Quentin Northern Cemetery in the St Jean Quarter are the graves of Rifleman J. Hughes, 2nd RIR, age 20 and Pte Thomas Hands, 1st King’s Own R Lancasters, age 21. (Consult the Cemetery Guardian for the exact site.) Both were shot by the Germans on 8 March 1915 when they were captured wearing civilian clothes and thus automatically deemed to be spies and subject to the death penalty. Their story is similar to that of Robert Digby and his companions, also sheltered by local people and shot when discovered in Le Catelet. The formers’ case is well-documented from minutes of the St Quentin Town Council, copies of which are held in the Historial. They reached St Quentin during the Retreat at the end of August and couldn’t get out before the Germans arrived to occupy the town. They were looked after by townspeople but were eventually arrested, Rifleman Hands after he was imprudent enough to go out after the 1900 curfew, and Hughes after being denounced. They were tried by a military tribunal on 11 February 1915 when their attitude was described as ‘dignified’. Their death sentence was declared the very day of their execution, 8 March. Hughes asked to see Madame Preux who had sheltered him and who treated him like one of her children. This was refused. They were taken to the barracks and shot by a firing party of six. The Germans refused them burial in the newly-created St Martin German Cemetery (qv) where other Allied soldiers were buried. ‘You can put Frenchmen in our cemetery’, said Lt Hauss of the German Command, ‘but not Englishmen. They are scum’. They were therefore buried in the St Jean Cemetery and their graves were soon covered in flowers by the local people. Gustave Preux, the weaver who had hidden Hughes, was condemned to fifteen years of forced labour in Germany and returned after the war his health broken. At the same time eleven British soldiers and the miller who had taken them to hospital were shot in nearby Guise. On 14 April a letter arrived at the Mairie saying that the Commandant of the 2nd Army was punishing the town of St Quentin with a fine of 50,000 francs because two Englishmen had recently been found in the town and because after their execution insulting notices to the Command were still being posted around the town. Count Bernstorff, the Commandant, also posted a notice around the town proclaiming the execution of the two English soldiers.
Return to the National Cemetery and pick up the main itinerary.
Go left signed to Cambrai on the D1044.
[N.B.] At 2.4 miles on the left is a well-maintained WW2 Memorial (GPS: 49.87231 3.27073) to twenty-seven patriots killed by the Nazis on 8 April 1944, with a Plaque to commemorate the 50th Anniversary. It stands upon the line of a German communication trench called ‘Major Alley’ that ran at right angle across the road here.
Memorial to 27 WW2 Patriots
Continue to a left turn signed to Fayet on the C4. Turn left and continue towards power lines on the top of the plateau. Stop below them. You have now reached the area of the German front line trench with the fighting line about 300 yards ahead and in front of that is No Man’s Land.
• German Trenches, Fayet/2.9 miles/20 minutes/ITMap 6C/2/GPS: 49.87364 3.26526
The German jump-off trench lines here in the wood to the right ran almost due south for about 2,000 yards and at this point were barely 200-300 yards from the British trenches. The attack was made in the direction you are driving. The British force between here and the northern edge of St Quentin (the cathedral should be visible to your left) was the 2nd/8th Worcesters, part of 182nd Brigade of 61st Division of the 5th Army. These were Forward Zone positions. The battalion put two companies forward, A and B, each covering a front of about a mile with their company HQs in Fayet village (B Coy) and 1,500 yards south of it (A Coy). D Company was nominated as a counter-attack force and centred on Fayet village, while C Company and battalion HQ occupied a central redoubt about a mile behind the lines, i.e. in front of you.
The Regimental History described the defences as ‘for the most part merely shallow ditches not more than waist deep. Neither labour nor materials had been available to improve the defences. There was but scanty wire protection save around the actual defensive posts.’
What happened here is described now in selected extracts from the Regimental History. On the night of 20 March a raiding party went into the German trenches. ‘The raiders brought back prisoners from three different German regiments. Those prisoners stated that the German army would attack the next day. The Corps Commander decided to put into force the pre-arranged dispositions for meeting an attack. The order to man the battle stations reached HQ 61st Division at 0435 and at that very minute all along the line the German artillery opened fire… For several hours the platoons of the 2nd/8th Worcesters endured the bombardment. The mist, torn only by the blaze of the shell bursts and then thickened by their smoke, hid everything from the eyes of the crouching sentries. Gas shells added their fumes to those of the high explosives and the survivors groped in the trenches, half-blinded by their gas masks. On every side parties of the enemy’s infantry came looming through the mist… instead of advancing in regular waves they worked in groups. The forward posts were overwhelmed one by one.’
All of the Worcesters’ companies were decimated, small bands of survivors struggling hack to battalion HQ: ‘A ring of small defensive posts connected by a trench… from 1020 attack after attack beat against the defences. The enemy closed in from every side… two-thirds of the defenders had been killed or wounded… ammunition ran out… the German infantry charged in with the bayonet and the remnants of the defenders were compelled to surrender.’ It was 1730 hours. What the gallant Worcesters did not know was that Holnon, the village a mile or more behind them, had been taken and passed by the enemy seven hours earlier. Altogether the battalion lost nineteen officers and 560 men on that day, almost exactly the same total as the Tyneside Scottish lost at La Boisselle on the first day of the Somme.
To your right about 100 yards away across the fields, is an arc of wood. In that wood signs of original German jump-off trenches still remain and, crops permitting - be very careful not to damage anything that may be growing - it is possible to walk to them across the field. You can therefore stand exactly where the Kaiser’s Battle began.
Continue.
In about 300 yards you cross over the British front line Landerneau trench area and at the roundabout is the site where the Duguesclin Redoubt was established around a mine crater (du Guesclin was a Breton knight in the 100 Years War).
Continue over the roundabout on the C4 into the village of Fayet.
It is a ‘Village Fleuri’ and if you visit it during the spring or summer you will be overwhelmed by the colourful glory of the flowers throughout the village.
Continue to a ruined archway on the right and stop on the left at an ornate structure at the corner of the Chemin Vert.
• Water Tank, Fayet/3.6 miles/5 minutes/ITMap 6C/3/GPS: 49.86912 3.25150
The elaborately carved structure contains a water tank, donated to Fayet by the town of Oxford after the war. The ruined archway over the road is all that remains of the Ecole Apostolique. Alongside and roughly parallel to the road you have just taken was the Duguesclin Alley communication trench leading forward to the Redoubt.
Continue to the T Junction, turn left and immediately stop at the beautifully tended memorial park beside the Mairie.
The Oxford Water Tank, with its ornate façade, Fayet.
• Fayet Memorials/3.7 miles/10 minutes/ITMap 6C/4/GPS: 49.86804 3.25086
In the centre is the main village obelisk Memorial. To the left are Memorials to the fighting of 28 August-16 September 1914 and to the trench warfare along the Hindenburg Line from March 1917-March 1918. It celebrates the retaking of Fayet on 30 September 1918 by the 46th and 47th French Divisions and the 6th English [sic] Division. The 6th held the area just north of the village and were relieved by the French 47th on the night of the 29th having moved up from the area of Manchester Hill to where the route continues. On the right is a Memorial to the evacuation of the villagers to Marpent on 15th February 1917 and Noyon on 22nd, the total destruction of the village by fire or mines in March 1917 and the felling of all trees from April 1916-March 1917.
Turn round and go downhill past the church then turn left at the bottom of the hill on the rue Quentin de la Tour signed Francilly on the C3. Immediately after the road crosses the motorway there is what appears to be a rectangular wooded area about 100 yards off the road to your right with a track leading to it. Stop and walk to the redoubt.
Memorial to 46th and 47th French Divs and 6th ‘English’ Div’s recapture of Fayet, with Church behind.
• Enghien Redoubt/4.5 miles/10 minutes/ITMap 6C/5/GPS: 49.86627 3.23613
The area enclosed by trees is in the precise form and position in the the centre of a British redoubt called Enghien (presumably based upon an earlier French fortification, since Enghien was the name of the Marshal of France who gave Vauban his opportunity to become France’s greatest fortifications exponent). The northern boundary of 2nd/Bth Worcesters was the road along which you are driving. One thousand yards due south of here was Ellis Redoubt where the Worcesters had battalion HQ. Redoubts were meant to be mutually supporting and the ground between them covered by machine-gun fire. The mist prevented that. This redoubt was held by the 2nd/4th Oxs and Bucks, who, with a few Worcester stragglers, survived until 1630 on 21 March.
Continue to the T junction and turn right, then take the next left signed to Francilly-Selency on the 0683 and continue to the church on the right and the memorials in front of it.
Site of the Enghien Redoubt.
• 2nd & 16th Manchesters/Manchester Hill & French Memorials, Francilly-Selency/5. 6 miles/5 minutes/ITMap 6C/6/GPS: 49.85604 3.22530
Headed ‘Manchester Hill’, the British Memorial commemorates the actions of the 2nd Manchesters on 2 April 1917 and the 16th Bn on 21 March 1918. It was erected by the King’s Regt on 30 June 1998. Beside it are the village WW1 Memorial and Memorials to the Battle of 18-19 January 1871 (during the Franco-Prussian War) and to Lionel Lefèvre, 1902-1974 and Cdr de la Légion d’Honneur Joseph Loiseau, chief of the Aisne Resistance, deported by the Nazis in 1943 to Camp Dora, the V2 Weapons site near Nordhausen - there is a museum there today.
Continue through the village and over the motorway to the T junction and turn left on the D68 towards St Quentin into Maison Rouge. Stop just beyond the last house on the left beside which is a gateway.
• Manchester Hill/7.2 miles/5 minutes/ITMap 6C/7/GPS: 49.84103 3.22708
To the right of the gate is all that remains of the scene of the heroic defence of the Redoubt at Manchester Hill on 21 March 1918 – a small wooded mound known to the Germans as Margarine Hohe. Today it is fenced around and the traces of the concrete and steel artillery post on top are hard to find - and remember it is on private ground. Behind the mound are the remains of the quarry (Brown Quarry) that existed in 1918. In his 1934 book, The March Retreat, Gen Sir Hubert Gough wrote, ‘The defence of Manchester Hill in the Forward Zone is another instance of the heroic behaviour of our troops. This hill - opposite St Quentin on the front of the 30th Division - was held by the 16th Manchester Regiment, under Lt Col Elstob. On taking over the defence of this position, he had already impressed on his battalion that “There is only one degree of resistance and that is to the last round, and to the last man”. This injunction was heroically carried out to the letter. At about 11 a.m. Col Elstob reported to his brigade that the Germans were swarming round his redoubt. At about 2 p.m. he said that most of his men were killed or wounded, that he himself was wounded, that they were all nearly dead-beat, that the Germans had got into the redoubt, and hand-to-hand fighting was going on. He was still quite cheery. At 3.30 p.m. he answered a call on the telephone and said that very few were left and the end was nearly come. After that, communication ceased. Wounded three times, using his revolver, throwing bombs himself, and firing a rifle, he was last seen on the fire-step, and when called on to surrender by Germans within thirty yards, replied “Never!” upon which he was shot dead.’
The gateway to the remains of ‘Manchester Hill’.
Memorial at Francilly-Selency to Manchester Hill and to the 2nd and 16th Manchesters.
For this act of heroism, Lt-Col Wilfrith Elstob was awarded the VC. His name is recorded on the Pozières Memorial (qv).
From just behind the hill a major British trench line named successively Havre, Island and North ran to some 200 yards behind the Enghien Redoubt.
Continue under the motorway, on the D68, keeping left at the water tower at Faubourg St-Martin (during which time you cross over the British front line, No-Mans-Land and into the German lines) and continue downhill towards the Cathedral. At the bottom turn sharp left signed Vermand and continue straight onto a tree-lined avenue to the German Cemetery on the left. Between the sharp left turn and the cemetery you crossed over the thick defences of the Hindenburg Line from German lines into No Man’s Land.
• St Quentin German Cemetery/10. 1 miles/10 minutes/ITMap 6C/8/GPS: 49.84874 3.26265
Over 6,000 named burials marked by small black crosses, some irregularly placed, with up to four soldiers in a grave, are gathered here, originally known as St Martin, many from the 1918 Offensive. They are interspersed with Jewish Stars of David which bear the legend ‘With the help of God’ in Hebrew. The cemetery was actually inaugurated by the Kaiser on 18 October 1915 and there is a record of the cordial meeting he had - in perfect French - with the Maire of St Quentin to discuss the setting up of the cemetery. Inside the entrance on the left-hand border of the cemetery is an impressive Memorial in the classical style carrying the names of almost 2,000 missing with no known grave. The Kaiser was particularly concerned with the siting of the Monument so that it would receive the best possible light. A short flight of steps was flanked by two larger-than-life Graeco-Roman soldiers by the Berlin academician Wilhelm Wandschneider which were pejoratively described locally in 1917 as ‘gross idols of an abject Munich-style of art’. The statues are, however, of a very high artistic quality and because of their bronze content very valuable. Fearing that they would become the targets of art collectors or vandals, the Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge took them to their local headquarters at Chaulnes where they were renovated and were re-instated on the 90th Anniversary in 2008. The steps lead to a central panel with laurel wreath and sword, headed by the words ‘Resquiescat in pace’ - Rest in peace.
Turn right opposite the cemetery on rue A. Parmentier and continue to the T junction. Turn left, still on rue A. Parmentier. Continue to a crossroads and turn right on rue C. Naudin. Turn left at the roundabout with the French Cemetery on the right, direction Amiens all the D1029. Continue through Holnon.
The Memorial, with restored statues, German Cemetery, St Quentin.
In the village on the right is the delightful Pot d’Etain restaurant/hotel (Tel: + (0) 3 23 0934 34. E-mail: info@lepotdetain.fr Website: www.lepotdetain.ir).
Continue through Vermand and past Poeuilly to the junction with the small road to the right to Vraignes.
[N.B.] Just before the junction is a well-maintained Monument to the ‘10 Victims of the barbarous Nazis, 29 August 1944’ (GPS: 49.87852 3.07389) from the Commune of Vraignes.
Memorial to 10 Victims of WW2, nr Vraignes
As you make your way towards Amiens following the line of the retreat, two literary personal accounts will considerably add to your understanding of what it was like to have taken part in this momentous and often terrifying event. First there is Col Rowland Feilding’s moving Letters to a Wife. In 1918 this sensitive and popular Regimental officer was commanding the 1st Civil Service Rifles. His account of the Battalion’s withdrawal from Ronssoy to Bray is dramatic and realistic, describing the casualties, the pitiful refugees who fled before the armies and his own wounding and treatment. Second, there is Sir Herbert Read’s In Retreat, published in 1925. Read was a Captain in the Yorkshire Regiment, and served with distinction, winning the DSO and the MC. In Retreat is both coolly factual and vivid. It describes men as ‘dazed’, ‘haggard’; the fighting as ‘bloody’, ‘hellish’, ‘ghastly’. We share the light relief of his battle-weary group when a forager brings (no questions asked about its provenance) ‘French bread, butter, honey and hot, milky coffee in a champagne bottle! We cried out with wonder: we almost wept. We shared the precious stuff out, eating and drinking with inexpressible zest.’ Of such contrasts are battles made.
Continue to the crossroads with the D937 (24 miles).
[N.B.] On the right is a fine Memorial to two motor racing drivers, Guy Comte Bouriat Quint and Louis-Aimé Trintingant (GPS: 49.87731 2.97879) who were killed in trials for the Grand Prix de Picardie on 20 May 1933. Trintingant’s nephew, Jean-Louis, was a famous actor and movie star (he played a racing driver in Un Homme et une Femme, 1966) and his brother Maurice twice won the Monaco Grand Prix and the Le Mans 24 Hours race.
Memorial to racing drivers Bouriat Quint & Trintingant, Brie
Continue into Brie, passing a sign to Brie Brit Cemetery on the left. Immediately after crossing the Somme and the Canal du Nord (or Canal de la Somme - the two merge above Peronne) turn left on to the D62 and continue through St Christ-Briost and Cizancourt, under the A29 motorway and through Epénancourt.
As one drives from Brie to Pargny the line of the Canal de la Somme, with the River beyond it, is to the left. These waterways formed a barrier to the Germans’ advance and for them an intact bridge was vital-hence the importance of the one at Pargny.
When the Allied counter-attack began on 8 August it started on a line roughly parallel to the road you are driving along about 20 miles to your right. By 7 September the advance had reached here, just behind the barrier of the River Somme in exact reverse of the German’s situation in March.
Continue into Pargny village. As the road enters the village, it runs abruptly left; as the buildings begin. Pause.
• Site of Maj Roberts’ VC, Pargny Village & Bridge/31.8 miles/15 minutes/ITMap 6/B1 /GPS: 49.81475 2.94957
When the March German attack opened, the 1st Battalion of the Worcesters was at Moringhem six miles east of St Omer. Next morning they and the whole of 24th Brigade marched to St Omer and entrained at midday, reaching Amiens that night. After a short delay the train continued to Nesle some five miles south of here where the troops got out at 0230 hours on 23 March in darkness. The Worcesters marched north and took up positions on the west bank of the Somme (i.e. this side) covering Pargny. Their task was to hold the river line and to cover the retreat of the Fifth Army. Very early in the morning the route across the Somme, through the village, became congested with refugees and by 1400 hours battalions of the Fifth Army began to stream back, closely followed by the Germans. That evening, about 2000 hours, Germans began to cross the Somme by the bridge at Pargny, which had been incompletely blown. Maj (acting Lt-Col.) F. C. Roberts of the Battalion, seeing what was happening, gathered about forty-five men, where you now are, determined to drive the enemy back across the Somme. At 2100 hours Maj Roberts’ party set off from here towards the bridge in an action that was to win him the VC.
Drive through the village, bearing left past the church, to the bridge and stop.
Here is the story in Maj Roberts’ own words, ‘We started off with fixed bayonets and magazines loaded. For the first hundred yards or so we went in two parties in single file on each side of the main road at the walk and as quietly as possible. The first sign I had of the enemy was some shouting from houses we were passing and then both machine-gun and rifle fire from windows and doors, with small parties dashing into the streets and clearing off in the direction of the bridge. Once this started we all went hell-for-leather up the street firing at anything we saw and using the bayonet in many cases. Every man screamed and cheered as hard as he could and, by the time we reached the church, the village was in an uproar - Bosches legging it hard for the bridge or else chucking their hands up. In the churchyard itself the hardest fighting took place - tombstones being used as if in a game of hide and seek. After clearing it we had a few moments rest and went smack through to the bridge where a crowd of Bosches were trying to scramble across. Some did and some did not. That more or less ended it - we actually captured six light machine guns, fifteen to twenty prisoners and killed about eighty. Our own losses were heavy.’ Maj Roberts later became a Maj-Gen and on 25 June 2005 a Plaque in his honour was unveiled at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate, his old school.
Tum round, return past the church and turn left to Nesle, still on the D62. Then follow signs to the right to Pargny Brit Cem on the D0103. When you stop at the cemetery on the left it is advisable to leave your hazard lights on.
Pargny Brit Mil CWGC Cemetery.
• Pargny British Military CWGC Cemetery/33.2 miles/10 minutes/ITMap 6B/2/GPS: 49.80337 2.94440
The beautiful Cemetery, sloping up the hillside, was made after the Armistice by concentrations from the surrounding battlefields. Fragrant box shrubs shaped like pyramids line the central path that leads to the Cross. The majority of the men here are of the 61st (S Midland) and 8th Divisions whose resistance at the Somme crossings of 24 March materially helped to delay the German advance. There are sixty-one soldiers and airmen from the UK, six Canadians of the Motorised Machine Gun Service and Special Memorials on the left as one enters, to sixteen UK soldiers and two RAF officers, Lt C.H. Roberts and 2nd Lt J.H. Davies, 98 Sqn, RAF, 19 August 1918. Between their graves is a headstone describing how they were originally buried in Pertain Mil Cemetery which was destroyed in later battles.
Three quarters of the 619 burials are Unknown. Buried here is Rfn Berry, 2nd Bn Rifle Bde, 23 March 1918. A message in the Visitor’s Book recorded that Berry won the MM for defending the Bridge at Pargny, but the decoration is not inscribed on his headstone.
Continue uphill and down to the crossroads with the D15. Turn left to Bethencourt. Enter the village and turn left before the bridge on the D62, signed to the German Cemetery. Continue to the cemetery on the left. It is by the exit sign of the village before the local cemetery and is not signed at that point. The entrance is up a path to the left.
• Bethencourt German Cemetery/35.7 miles/10 minutes/ITMap 6B/3/ GPS: 49.79761 2.96242
This is immaculately maintained although devoid of any colour. A fine beech hedge surrounds the Cemetery in which there are some great oak trees. In the centre is a large black cross around which are the small black crosses and two Jewish headstones that mark the 1,242 burials. The majority are from 1916, but there are some from 1917 and others from the March attack of 1918.
Cross to Robert Westphal and Eugen Holtz, Béthencourt German Cemetery.
The Canal runs beside and just over the road from the Cemetery.
Continue through Fontaine-les-Pargny back into Pargny. Return to the DI029 Amiens road by retracing your steps to Brie. Tum left and continue towards Amiens through Estrées and Mons (not to be confused with the Mons in Belgium!). Continue to the junction with the N17. Continue to the French cemetery on the right.
• French National Cemetery/Chinese Graves, Villers Carbonnel/43.2 miles/10 minutes/ITMap 6/1/GPS: 49.87638 2.89326. See Itinerary Four, page 265 for details.
THE KAISER’S OFFENSIVE TOUR IS COMPLETED VIA THE FOLLOWING SITES, WHOSE DETAILS ARE GIVEN IN ITINERARY THREE:
Heath Cemetery (page 235, Map 1/25a, GPS: 48.87297 2.67269); Site of Carey’s Force Action (page 234, Map 1/25, GPS: 49.87606 2.57877); Le Hamel: Australian Memorial Park, RB Plaque (page 215, Map1/24a,b, GPS: 49.89977 2.58161); Villers Bretonneux: Demarcation Stone (page 210, Map 1/18, GPS: 49.87059 2.598), Australian National Memorial, RB Plaque, Cemetery & Interpretation Centre (page 211 Map 1/11/1, GPS: 49.88613 2.50819), Town Hall (page 209, GPS: 49.86832 2.1755), School & Franco-Australian Museum (page 208, Map 1/15/16, GPS: 49.86625 2.51722), First Tank v Tank Battle (page 206 Map 1/14, GPS: 49.86060 2.49667), Nearest Point to Amiens reached by the Germans (page 205, GPS: 49.86974 2.49029), Adelaide Cemetery/65.0 miles (page 207, Map 1/13a, GP: 49.87024 2.4791).
• End of Itinerary Six
The Bridge at Pargny.