Brave Battalion (36 page)

With MacLennan's relief party held up, Peck sent a second tank up the hill supported by another Canadian Scottish platoon. When it came up alongside Mackie's men and the other tank, the Germans surrendered. The enemy at the quarry, including a regimental commander and his staff, also gave up. This ended the battalion's fight, as it now controlled all the assigned Green Line objectives. It was about 0715 hours.

As 1
^st
Infantry Brigade passed through 16
^th
Battalion, some of the Canadian Scottish shouted, “Fritz, beat it! Get a move on before the war, stops.”
²⁰
Move the Canadians did. By dusk the Germans had been thrown back eight miles on their front while the Australians gained seven miles. On the flanks the French had advanced five miles and III Corps two. Canadian losses were 1,036 dead, 2,803 wounded, and 29 men lost as prisoners. But German prisoners tallied 5,033 and 161 guns had been captured. Peck estimated that 16
^th
Battalion had taken more than 900 prisoners and bagged 18 heavy guns, 17 trench mortars, and 30 machine guns for a surprisingly low casualty count of 144.
²¹

The British Fourth Army counted its total casualties at approximately 8,800. The butcher's bill this time had been entirely weighted against the Germans. They admitted losses of up to 700 officers and 27,000 other ranks with more than two-thirds having surrendered. “August 8,” Ludendorff wrote, “was the black day of the German army in the history of this war. Everything I had feared … had here, in one place, become a reality.”
²²
Two days later, as Ludendorff reported to the Kaiser, the German ruler interrupted. “We have reached the limits of our capacity. The war must be terminated.” But this could only be achieved by opening peace negotiations, something the Kaiser refused to consider.
²³

Amiens had finally given the Allies a decisive triumph. “The surprise had been complete and overwhelming,” Currie wrote. “The prisoners stated that they had no idea that an attack was impending … The noise of our tanks going to the final position of assembly had been heard by some men and reported, but no deduction appears to have been made regarding this. An officer stated that the Canadians were believed to be on the Kemmel front.”
²⁴

Field Marshal Douglas Haig intended to keep driving the Germans. “Having secured the old Amiens defence line,” he declared, “the Fourth Army will push forward to-morrow and establish itself on the general line of Roye-Chaulnes-Bray sur Somme-Dernancourt.” To reach the new objectives the army's right flank—where the Canadians were—would have to gain nine miles while III Corps need win only a mile. To the right of the Canadians, the French would continue advancing toward Roye while simultaneously broadening their front by another 16 miles to stretch the Germans ever thinner.
²⁵

Haig recognized Canadian Corps faced the greatest challenge meeting its objectives. There would be no surprise. The Germans would be ready and waiting. In fact, by the evening of August 8, seven German reserve divisions had bolstered the front and three of these faced the Canadians. Each passing hour gave these fresh troops more time to prepare fighting positions.

Confusion at Fourth Army headquarters ensured the Germans had sufficient time to get ready. At 1630 hours on August 8, Gen. Rawlinson arrived at Currie's advanced headquarters in Gentelles. Currie was touring his various divisional headquarters so “Rawly the Fox” contented himself with discussing matters with Currie's general staff officer, Brig. N. W. Webber. Rawlinson was in fine fettle, proclaiming that much credit for the day's victory must go to the Canadian Corps. What did Currie need for the coming day? Rawlinson wondered. Webber knew exactly what the corps needed—a fresh division to relieve the badly worn 3
^rd
Division. Rawlinson promised to release the 32
^nd
Imperial Division from the army reserve and wired the required instructions to his headquarters. Webber and he then fleshed out a plan whereby 1
^st
and 2
^nd
Canadian Divisions would resume the advance at 0500 hours with the 32
^nd
Division passing through 4
^th
Canadian Division in the morning to come up alongside.
²⁶
The 3
^rd
and 4
^th
Divisions would then move into reserve.

Shortly after Rawlinson's party drove off, a cable from Fourth Army headquarters was delivered to Webber. Rawlinson's chief executive officer, Maj.-Gen. A. A. Montgomery, had peremptorily cancelled the 32
^nd
Division's movement orders and demanded that Webber proceed immediately to Drury—the closest telephone link from the Canadian front to Fourth Army—about eight miles west of Gentelles. Travelling upstream by car along roads clogged with supply transports and vehicles bearing the 32
^nd
Division's battalions in the opposite direction, Webber was unable to reach the phone until two hours later. The moment he came on the line, Montgomery left Webber no doubt that he was “very irate with [Rawlinson] for daring to give away 32
^nd
Div[ision] and with myself for aiding and abetting.” The British division was immediately ordered to turn about and march back to whence it came. With 3
^rd
Division having already moved to the rear, it was now instructed to get back to the front to resume the offensive in the morning. Montgomery was unconcerned that such a major regrouping of divisions would necessarily delay the Canadian resumption of operations.

Webber returned to corps headquarters and broke the news to Currie. Then the two officers and their staff worked through the night to issue fresh orders. Because telegraph communication with the forward divisions was unreliable these orders had to be delivered by dispatch riders. None of the divisional commanders received instructions before 0400 hours and some not until 0500 hours, so the advance was set back to 1000. Hours had been wasted.
²⁷

Even before Montgomery countermanded Rawlinson's orders, the divisional commanders had been hard pressed to be ready by early morning. In 1
^st
Division's case it had to move to a new frontage, which required the brigades to sideslip 5,000 yards southward in order to face the villages of Beaufort and Warvillers. To the divison's left would be 2
^nd
Division (which also had to slip southward to keep aligned with 1
^st
Division), while 3
^rd
Division was on its right.

The southward move required longer than Currie's staff had anticipated and was only completed at 1100 hours. Zero Hour was shoved back to 1310. The 3
^rd
Division was unable to move even then because the 4
^th
Division had yet to secure its start line just beyond Le Quesnel—a final objective for August 8 that the division had failed to gain and spent the following morning winning despite stiffening German resistance. All the delays forced Currie to abandon hopes the corps would gain nine miles of ground this day. Instead, he expected at best to win only four miles.
²⁸

From the moment 2
^nd
Division crossed the start line it faced a hard fight while 1
^st
Division met only marginally less opposition. Maj.-Gen. Archie Macdonnell put his 1
^st
and 2
^nd
Brigades forward with 3
^rd
Brigade's battalions parcelled out and lurking in support. While 14
^th
and 15
^th
Battalions backed up 2
^nd
Brigade, 16
^th
Battalion marched to new positions behind 1
^st
Brigade. This brigade, advancing on the division's left flank toward Beaufort and the village of Rouvroy-en-Santerre beyond, advanced while being flayed by heavy machine-gun fire from a height of ground to its right. With 3
^rd
Division not yet on its start line, the brigade's 1
^st
Battalion jogged over to clear this enemy position—an action that forced Brig.-Gen. W. A. Griesbach to advance his 2
^nd
Battalion to fill the gap the battalion left in its wake. This meant that the brigade had three of its four battalions committed almost from the outset. But the quick adjustment of its lines to include some of 3
^rd
Division's front prevented the attack from stalling. Meanwhile, 2
^nd
Brigade set a cracking pace across flat country broken by little more than a few villages and the occasional small wood or rise of ground that typified the countryside east of Amiens. Soon Warvillers was secure.

On the right flank, 3
^rd
Division's 4
^th
Canadian Mounted Rifles made good progress once it was able to get moving and came up alongside 1
^st
Division adjacent to Foilies by late afternoon. But to the right of this battalion, the 5
^th
Canadian Mounted Rifles met intense head-on machine-gun fire from Bouchoir and flanking fire from Arvillers, a village that the adjacent French troops had failed to gain. This situation was only resolved when a combined Canadian-British force of infantry and tanks struck out from 3
^rd
Division's line of advance and cleared Arvillers in tough fighting that centred on a large beet-sugar factory.
²⁹

With the Canadian Corps advance progressing rapidly, and in accordance with Currie's revised battle plan, the reserve brigades were never called forward. So the Canadian Scottish did little but walk along some distance behind the forward troops, tasting “the heady wine of victory. In the hot, August day, with everybody in high spirits, the whole countryside was alive with movement. Generals and their staffs were galloping to and fro. Command pennants, which had been laid aside since 1914, fluttered in the breeze over the escorts; divisional headquarters, a hive of bustle, with attendant motor cars, signal wagons and wireless aerials were grouped near the cover of copse and hedge; supporting troops in formed bodies were streaming forward; reserve troops lay on the ground waiting the summons to advance.”

Only as dusk began to settle did 16
^th
Battalion return to the grim realities of war as it marched along the Amiens-Roye road toward Beaufort in what was the third major move of the day. Just as it turned dark the men heard the drone of aircraft overhead and recognized them as German. They “flew low, backward and forward, over the lines of the tall elms that bordered the highway” jammed with “troops, guns, and transport.” After a few passes the planes roared down and “bombed and machine-gunned the roads, the horse lines, and villages where troops were quartered. The airmen shot out parachute flares which lit up every feature of the ground, and flung down egg bombs which, bursting on contact into a shower of ragged fragments, caused widespread injuries. Then, the terror of death, and maiming stalked the night.” Confusion reigned all along the roadway as hundreds of horses “terrified by the roar of the planes' engines, stampeded, and many men were hit.” Serendipitously, the Canadian Scottish were unscathed while units either side of them were struck hard. When the planes flew off, the battalion continued past “the dead and wounded lying by the roadside [that] told their own story of the losses incurred by other units.”
³⁰

How many of the 2,574 total Canadian casualties for August 9 resulted from the air raid went unrecorded, but all the units caught in it were badly shaken. The frequency and deadly result of air raids had increased dramatically with each passing month in 1918. The raid on the night of August 9 was yet another example of how technological advances stacked the odds against a soldier's chances of survival.

The Canadian Scottish halted at Beaufort, Lt.-Col. Peck establishing his headquarters in the battered village while the troops distributed by companies in nearby fields where stooks of newly cut grain stood in orderly rows amid the black shell craters. Few could sleep, for the German shelling intensified hourly. “A shell here, a shell there, sometimes inflicting casualties and always so close as to disturb the resting troops.”

By 0420 hours, when Peck ordered the battalion to advance into battle positions near Rouvroy, a thick fog draped the land. Unable to take any bearings, the troops counted on the guides to know their way. As they set up in a series of old trenches, the guides assured them that once the fog lifted the Germans beyond would have them in their sights. Company commanders needlessly instructed the wary soldiers to stay under cover and avoid moving in the open. All across the front, the sounds of men working with entrenching tools carried on the air—telling them that the Germans were close and frantically preparing their defences.
³¹

Intelligence staff at Fourth Army headquarters reported German reserves being rushed to the Amiens battlefront by train, bus, and truck. The numerical advantage Fourth Army had enjoyed was so reduced by the morning of August 10 that its thirteen forward divisions faced precisely the same number of German divisions. Given the loss of impetus and the growing resistance little more ground could be won, but Haig still hoped to at least establish the line set out in the orders he had issued on the evening of August 8. This meant the Canadians must win another five miles of ground.