would fall on the British Fifth Army, one of whose divisions was our own. We were practically sure that the attack would come on the 21st March, and this proved to be the case. At that time our Company H.Q. was close to one of the strong points, or redoubts as they were called, to which I have previously referred. This redoubt was about half a mile behind the village of Le Verguier, where a number of our guns were in position. A number of others were in various positions near or in the redoubt. I was required to submit a report later on regarding our Company�s part in the battle, and from a copy that I kept of it I see that although the vicinity of our H.Q. was heavily shelled with gas and high explosive, we saw no targets on the first day of the attack. At 9 a.m. the redoubt was also manned by a Company of the Northants, which was in command of a man whom I used to know at B.N.C. and had not seen since 1914. The Germans were greatly helped on the first and second days of the attack by a heavy mist, which did not clear properly for hours. They attacked, General Gough states in his book�The Fifth Army�, with 42 divisions, while we had 12 in the line or in close support and could rely on only 6 more to reach our front within the next one to three days. Three of the latter were French. On the morning of the second day, when the mist had lifted, targets were plentiful, and as all our guns were firing well, we must have inflicted numerous casualties. The Germans were quite unable to make any progress on our front, but we could see them working their way along the ridges on our left, in some cases with transport, and by 12 noon a small group had occupied the ruins of a village called Jeancourt, which they had approached over ground not covered by our guns. As we could spray the village itself with our fire, this group remained dormant for the time being, but were a potential menace, as the ruins behind which they were sheltering were only a few hundred yards from our position. They had also, as we discovered later, brought a light field gun with them. This use of light guns in the front line was a feature of the German offensive.
About 1.30 p.m. the enemy was observed to be coming down into the valley on our left rear, and a half hour later, not a moment to soon, we received orders to retire, leaving two guns in the redoubt to cover our retreat. The Company was formed up in the sunken road where our H.Q. were situated and we started to file out down a road leading from Jeancourt to our rear. The O.C. Company was leading and I as acting second-in-command brought up the rear, which is not a good place to be in when you are retreating. However, it was the head of the column that the Germans in Jeancourt first spotted. They opened fire immediately, first with rifle and machine gun fire and then with the field gun to which I have referred. One of the first to be hit was the O.C. Company, who was wounded in the arm. I got all the men under my immediate control to one side of the road, where they could not be seen from Jeancourt, but it was essential to cross the road to get away, so I waited for a lull in the firing and then calling to the men to follow made a mad dash for it and we all got across safely , except for a few men who did not follow and whom I did not see again. Presumably they were taken prisoner. I think that our success in crossing that road was largely due to the covering fire of the two teams left behind, who did their work magnificently. I could hear their guns firing some time after the Company had started its retirement. We did not hear officially what happened to these teams, but there were rumours to the effect that not long after we had left they were rushed from behind and taken prisoner. They were brave men, and I hope that they all survived the war.
Shortly after we had reached the other side of the road, our O.C. Company came up holding his wounded arm and said that he would have to go down and that I should take command of our Company. He went off and I have never seen him again, although I had two letters from him, one of which I still have. The Company was formed up and we started off for the appointed rendez-vous with the rest of the Battalion. We had marched a few hundred yards when I saw the O.C. the Company of the Northants that had manned the redoubt with us talking to his C.O. on the roadside. The latter shook hands with me and congratulated us warmly on our defence, a gesture that we much appreciated.
I do not propose to give detailsof the battle in which we were engaged during the next nine days and of the various vicissitudes through which we passed. General Gough, the Fifth Army Commander, was criticized in some quarters for giving up too much ground. He was in fact relieved of his command before the battle was over, although some years later he was completely exonerated. There can be no doubt that the tactics that he employed of a delaying action and an elastic defence were absolutely right. If we had stayed to fight it out with the odds against us of 4-1, we should undoubtedly have been destroyed. If at times we wondered why we were ordered to retire when we thought we were doing quite well, we could not know what was happening on our flanks or that if we remained where we were we should be cut off and surrounded. As it was, we drew the enemy on, away from his heavy guns and his main sources of supply, and gradually wore him down. About half way through the retreat, the Colonel called his Company Commanders together and told us that it had been decided for the time being to send us back to our former Brigades. I therefore duly reported to the 17th Brigade with my Company. By that time, as I had become seperated from my kit, I had grown quite a beard, and my Sgt. Major seeing my plight offered to shave me with his open razor, an offer that I gladly accepted. He gave me a splendid shave, and when I reported to the Brigade again they told me that at first they hadn�t recognized me.
As the front gradually became more stabilized, our field artillery, which had evidently been heavily reinforced, kept up an incessant fire, drum fire as it was called, that seemed to go on day and night, and we could hear the distinctive bark of the French light guns, the famous 75s, that were firing in the same way on our flank. Such a deluge of shells must have been very disconcerting to the Germans, to put it mildly.
The Australians took over our part of the line on the 2nd April, by which time the momentum of the German offensive had slowed down very considerably. We were then not far from the town of Villers-Bretonneux, and the irony of the situation, so far as the 24th Division was concerned, was that it had been intended that the Division should go down to Villers-Bretonneux for a rest at the end of March, but the German offensive came first. About eleven days later we duly reached the Villers-Bretonneux area, but in very different circumstances.
When the Australians took over from us, we were pulled out of the battle and sent well behind the line for quite a long rest, while we were refitted and our numbers made up by drafts from England. We had suffered heavy losses. After our rest we were sent to the Loos sector, which was of course familiar ground to us and nearly as quiet as it had been before. There we stayed for several months. I was sent for a senior machine gun course at Camiers for the month of August, after which I went on a fortnight�s leave. It was on this leave, on the 7th September, as I have already mentioned, that Marjorie and I were married. Thanks to Marjorie�s parents, we had a good wedding, which was attended not only by Marjorie�s relations and friends, but also by a number of Bermudians who were in England on various kinds of war work. Strictly speaking, I was entitled to a month�s leave after serving in France and Belgium for more than two years, but this privilege was withdrawn, owing, it was said, to a shortage of officers after the severe fighting that had taken place. However, I did obtain an extension of 5 days because of my marriage. We spent most of our honeymoon at Boscombe near Bournemouth and the last few days at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.
I was back with my unit in France shortly before the 29th September, when the British armies in the more southerly part of the line, including our Division, took the offensive on a broad front and drove the Germans back. I was not in the front line of the attack and I recall that in the afternoon I was able to mount my horse and ride over ground that had been occupied by the Germans in the morning, the first time during the war that I had been able to do anything like that. As our attack progressed, the Hindenburg Line was breached without undue difficulty, thus proving that the strongest defensive works are of little avail unless the defenders have the determination to hold them. It was now a case more or less of open warfare and we pressed the Germans relentlessly. In some places they put up a stout resistance, especially their machine-gunners, and sometimes they counter-attacked, but if they regained any ground they seemed unable to hold it for long. The pressure was too great. I had been transferred to B Company as second-in-command shortly before our attack began, and this Company was unfortunate enough to have 5 men killed by shellfire a few weeks later. At about the same time, I remember that some shells fell uncomfortably close to an open trench where I was sheltering for the night. We were advancing all the time, and eventually we came to country where there were still small numbers of French civilians - gaunt and half-starved they looked - but delighted, of course, to see us. On one occasion we reached a village where there was a row of small houses, which apparently had been recently occupied. As I required a billet, I opened the door of one of them to see what it was like and there on the floor of the little sitting-room lay a dead German soldier. So far as I could see from a quick glance, he had no wound, and I have often wondered how that German died. Needless to say, I left the house rather hurriedly to look for a billet elsewhere.
As our advance continued, we began to notice definite signs of deterioration among the German troops, who were retiring so quickly that we had difficulty in keeping in touch with them. Many items of equipment, including even rifles, were left lying about, which was very uncharacteristic of the well disciplined German soldier. We were, however, quite unprepared for the news we were soon to hear. Early in November we had been taken out of the line for a brief rest and were staying at the small town of Bavai, not far from the fortress of Maubeuge, which the Germans had captured in the early days of the War. A number of us, including the Colonel, were billeted in a large house, which was also used as our mess, and we were getting up on the morning of the 11th November when we heard the Colonel call out in a loud voice - �An Armistice will be signed at 11 am to-day�. Amazed as we were at this announcement, we took it on the whole fairly quietly, and I see that in a letter that I wrote my mother at the time, I spoke rather contemptuously of the riotous scene that took place in London. One did, though, rather have the feeling that having come safely through so much, it was advisable to be careful when crossing the road.
We left Bavai soon after the Armistice and marched to Tournai in Belgium, a march that took us, I think, about three days. On long marches of this kind we used to rest for ten minutes each hour and our rate of progress was 3 miles an hour. Unfortunately, we had no band, but we were in high spirits and the men would sing and whistle to help us on our way. I enjoyed that march. I see that I wrote on a piece of pape the names of the various towns and villages that we passed through, but there is no point in enumerating
NEXT