XXX FIGHTING BEYOND FLERS

1

September 17

The enemy has made desperate attempts to organise counter-attacks to thrust back our lines from the ground gained by us since Friday morning. They have failed. We hold all the ground captured in the general assault, and yesterday and to-day our troops have gone further forward winning new and important positions.

Mouquet Farm, for which the Australians fought with a most stubborn courage, entering the place several times with their patrols, was taken last night by a swift and successful assault. Left of that, below Thiépval, and to the east of that stronghold, attacks beginning last Thursday on a fortified position known as the “Wunderwerk” (a curious and villainous system of trenches and dug-outs) have been a brilliant success, and have extended our gain by a mile of frontage along the Danube trench.

We have a strong flank line securing Courcelette and have pushed out beyond Martinpuich towards Eaucourt l’Abbaye, and beyond Flers towards Guedecourt. The day has not been so sensational as Friday, but solid progress has been made, and the enemy is kept nervous.

He has been hurrying up reserves from Le Sars and Miraumont and places far back behind his lines. They were reported to be moving up yesterday by motor transport, and our long-range guns “dealt with them,” to use the grim phrase of one of our artillery officers.

The enemy’s losses are certainly very frightful. His dead lie solid in certain parts of the battle front. There are fields of horror here round High Wood and above Delville Wood, and not all the shells which I saw slashing those rows of tree stumps to-day will give the enemy back those men who are being buried by his high explosives.

The whole of the great stretch of battlefield along the high ridge to Delville Wood and Ginchy is one great graveyard, and looking across it to-day, as I stood among shell-craters and old German trenches and the litter of a wide destruction, this great desolate horror was an evil panorama which chilled one’s spirit.

The enemy was flinging over heavy crumps and black shrapnel, but his shooting seemed to me wild and without definite targets. The reason of it was clear. In taking the high ridge we have the observation which was once his, and it is our artillery which now has the supreme advantage.

2

The bombardment of September 15 was the most remarkable achievement ever done by British artillery, and not surpassed I should say in any army. Every detail of it was planned beforehand.

Every “heavy” had its special objective and its own time-table working exactly with the infantry, concentrating upon the enemy’s trenches and strong points, barraging his lines of communication, following the tracks of those motor monsters whose amazing adventures I described in my last despatch, and co-operating with the air service to reach out to distant targets.

The field batteries were marvellously audacious in taking up new positions, and the F.O.O.’s (the forward observing officers) were gallant in getting up to the high ground as soon as our infantry had taken it and registering their batteries from these new view-points.

I heard to-day the whole artillery scheme of one corps and the scientific precision with which the enemy’s defences were destroyed made me shiver as in the presence of a high intelligence distributing death on a great scale, by means of minute calculations of time and space, which, indeed, is exactly the truth.

The enemy’s artillery is still very strong, and it would be nonsense to depreciate his prodigious gun-power. But some at least of his batteries are in a perilous position now that we are able to observe them, and from my own observation of his shell-fire to-day it seems to me that he is shifting them further back.

He had not shifted them when our attack began on Friday morning last (although our counter-battery work was making it extremely hot for him), and it is remarkable that within two minutes of our attack he concentrated a particularly fierce fire on High Wood, where our men were advancing.

It is possible that his “sausage” balloons had observed the approach of the Tanks, and had seen them behind our trenches, like ichthyosauri waiting for their morning meal. But as I have previously hinted, there is sound evidence for the belief that he had prepared a great counter-attack along a wide front at the very time when our own was launched.

This accounts for the great mass of men killed in his lines and for the large number of prisoners who fell into our hands.

3

The capture of Mouquet Farm last night was made by a dash across a short strip of No Man’s Land. The garrison there retreated into a tunnelled dug-out, which had at least two entrances, and showed no willingness to surrender, maintaining rifle fire from loop-holes after they were surrounded.

The southern entrance to this underground stronghold was blown in by high explosives, while men kept guard of the other entry, waiting for any Germans who might come up to surrender.

This capture of Mouquet Farm (a stick or two above a heap of broken brickwork, as I saw it some weeks ago) has made the position of Thiépval still more closely gripped—the garrison there holds out stubbornly in its tunnelled corridors—and helped forward the assault upon the Danube Trench launched with absolute success.

This carried further the operation begun last Thursday, when our troops made one of those brilliant assaults upon the intricate system of earthworks to the south of Thiépval, which I watched a few weeks ago, when the Wiltshires and the Gloucesters did so well.

On the left, running southwards down the ridge, is an extraordinary V-shaped wedge with an open end. This position was not attacked, but our men drove straight up to the left of it, upon the “Wonder-work,” which was one of those nests of dug-outs upon which the Germans lavished all their skill in digging and pummelling and strengthening and furnishing in what soldiers call “the days of peace”—the old days of ordinary trench-warfare.

It was no longer a “Wonder-work” when our men rushed upon it. A whirlwind bombardment which had preceded them, and heavy shell-fire for weeks past had broken the concrete emplacements and flung up the earth with deep shell-pits, so that it was merely a part of the general chaos existing on these battlefields.

Five German officers and 116 men were still alive there, and surrendered instantly. “You were on us like the wind,” said one of these officers afterwards. “We had no time to defend ourselves.” Other men fled from neighbouring shell-craters, but ran straight into our curtain fire and fell.

Our lads chased some of them as they ran, but halted this side of our bursting shells, and came back “fearfully bucked,” to use their own phrase, because they had put the enemy to flight and mastered him so utterly.

4

Yesterday counter-attacks were attempted by the 5th Reserve Regiment of Guards, but they were not carried through with resolution. The first wave of men came a hundred yards or so towards our men, then hesitated, flung their bombs, which fell ludicrously short, and ran back.

On the left they were bolder and brave, and a very long and stubborn fight took place with bombs, ending in the complete victory of our men after they had flung 1,500 hand-grenades.

North-east of Flers other counter-attacks were attempted yesterday, but our troops who were advancing towards Guedecourt went right through them and over them with irresistible spirit, checked only by concealed machine-guns in a harvest field on their wing.

In Bouleaux Wood, to the north of Leuze Wood, there has been fierce hand-to-hand fighting, and in the centre of it is an unfortunate Tank—one of the few casualties among the armoured monsters—which lies with its nose in the earth, forming a barricade between the opposing bombers.

The general situation along our attacking front leaves the initiative in our hands and reveals the temporary demoralisation of the enemy’s troops and command.

One cannot say more than that. The enemy has had a hard blow, but he has reserves of strength which are controlled by cool brains behind his lines.

There is still much fighting to be done before Germany’s weakness reaches the breaking point, but the losses we have inflicted upon her during the last three days are so terrible that she cannot hide her wounds.