Brave Battalion (38 page)

- AUGUST 20-SEPTEMBER 3, 1918 -

During the last days of August, the Allies struck hard across an ever-enlarging front. On August 20, with the Amiens offensive still smouldering, the French Tenth Army had thrown twelve divisions northward from Aisne and gained five miles between Noyon and Chauny in two days. The Third French and British Third armies weighed in on August 23 and General Sir Julian Byng's divisions advanced two miles toward Bapaume, sweeping up 5,000 prisoners. Field Marshal Douglas Haig next committed Fourth Army on the Somme River and then directed First Army to be ready for an operation on August 26 with the Canadian Corps leading.

Having only completed relocating from Fourth Army, the Canadians had anticipated a short respite for rest and refitting. But, as the official Canadian historian later put it, such a period after “extensive operations … was denied the Canadians for in these last hundred days of the war each major offensive so rapidly succeeded its predecessor that unprecedented demands had to be made on the stamina of the forces employed.”
¹

By the end of August, almost all the losses of the spring and early summer had been reversed, but the Allied plan was less about winning ground than destroying the German army before it could take refuge inside the heavily fortified Hindenburg Line. Constructed in the winter of 1916-1917, this line stretched from the North Sea to Verdun and consisted of a network of deep trenches tying together hundreds of steel-reinforced concrete pillboxes protected by a 60-foot-wide wall of barbed wire. To ensure that any Allied attack became disorganized well short of this main defensive line, the Germans had constructed an outpost zone about two miles to its front that was 1,100 yards deep. The mile-and-a-half stretch of ground between the outpost line and Hindenburg proper was designated a “Battle Zone” meticulously pre-sighted and range-marked to be swept by masses of machine guns and artillery. Any Allied attackers would first have to fight through the outpost line, then cross the gauntlet of the “Battle Zone,” before facing the deadly wall of the Hindenburg fortifications.
²

If the Germans were allowed to conduct an orderly withdrawal into the Hindenburg Line, a return to stalemate was certain. But the Hindenburg Line was not without an Achilles' heel. If the Allies could advance east along the Arras-Cambrai road immediately to the south of the Scarpe River and gain the rolling country beyond Cambrai, the Hindenburg Line would be outflanked and rendered indefensible. Realizing this, the Germans had been frantically preparing to meet such an offensive here and the hilly, wooded country between Arras and Cambrai was ideal for defence.

By late summer, the Germans had created five distinct defensive zones. The first consisted of ground they had won in the spring of 1918 covered with a maze of old British and German trenches and their wire entanglements. Behind this ad hoc defensive line were four that were carefully engineered. The first lay east of Monchy le Preux, and two miles behind this was the double-barrelled Fresnes-Rouvroy Line and Vis-en-Artois Switch. Taken together, these three initial lines constituted a forward defence intended to serve the same disorganizing function of the Hindenburg Line's outpost line. Behind these the Germans had constructed two lines, fortified as close to Hindenburg Line standards as possible. The first was the Drocourt-Quéant Line with the Canal du Nord Line behind. Breaking through these two lines would require an advance of eight miles across heavily defended ground that descended gradually toward the uncompleted Canal du Nord and was exposed to fire from a height of wooded ground to the east called Bois de Bourlon.
³
Although a couple of weaker lines had been constructed behind Canal du Nord to block the way to Cambrai, once the canal fell the Germans would be hard-pressed to hold the city and the Allies would have reached the Hindenburg Line. Carrying Cambrai was the task given to First Army, and Gen. Henry Horne had specifically asked for the Canadians to lead the offensive.
⁴

Lt.-Gen. Arthur Currie established his headquarters at Hautecloque, a village twenty miles west of Arras, on August 23. Although 2
^nd
and 3
^rd
divisions were already in place, 1
^st
and 4
^th
divisions would not arrive until August 25 and 28 respectively. Consequently Currie was given the Scottish 51
^st
Highland Division to participate in the first phase of his offensive. General Horne's instructions told Currie he was to “attack eastwards astride the Arras-Cambrai Road, and by forcing … through the Drocourt-Quéant line south of the Scarpe to break the hinge of the Hindenburg System and prevent the possibility of the enemy rallying behind this powerfully defended area.” Canadian Corps's operation would begin in conjunction with an attack by Third Army on Sunday, August 25. Currie protested that “this gave barely 48 hours to concentrate the necessary Artillery, part of which was still in the Fourth Army area, and that, furthermore, the Canadian Corps had sentimental objections to attacking on the Sabbath Day. It was then agreed that the attack should take place on Monday the 26
^th
.”
⁵

Currie considered the German defences his corps must breach “among the strongest on the Western Front. The ground was pocked with the scars of 1917 and early 1918, and in the litter of old trenches and fortifications German engineers had found ready-made positions which they had considerably strengthened. Furthermore, topography was on the side of the Germans. The battle area spread over the northeastern slopes of the Artois Hills, whose summits about Monchy were over 300 feet above the valley-bottoms of the Scarpe and Sensée. The latter river, flowing generally eastward, together with its tributaries had dissected the hills into numerous deep valleys. The intervening ridges and high points, often mutually supporting, the enemy had fortified with a skill that demonstrated his mastery in military engineering.”
⁶
The Germans had concentrated eight infantry divisions directly in the path of the Canadian line of advance.
⁷

Currie decided to advance two divisions in line, each rotating its brigades to the front one at a time so that they could “carry on the battle for three successive days” and then be replaced by his other two divisions, which should have arrived by then. The 51
^st
Highland Division would cover the Canadian left flank with an advance along the Scarpe's north bank.
⁸

At 0300 hours on August 26, the Canadian 2
^nd
and 3
^rd
divisions struck with fifty tanks in support. The village of Monchy-le-Preux fell quickly before the Germans recovered from their surprise to bitterly contest the loss of every subsequent height of ground. Two thousand prisoners were taken, but the advance slowed as the day wore on. With heavy rain turning the battleground into a muddy morass the following day, the Canadians and Highlanders slogged grimly onward. Such was the ferocity of enemy resistance that Currie's original plan to have only one brigade at a time on the sharp end had to be abandoned and each division put two brigades forward. Consequently, by the night of August 28, both divisions had, at a cost of 5,801 casualties, shot their bolt well short of the Drocourt-Quéant Line.
⁹

As the Germans were pouring reinforcements into the D-Q Line, as it was nicknamed, First Army headquarters agreed to delay the next advance to September 1. Then the Canadians would attempt to not only carry the D-Q Line but also Canal du Nord in one jump. Before this offensive could be undertaken, however, the ground between the Canadian current position and the ideal jumping-off line roughly parallelling the D-Q Line from a distance of 600 yards needed to be secured. That task was assigned to 1
^st
Canadian Division on the right and the 4
^th
British Division, placed under Currie's command, to the left with Brig. Raymond Brutinel's independent mobile brigade's Canadian Cyclist Battalion guarding the British left flank immediately south of the Scarpe. Heavy fighting ensued and not until the evening of August 31 was the jumping-off line secured. Currie placed one of 4
^th
Canadian Division's brigades between 1
^st
Division and the British 4
^th
Division with plans to hit the D-Q Line the next morning.

The previous fighting, however, had so worn the British division that its commander told Currie he could not advance across the breadth of frontage assigned, so Currie widened 4
^th
Canadian Division's frontage by another thousand yards by committing another brigade. This caused a postponement to September 2, which had the benefit of giving 1
^st
Division's 3
^rd
Brigade time to capture a strongpoint known as the Crow's Nest. This 60-foot-high bald bluff overlooked the D-Q Line from about a thousand yards. With one Canadian Scottish company in support, the 48
^th
Highlanders of Canada stormed the Crow's Nest and its seizure ensured that 1
^st
Division could form for the coming assault free of German observation.
¹⁰
Several Canadian Scottish officers climbed the knoll to study the D-Q Line. “We got out our glasses and commenced to scan the country,” one officer wrote. “The first thing I saw was a line of figures emerging from a trench and advancing on the battalion [the 48
^th
Highlanders] holding the front—no mistaking them, they were Huns.” A forward observing artillery officer on the Crow's Nest phoned in co-ordinates for a barrage which soon “dropped and scattered the Huns.”
¹¹

In 1
^st
Division's sector, 3
^rd
Brigade would be on the right, 2
^nd
Brigade the left. The Royal Highlanders and Canadian Scottish would lead 3
^rd
Brigade's advance with the latter battalion on the extreme right flank of the corps and maintaining contact with 1
^st
Royal Munster Fusiliers of 57
^th
(West Lancashire) Division. Beyond this broad plan many details were still hanging on the evening of September 1 when Lt.-Col. Cyrus Peck established his battalion headquarters in a large dugout alongside No. 2 Company. The other companies lacked any accommodation, their men lying in the open ground designated as forming-up positions. It was a cloudy, moonless night, but the rain had lifted so they were relatively dry.

Peck had still to receive the brigade operational order when he called the company commanders to the dugout at 2030 hours, so they ended up waiting impatiently until after midnight. Leaning close to a candle set on a table, Peck read the order out loud—the others crowding close around because German shells exploding nearby made it difficult to hear. Their instructions were straightforward—the two lead battalions would drive straight through the D-Q Line and then the Royal Montreal Regiment and 48
^th
Highlanders would pass through to capture Cagnicourt and two woods east of this village—Bois de Bouche and Bois de Loison.