In spite of the French reinforcements, which were not accompanied with artillery, the attack was still markedly stronger than the defence, so that March 25 was a most dangerous and critical day in this quarter of the field. To trace the developments from the north the enemy continued to press through the gap between the two corps, the Nineteenth and the Eighteenth, making a series of heavy attacks towards Mesnil-le-Petit and Nesle from the direction of Potte. This movement, powerfully followed up, pushed back the left flank from Quiquery to a point on the high ground 1000 yards west of Nesle. The 183rd Brigade, which was now a mere handful of Scottish infantry, superb in quality but reduced to the last stage of exhaustion, together with the thin ranks of the 59th Brigade of Rifles, could not, even with the aid of the Canadian motor-guns, hold the heavy masses who pressed down upon them. The French One hundred and thirty-third Division moving up in support had dug a line between Billancourt and Herly, but Nesle was abandoned to the enemy, the Twenty-second French Division retiring from this sector and falling back towards Roye. The 60th Brigade of the Twentieth Division, much helped by the 23rd Entrenching Battalion — these valiant diggers made their presence felt all along the line — still held stoutly to their positions from Quiquery to Buverchy, but their left and left rear were so compromised that it was clear they could not hold out longer. To the south the French, who had relieved the Thirty-sixth Division at Libermont, had been pushed back, and the British position was turned in their direction also. By the afternoon the French had taken over the line as far north as Buverchy, and the Thirtieth Division was ordered to fall back, but the Germans had advanced so rapidly from Libermont and got so far to their Eighteenth right rear that it was no easy matter either for the British or the French to get past them. Many had to swim the canals which striate this part of the country, and the 2nd Bedfords were especially hard-pressed before they were able to get away. The Twenty-second French Division was doing all it could to cover the approaches to Nesle upon the south, and the 184th Brigade cheered them loudly as they passed through their ranks. “They looked very fine men and seemed very much for it.” General Wetherall of this brigade was badly wounded by a shell splinter in this period of the battle. And we have a vivid pen-picture drawn by a spectator of Brigade-Major Howitt, some of whose adventures have already been recorded, holding Wetherall’ s wounded artery with one hand, while he wrote brigade orders with the other, for more than two hours on end. The 184th lost five commanders during the retreat.
Even if the local pressure had not caused a rapid withdrawal at this portion of the line, it would have been enforced by the general strategic position, for the German advance in the south had been so masterful that on this night of March 25 Roye was taken, which is far to the south-west of Nesle. The 61st Brigade had been sharing the hard fortunes of the Thirty-sixth Division, but now, as the latter had been drawn out, it was restored to the Twentieth Division. So severe had been the strain upon it that it only numbered about 500 bayonets, and some battalions, such as the 2/6th Royal Warwicks, had not a single combatant officer left standing. None the less, it was at once sent to man a supporting line stretching through Gruny, Cremery, and Liancourt, and had hardly reached it before the Germans were also at Liancourt. The brigade held them, however, and so enabled the front line to fall back upon an organised position whence, on the next morning, a swift retreat became necessary.
After dark on March 25 the One hundred and thirty-third French Division had come up to relieve the Twentieth and Sixty-first, but the situation was such along the line of the Nesle Canal that no fixed line could be formed, and the three divisions were finally greatly mixed up in the darkness and there was a good deal of confusion in their councils, since the general directions of the French were, to fall back to the south, while the line of retreat of the British lay rather to the west. There was little time for deliberation, for word had come in that the Germans were closing in upon Liancourt, pressing south and west, in a way which threatened to cut off the whole forward line. At midnight, the British, many of them hardly able to move for fatigue, staggered off in such formations as they could assemble, with orders to concentrate north and east of Roye. Thanks largely to the presence of the remnants of the 61st Brigade near Liancourt, this most hazardous march was successfully accomplished, but as Roye was within the grasp of the enemy the movement was continued so as to reach a line between Hangest and Le Quesnel. The Germans were close upon them in the north, so the 61st Brigade, now down to 400 men, acted as flank-guard, fending off their constant attacks.
The war has shown few finer instances of disciplined and tenacious valour than in the case of the three handfuls of men who represented what had once been the 12th King’s, 7th Somersets, and 7th Cornwalls. The enemy were in Liancourt, and their patrols were in actual hand-to-hand fighting with a French detachment aided by some of the Somersets. Other German troops pouring down from the north and using to the utmost the gap which had opened between the corps, endeavoured to cut in and to seize Le Quesnoy (not to be confused with Le Quesnel, towards which the troops were marching). It was, however, upon their line of retreat, and about halfway to their destination, so that a German occupation would have been serious. The post was most desperately defended by Captain Combe, the brigade-major of the 61st Brigade, with two Lewis guns and 100 men. Only eleven were left standing at the end of this defence, but the village was held for the necessary time, and the survivors only withdrew upon receipt of a positive order. Thus the flank march of the British from Roye to Le Quesnel upon the morning of March 26 was successfully accomplished, owing to the devotion of their covering party to the north. “It was very much of a rabble,” says an officer, “and there was great difficulty in sorting out the men and arranging the units.” None the less the future was to show that the force was no more beaten than were the old contemptibles after Mons.
The Thirtieth Division had been drawn out of the line on the arrival of the French, but they were hardly started on their movement towards the rest which they had earned so well, when this great pressure arose, and every man who could still carry a rifle was needed once more in the line. On the morning of March 26 they were back then, between Bouchoir and Kouvroy. The 21st Brigade had now entirely disappeared, but the remains of the 2nd Yorks and the South Lancashire Pioneer Battalion were added to the 89th Brigade which was in the north at Rouvroy, while the 90th, under General Poyntz, filled the gap to Bouchoir. The Thirtieth Division had got considerably to the west of this line before they were recalled, and it was only by some splendid marching that they were able at last to throw themselves down upon the coveted ground before the German armies, which were streaming along the Roye-Amiens road, were able to reach it. As they faced the Germans the Twenty-fourth, now the mere shadow of a division, was on their left at Warvillers, while the Sixty-first and Twentieth were in support at Beaufort and Le Quesnel. Near Erches the Thirty-sixth Ulster men, whose relief, like that of the Thirtieth, had proved to be impossible, were still battling bravely, retaking the village of Erches after it had fallen to the enemy. The 109th Brigade also distinguished itself greatly in this area, the Irish Fusiliers Battalions of which it is composed holding on most desperately to the village of Guerbigny, at the extreme south of the corps front, and continuing a heroic defence during March 26, and long after it was isolated upon March 27. The artillery of the Ulster Division was particularly good in its covering fire during these operations, gaining the very grateful acknowledgments of the French troops and generals who were more and more concerned with this southern sector of the line. Speaking generally the troops had now reached the region of the old French trenches, which grid-ironed a considerable area of country, so that it was certain that if men could be found to man them, the pursuit would no longer continue at the Battle pace of the last two days.
Great work was done at this period by four of the Canadian motor-guns at the cross-roads, north-west of Rouvroy, where they not only inflicted heavy losses upon the enemy but delayed his advance while t
he exhausted troops were settling down into this new position. Every hour was of importance as giving reinforcements time to come up from the rear, and the general orders to the divisional generals were to hold on at all costs wherever defence was possible. A small body of corps cyclists under Lieutenant Quartermain co-operated splendidly with the motor-guns and did good service at this critical period of the retreat, during which there was very little artillery support behind the thin line of infantry.
The German pressure on March 27 fell chiefly, as already shown, upon the Twenty-fourth Division and the other units on the extreme south of the Nineteenth Corps, which were forced back for some distance, and so threatened the stability of the line in the south. The 17th King’s Liverpool, which was the flank battalion, held fast, however, and flung back their left to form a defensive line to the north. A small body of German cavalry performed a brilliant piece of audacious work in the darkness of the early morning of this date, pushing through the outposts of the Thirty-sixth Division in the south near Guerbigny, and capturing the Brigade Headquarters of the 109th Brigade, and also the chief staff officer of the division.
The future was full of menace, for the Germans were pressing on in great numbers. An observer near Bouchoir that evening (March 27) says: “I have never seen so many Germans in all my life — one huge dark mass about a mile away. With glasses one could see howitzers, machine-guns, trench-mortars, and field batteries, as well as infantry. It was a most wonderful sight. They seemed to be coming down the Roye road, then moving off to the south, and some stopping in a mass.”
The main German attack upon the extreme south of the corps line on March 27 fell upon the Thirty-sixth Division in the direction of Erches, with the result that the Ulster men fell slowly back upon Arvillers, the 60th Brigade throwing back a defensive flank to correspond. By 12:30 Bouchoir, held by the 90th Brigade, was gained by the Germans, but the British formed a new line to the immediate westward of the village. An attack upon Folies was thrown back by the 59th Brigade. Towards evening some order came out of a rather tangled position, which may well be obscure both to writer and reader, since soldiers upon the spot found the greatest difficulty in separating the various confused elements. As night fell upon March 27 after much desultory and inconclusive local fighting, there was no great change in the British line which ran from Warvillers, still held by the Twenty-fourth Division, to the west of Bouchoir, where the Thirtieth held the line, and down to Arvillers held by the 60th Brigade of the Twentieth Division, which was temporarily out of touch with the Thirty-sixth Division. Hangest was held by the Sixty-first Division, and Le Quesnel by the Sixty-first and the French. That night the Twentieth Division was ordered to join the Nineteenth Corps, and their record under this new command will be found in the preceding chapter. One would have thought that they had reached the limits of human endurance, and their total numbers were not more than a thousand, and yet they were but at the beginning of a new chapter in their glorious history.
The same words apply to their comrades of the Sixty-first Division, who were also ordered north. They were relieved by the French at Arvillers, and this portion of the line was on March 28 pressed back to the west of Hangest.
The removal of the Twentieth Division at so critical a time could only be justified by the extreme and pressing need of the Nineteenth Corps, for it had the effect of producing an almost impossible position for the line in the south. Had it been possible to replace it at once with a solid French division, it would have mattered less, but as matters stood the One hundred and thirty-third French Division had itself been involved in the retreat and was greatly worn. There was so little time also to get it into its new positions that there was never any solid bastion upon that corner of the line. The result was speedily seen in the morning of March 28, when the Thirtieth Division were first subjected to a very heavy bombardment, and then looking south saw a general retreat going on from Arvillers, while their left flank at Warvillers was also very weak, since the Twenty-fourth Division was hardly strong enough to maintain itself. By 2 P.M. both flanks were bare, and the enemy were well round them in the north and in the south at Hangest. At one time it seemed impossible for the division to get clear, and even now their extrication seems miraculous to the officers who effected it. A rapid retreat was made through Mézières and on to Moreuil, which only just avoided the closing pincers of the German advance. The French, who were in the act of relieving the Thirtieth Division, came away with them and had the same narrow escape. The block upon the road which formed the only egress is described as having been appalling, fugitives, refugees, and small disciplined columns of troops being crowded together from one end of it to the other. “The men were excellent,” says an officer of the Thirtieth Division. “Their discipline was not a bit shaken.” Such words, could not truthfully be said of every unit, and yet soldiers can have seldom been more highly tried in any operation in history. Even the Imperial Guard may reach its breaking point, as the retreat from Moscow has shown. At Moreuil there is only one bridge, and had the German artillery been able to find it the result would have been a Beresina. As it was, the troops got across and speedily reformed upon the farther side of the river Avre.
This may be taken as the limit of the retreat of the Eighteenth Corps, since the stand in the north of the line and the thickening French resistance in the south brought the momentum of the German advance to a halt. How terrible the ordeal had been may be gathered from the fact that the Twentieth Division, as already mentioned, was not more than 1000 strong, the Thirtieth Division about 2000 strong, the Sixty-first Division 2100 strong, and the Thirty-sixth Division only a little stronger at the end of it. Again and again it had been on the brink of absolute disaster, but always by the wise dispositions of General Maxse and his divisional generals, seconded by the splendid tenacity of his men, the worst consequences had been avoided. Rapid readjustments had been needed, but a fatal break was always averted. The troops were handicapped in every possible way, for not only was their artillery far below strength, but for some reason the British Air Service during these days of stress was very weak in this southern area, while the German machines were very numerous and aggressive. The artillery officers were splendidly cool and efficient all through, and in the case of the 92nd Brigade Royal Field Artillery near Esmery-Hallon, it is said that the last gun was just 25 yards from the Germans when it limbered up. For two days the whole corps artillery was with the French, and did fine work with them, but to the great detriment of their own infantry. Some of the batteries remained for a long time with the French, and one French general has left it upon record that the failure of the Germans to capture Moreuil on April 4 was almost entirely due to the splendid shooting of the 306th Brigade Royal Field Artillery. After the first two days of the retreat no guns were abandoned by the Eighteenth Corps. The total losses of guns might be put at about 90 field pieces and 4.5 howitzers, with about 60 heavier pieces.
VII. THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE SOMME
The Retreat of the Third Corps
Movement across the Crozat Canal — Fight of the 173rd Brigade — Forcing of the Canal Line — Arrival of the French — Fight of Ffieres Wood — Splendid work of the Cavalry — Loss of Noyon — Final equilibrium — General retrospect of the Battle
WE shall now complete this slight survey of a vast subject by following the fortunes of Butler’s Corps upon the extreme right of the whole British Army. It has already been shown that the condition of this corps at the end of the first day of battle was most perilous, as its left flank in the region of Essigny, where the battle zone of the Fourteenth Division had been deeply pierced, was completely turned. The Eighteenth Division in the centre had, it is true, retained its ground, but the left brigade of the Fifty-eighth Division upon the right, the only brigade of that unit which was engaged, had also after a very desperate resistance lost their front positions at Quessy opposite to La Fère. Therefore orders had been given to draw off the troops during the night of March 21 across the Crozat Canal
, and a covering line had been built up from the 54th Brigade, the Second Cavalry Division, and the 12th and 18th Entrenching Battalions in order to hold the German pursuit and to give the somewhat dishevelled troops time to re-organise their ranks. By 5 A.M. on March 22 they were over the canal and the bridges had been destroyed. The artillery had been got over first to cover the crossings, and the 54th Brigade, which had covered the rear of the Fourteenth Division, was lined up from Jussy to Mennessis. The Eighteenth Division (less the 54th Brigade) fell back in the line of Frières Wood, behind the canal. Many guns had been lost but the cavalry had thrown the 3rd and 6th Brigades of the R.H.A. into the firing-line to support the infantry, and two new batteries of the 96th K.F.A., only arrived the day before from England, came in at the nick of time.
It was of the first importance to destroy the bridges along the canal, but this was found to be no easy matter. They had all been mined and prepared for destruction some time before by the French, but either the lapse of time or faulty material had caused such deterioration that the charges failed to explode, and had to be renewed and discharged under circumstances of great difficulty and danger. It was carried out none the less with great tenacity by the British sappers, but several weak points remained, notably a canal lock which had been so injured that the bed of the canal was exposed for some distance. The railway bridges here, as elsewhere, were also a source of weakness.
As the corps turned to face the enemy upon the south side of the canal the general line of battle showed the 41st Brigade just south of St. Simon, connected up on the left by the only surviving battalion of the 42nd Brigade with the 61st Brigade of the Twentieth Division who were in support of the Thirty-sixth Ulsters at that place. Then came 43rd and 54th Brigades, facing Jussy and Mennessis with the 3rd and 5th Dismounted Cavalry Brigades in support. South of this point were the 4th Cavalry Brigade, the 55th Brigade, and the 63rd Brigade, all in the Frières area. Then came the 173rd Brigade in the Vouel neighbourhood with the 18th Entrenching Battalion and the 6th Dismounted Cavalry Brigade. This force had already lost heavily, and many of the men were suffering from gas, but they were sustained by the certainty that French reinforcements would speedily reach them from the south, as a system of mutual lateral support had been agreed upon between the commanders.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 1220
