It seemed to me that the plan as outlined by Gen. Louis Vaughan, not to exploit success farther than justified by the initial surprise, was abandoned for a time. A brigade of Guards was put in to attack Fontaine Notre Dame, and suffered heavily from machine-gun fire before taking it. The 62nd (Yorkshire) Division lost many good men in Bourlon Village and Bourlon Wood, into which the enemy poured gas-shells and high explosives.
Then on November 30th the Germans, under the direction of General von Marwitz, came back upon us with a tiger’s pounce, in a surprise attack which we ought to have anticipated. I happened to be on the way to Gouzeaucourt early that morning, and, going through the village of Fins, next to it, I saw men straggling back in some disorder, and gun-teams wedged in a dense traffic moving in what seemed to me the wrong direction.
“I don’t know what to do,” said a young gunner officer. “My battery has been captured and I can’t get into touch with the brigade.”
“What has happened?” I asked.
He looked at me in surprise.
“Don’t you know? The enemy has broken through.”
“Broken through where?”
The gunner officer pointed down the road.
“At the present moment he’s in Gouzeaucourt.”
I went northward, and saw that places like Hermies and Havrincourt, which had been peaceful spots for a few days, were under heavy fire. Bourlon Wood beyond was a fiery furnace. Hell had broken out again and things looked bad. There was a general packing up of dumps and field hospitals and heavy batteries. In Gouzeaucourt and other places our divisional and brigade headquarters were caught napping. Officers were in their pajamas or in their baths when they heard the snap of machine-gun bullets. I saw the Guards go forward to Gouzeaucourt for a counterattack. They came along munching apples and whistling, as though on peace maneuvers. Next day, after they had gained back Gouzeaucourt, I saw many of them wounded, lying under tarpaulins, all dirty and bloody.
The Germans had adopted our own way of attack. They had assembled masses of troops secretly, moving them forward by night under the cover of woods, so that our air scouts saw no movement by day. Our line was weakly held along the front—the 55th Division, thinned out by losses, was holding a line of thirteen thousand yards, three times as much as any troops can hold, in safety—and the German storm-troops, after a short, terrific bombardment, broke through to a distance of five miles.
Our tired men, who had gained the first victory, fought heroic rearguard actions back from Masnières and Marcoing, and back from Bourlon Wood on the northern side of the salient. They made the enemy pay a high price in blood for the success of his counterattack, but we lost many thousands of brave fellows, and the joy bells which had rung in London on November 20th became sad and ironical music in the hearts of our disappointed people.
So ended 1917, our black year; and in the spring of 1918, after all the losses of that year, our armies on the western front were threatened by the greatest menace that had ever drawn near to them, and the British Empire was in jeopardy.
VIII
In the autumn of 1917 the Italian disaster of Caporetto had happened, and Sir Herbert Plumer, with his chief of staff, Sir John Harington, and many staff-officers of the Second Army, had, as I have told, been sent to Italy with some of our best divisions, so weakening Sir Douglas Haig’s command. At that very time, also, after the bloody losses in Flanders, the French government and General Headquarters brought severe pressure upon the British War Council to take over a greater length of line in France, in order to release some of the older classes of the French army who had been under arms since 1914. We yielded to that pressure and Sir Douglas Haig extended his lines north and south of St.-Quentin, where the Fifth Army, under General Gough, was entrusted with the defense.
I went over all that new ground of ours, out from Noyon to Chaulny and Barisis and the floods of the Oise by La Fère; out from Ham to Holmon Forest and Francilly and the Epine de Dullon, and the Fort de Liez by St.-Quentin; and from Péronne to Hargicourt and Jeancourt and La Verguier. It was a pleasant country, with living trees and green fields not annihilated by shellfire, though with the naked eye I could see the scarred walls of St.-Quentin cathedral, and the villages near the front-lines had been damaged in the usual way. It was dead quiet there for miles, except for short bursts of harassing fire now and then, and odd shells here and there, and bursts of black shrapnel in the blue sky of mild days.
“Paradise, after Flanders!” said our men, but I knew that there was a great movement of troops westward from Russia, and wondered how long this paradise would last.
I looked about for trench systems, support lines, and did not see them, and wondered what our defense would be if the enemy attacked here in great strength. Our army seemed wonderfully thinned out. There were few men to be seen in our outpost line or in reserve. It was all strangely quiet. Alarmingly quiet.
Yet, pleasant for the time being. I had a brother commanding a battery along the railway line south of St.-Quentin. I went to see him, and we had a picnic meal on a little hill staring straight toward St.-Quentin cathedral. One of his junior officers set the gramophone going. The colonel of the artillery brigade came jogging up on his horse and called out, “Fine morning, and a pretty spot!” The infantry divisions were cheerful. “Like a rest-cure!” they said. They had sports almost within sight of the German lines. I saw a boxing-match in an Irish battalion, and while
