Amabel Williams-Ellis

THE MARCH RETREAT

I

About March 14 the 3rd and 5th Armies were warned by their aerial reconnaissance that a new and ominous concentration was taking place behind the enemy’s lines.

These two Armies, to which the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Tank Brigades were, it will be remembered, attached, held the line which lay between Bullecourt to the north and St. Quentin to the south.

Behind them lay the old Somme battlefields, and about them was a dry, rather bare, downland country with few woods and divided up by broad valleys that ran east and west across it. It was a part of the line upon which we had long considered the blow might probably fall.

The 3rd and 5th Armies, now on the alert, immediately set about raiding the enemy and, having captured the desired prisoners and examined them, were consistently told the same story.

Thursday, March 21, was to be the day of attack.

The weather, which had been clear and bright for a week or two, broke on Tuesday, the 19th, and all day it rained heavily. On the night of the 20th a thick mist came up and lay densely over the downs. Such weather conditions only made an attack the more certain, and all along the line Tanks were moved forward into their allotted positions.

At two o’clock in the morning of the 21st the British line was warned to expect an attack. The forward zone was already fully manned, but at 4.30 an order was sent out to man the battle zone. Nor was the order premature. The mist still lay heavily over the lines, and under its cover the Germans had secretly pushed up their troops until all along the front between Bullecourt and La FÈre, they had massed thirty-seven divisions on a line little more than a mile from our outposts.

The drama was about to begin. At a quarter to five every German battery from the Marne to Dunkirk opened fire. Such a bombardment had never been known before, and it reached its zenith on the fronts of the 3rd and 5th Armies.

Torrents of gas shells and high explosives were poured out upon our forward and battle lines, upon our Headquarters, upon our artillery positions, and upon all our lines of communication.

The batteries of the 3rd and 5th Armies replied as best they could, but owing to the mist our artillery observers were helpless. It was impossible to see fifty yards ahead, and the German fire seemed to crash upon us out of some alien planet.

By 8 or 9 o’clock the first parties of Germans had begun to advance, to cut our wire here and there along the front of attack, and to filter unobtrusively through our outpost line.

We began to perceive that the enemy was behaving in a most unaccountable way. Even by 10 o’clock—as far as we could learn in the confusion—he seemed in some places to have made no attempt at an infantry attack at all. In others compact but apparently isolated little parties of Guards or Cockchafers, or men from some other picked regiment, had pushed right through our forward zone and were away beyond the places where the cross-fire from our machine-guns was to have checked them, before the men in the redoubts, half-blind amid the clouds of gas, had realised that any Germans had crossed No Man’s Land. Again and again the garrisons were overwhelmed from the rear before they could send back any warning to the men behind in the battle zone. When they did endeavour to signal, the S.O.S. would be blanketed in the mist.

Only too often the first news of the attack to reach our batteries was the appearance of German infantry on their flank and rear.

There would be nothing left but to mow down the enemy at point-blank range, till finally the gun crews were overwhelmed by the in-flooding tide.

As at Ypres, we had begun amazedly to feel that we were up against a type of tactics against which we had never fought before. Our conjecture was perfectly right. It was a system of surprise, and of the theory of Sturmtruppen carried to its extreme conclusion. Mr. Buchan has likened the new method to the advance of a hand whose finger-tips are shod with steel pushing its way into a soft substance.

In practice the assault was conducted as follows: The infantry attack was preceded by a short but extremely intense bombardment in which a large proportion of gas was used.

This was followed by the advance at irregular intervals of clusters of highly trained assault troops, carrying light trench mortars or machine-guns (each cluster really constituting a kind of human Tank. It was well, indeed, for us that they were no more than mere flesh and blood, and neither armoured nor engined.) These clusters, which were closely followed and supported by the field batteries, made gaps through which the line troops poured, guided by an elaborate system of flares and rockets.

Each section of the defence might thus find itself caught between the “fingers”—outflanked and encircled.

Each body of the advancing enemy was under the command of a specially trained officer, whose leadership generally proved a model of skill and initiative; each detachment was instructed to push on as far as its strength allowed, and every man carried iron rations for several days.

When a regiment had advanced as far as it was able, another took its place, the waves of the advance thus leapfrogging over each other in an endless chain.

The dangers of such tactics are obvious, but on March 21 the system was portentously successful.

II

As in all disasters, events seemed to move with a terrible rapidity.

A moment before the motor accident you are a free man; a moment after and you are involved in an endless line of consequences which have sprung up while you could hold your breath, and amid whose mushroom growth you may wander for the rest of your life.

Five hours after the opening of the German cannonade the world seemed to have changed for the two armies which had stood in the path of the hurricane.

In the course of the next fourteen days the Germans were to sweep forward for forty miles, and their advance was even then to be checked, not by the British Army, but by the gradual attenuation of their supply system.

The whole fourteen days of the retreat were completely confused. Units were inextricably mixed, and communications were impossible.

Some sort of immediate action was always having to be taken by junior Commanders on information which they justly believed to be untrustworthy. There were often more Germans to the flank of any given body than to its front. When we try to form any general conception of the events of this period, we seem to see the actors moving in a kind of mist from which they emerge for a moment, perform some action which may or may not appear relevant, and then disappear again into the confusion, leaving us to guess at the meaning of the play. As far as the events of such a time can be chronicled, we propose for this fortnight to follow separately the doings of the three Tank Battalions chiefly involved, and to make no effort to present a coherent picture of this return to the reign “of Chaos and old Night.”

The 4th and 5th Battalions (4th Brigade) lay near Cartigny (south of PÉronne).

On the morning of the 21st the two Battalions of Tanks were moved up into the line, two Tanks of the 4th Battalion counter-attacking at PeiziÈre and clearing a railway cutting of the enemy.

On the 22nd all the Tanks were ordered into action. The infantry were retreating, and their chief duty was to gain time and to cover that retreat.

Twelve Tanks of the 5th Battalion attacked the enemy at Hervilly Wood, and several from the 4th Battalion near Epehy. Both detachments suffered rather severely.

At this point the two Battalions seem to have more or less parted company.

Seventeen Tanks belonging to the 5th Battalion rallied at Cartigny that night, and next day (the 23rd) were ordered to retire over the Somme.

The only available crossing place was the bridge at Brie, a few miles to the south.

They set off immediately, but the enemy advance was too rapid for them. They were unable to cross the bridge, and, lest they should fall into the hands of the enemy, all the machines were destroyed by their crews.

The story of one of these Tanks is told in the 5th Battalion History:

There were other places where the now “dismounted” Tank crews could cross the river.

But they had no means of transport, and were, therefore, obliged to burn or otherwise destroy most of their stores and kit.

Indeed, as a rule, the Lewis guns from the Tanks were their only salvage.

One Staff Sergeant, however, hid away or buried a number of his tools, and six months later, when the British advance swept back again, they were recovered.

By March 24 the Battalion had lost all its Tanks. But in almost every case the Lewis guns had been salved.

As the crews fell back they were immediately organised as Lewis gun detachments, and distributed along the line wherever their help was most needed.

Colonel O’Kelly, Commanding the 5th Tank Battalion, had to use his own initiative in the matter, as communications were by this time hopelessly disorganised and the need was instant.

Once, too, a detachment had been sent off, as it were disappeared, and each party had to rely upon its individual Commander.

Tank crews had had no training in this kind of warfare, but the strange dilemmas in which a Tank frequently finds itself had accustomed them to the unexpected, and thus left alone they displayed plenty of initiative.

The chief work which fell to them was that of forming rearguards and of protecting the retreat of the infantry.

Food and ammunition were both short, and they, like the other troops, suffered many hardships.

Each of these Lewis gun detachments was made up of about four officers and forty men, and they ordinarily had twelve Lewis guns with them.

Three such detachments fought near Masvillers and Merlaincourt, others near Villers Bretonneux, Caix, HarbonniÈres and Marcourt, the general retreat carrying them back almost to Amiens.

Again and again small parties failed to get the orders to retire in time, and had to fight their way back after being surrounded and cut off by the enemy.

Sometimes they fought with French infantry, but chiefly with the Sherwoods, Queen’s and Royal Fusiliers of the 19th Corps.

Extraordinarily good individual work was done, as the list of honours shows. The story of a 5th Battalion detachment gives a typical picture:

Between March 24 and April 2 the 5th Battalion had sent a total of eighty-four Lewis guns and crews into the line.

Every available man had gone, cooks, officers’ servants, clerks and orderlies. They had suffered heavy casualties, and on April 4 the Battalion, or what was left of it, was taken to Auchy by lorry.

Here they drew Hotchkiss guns, and began to train again. But they were not to be left long in peace.

On April 12 they had orders to form again as a Lewis gun Battalion, and next day found them once more in the forward area, this time at Meteren, not far from Hazebrouck, where they relieved an infantry Battalion which had held a switch line through the village and an isolated point near Meteren Church. On April 15 they got news that the enemy had captured high ground between Neuve Eglise and Bailleul, and on the 16th the enemy advanced on Meteren.

On April 17 the Battalion, except for twenty guns, was relieved by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. After helping to hold back one more serious attack, the remaining gun crews were finally withdrawn and joined the rest of the Battalion at the Mont des Cats.

On April 24 detachments of the 5th Battalion, which were helping to man the line before Kemmel, were heavily in action.

The enemy attacked after a fierce bombardment, and Kemmel Hill was taken.

On the 29th the enemy opened a heavy gas and H.E. barrage and attacked Mont Rouge in force. They were driven away, but returned again and again, always being beaten off.

At last in the first days of May the Battalion was relieved, and was sent back to the training and rest area at Blangy, the Divisional General having complimented the gun crews upon their conduct in the field.

The story of the 4th Battalion is very like that of the 5th. All through the last days of March there was the same heartbreaking destruction of machines that had run out of petrol or grease, or were suffering from some slight defect which there was no time to rectify. Again kits and orderly-room material had to be burnt, and again the Lewis guns were salved. The usual Lewis gun detachments were formed, but this time did not have quite so much fighting, their chief battle being on March 26, on the Bray-Albert road, where they did exceedingly well.

The 2nd Battalion was near Maricourt when the crash came, and twenty-five of their Tanks went into action on the afternoon of March 22.

Of the twenty-five Tanks which went into action only six came out undamaged, and the Battalion was not really in a fit state to fight again without reorganisation.

But the enemy were still advancing, and the Albert-Bapaume road had to be defended at all costs.

So on the 24th the surviving Tanks were manned and sent forward again, and the Tankless crews were formed into Lewis gun detachments.

They waited all through the night of the 24th expecting to be sent forward.

No orders came till midday on March 25, when they were sent to the 3rd Tank Brigade Camp near Bray, which they later in the day were ordered to burn to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy.

All next day the infantry fell back, and with them the Lewis gun teams.

Some idea of the confusion may be gathered from the fact that at this moment the 2nd Battalion was separated into no less than eight parts, none of which could communicate quickly enough with its fellows to make any combined action possible.

The 8th and 10th Battalions still had some Tanks in going order, and, on the day when the 3rd Army was forced across the old Somme battlefield, they fought an exceedingly good rearguard action on either side of the Albert-Bapaume road. The Tanks received a special message of commendation from the General Commanding the 3rd Army.

Another incident—of which the authors have not been able to obtain many particulars—was the action fought by a scratch Tank force formed out of all the fighting Tanks from the driving school, Aveluy.

The 7th Battalion was one of several which were not in the path of the hurricane, and consequently lost no Tanks.

A certain number of its men were, however, organised as Lewis gun detachments, and by mid-April saw a considerable amount of fighting.

One such detachment was attached to the 61st Division near Nieppe Forest, and with them manned a line of fortified shell-holes.

There were no trenches and the country was absolutely flat. The whereabouts of the enemy was extremely uncertain. The Tank Lewis gunners held about a mile and a half of improvised line, their headquarters being a little farmhouse not far from Merville. Hardly had the detachment taken over than the enemy put down a hot barrage. A Reconnaissance Officer who was present described the events that followed in a letter home:

The 3rd Tank Battalion, whose camp at Bray had been destroyed, were now a fully fledged Whippet unit.

During the first few days the Whippets saw no actual fighting but were subject to plenty of alarms, and made a great number of fruitless excursions from place to place.

At the Bray Camp there had been, unfortunately, a certain number of Whippet machines which were temporarily laid up with engine trouble.

But there were no spare parts and no time for repairs, and a good many machines had to be blown up “unblooded.”

On March 26 two Companies of the 3rd Battalion were moved to Mailly-Maillet Wood.

As soon as the machines had arrived the Company Commanders went out to reconnoitre the position near the village (Mailly-Maillet).

The result of their investigations is typical of the whole retreat:

About noon the Whippets arrived at the village. The situation was explained to the Section Commanders, and half the Tanks proceeded down the main street while the rest guarded the two flanks.

A small body of our infantry which was holding the village had been on the point of falling back before the rapidly advancing enemy when the Tanks arrived.

The Tanks had gone forward almost beyond the village, when suddenly, round the edge of the wood, they met 300 of the enemy advancing in close formation.

The Germans were too much surprised to attempt to resist, and fled in disorder.

A number of them were shot down by the Whippet’s machine-guns, and many surrendered to the infantry who had by now arrived.

The remnant scattered, and were pursued by the Tanks right on to the outskirts of Auchonvillers.

The two Whippets remained out on patrol for about an hour, but no further attack was attempted, and they returned to the village about 3 p.m. Later in the afternoon the gap in our lines was filled by the arrival of a New Zealand Division. This successful little action is interesting as the first ever fought by the Whippets.

There were several other sections of Whippets and heavy Tanks out on patrol on this and the following days.

Several Tanks of the 10th Battalion fought in Rossignol Wood on two occasions, and Whippets of the 2nd Battalion were in action near Bouzencourt in a blinding rainstorm.

Everywhere it was the same story of villages the question of whose ownership was “obscure” of gaps in the line which the Tanks had to bridge for a critical hour or two, often firing their machine-guns into the advancing waves of the enemy until the guns grew hot and jammed and the Tanks had to retreat. Often they would go back till their petrol gave out, and the crews had to blow up their machines.

The new Medium A machines (the Whippets) acquitted themselves extremely well, and there were astonishingly few cases of mechanical trouble.

The Battalion histories describe many pitiful scenes which took place during the retreat, the fate of the inhabitants, for whom our withdrawal meant complete ruin, striking the eye-witnesses as the most distressing feature of the whole business.

Nor was the retreat only tragic to those of the Tank Corps who had to witness the supreme misery of these processions of the Cross. There was a lesser unhappiness for the tacticians of the Tank Corps in the contemplation of the appalling waste of Tank machines and men.

The Tanks had been far too scattered ever to pull their weight.

Out of 370 Tanks which were fit to fight, only 180 saw any action, a great many machines running out of supplies or being incapacitated by some temporary mechanical trouble, and so lost without having fired a shot.

The fault lay in the fact that the infantry Commanders under whom they were acting did not fully understand the functions and limitations of the Tank, or realise that as the final loss of a good many Mark IV. machines in such a retreat was inevitable, it would have been much better to give the Tanks a run for their money.

III
Villers Bretonneux

It was not till the German offensive had lasted for more than a month that opposing Tanks at last met in battle.

The enemy had pushed us back to within six or seven miles of Amiens, and he now planned a more or less full-dress attack upon positions on high ground, which were, in fact, the outer defences not only of the town, but of the vital Amiens-Paris railway. A break through on this sector would be a serious disaster, and the situation was an anxious one. The weather was unsettled, and the mornings often still misty in the Somme country.

At 6.30 on April 23 the river fog lay thick, and under cover of this mist the Germans attacked the whole of the line south of the Somme after a short and particularly intense bombardment.

A company of heavy Tanks of the 1st and seven Whippets of the 3rd Battalion had been hastily moved up into the domain of the 3rd Corps, north and south of Villers Bretonneux, where it was rumoured that the Germans were going to use Tanks, and, in fact, when at last the first little knots of German infantry appeared through the fog, three huge forms accompanied them.

It was over Tanks of this type, the “Schultz” and the “Hagan,” that the little boys of London scrambled so delightedly on the Horse Guards Parade in the spring of 1919. Now all we could see of them, as they lumbered slowly through the fog, was that they were a good deal larger and heavier than the heavy British Tanks, and that they were rather tortoise shaped, the armoured “shell” everywhere coming down over the tracks like a sort of crinoline.

They broke right through our line, opening a way for the infantry which was following them. But three of our Tanks, under Captain F.C. Brown, M.C., happened to be on their way to the very spot (Cachy) where the German Tanks had attacked. Unfortunately two of the three were females, whose machine-guns were not of much use against the new thick-skinned enemy.

However, they went on, hoping for chinks in their opponents’ armour, but in spite of their superior power of manoeuvre both the females were soon knocked out by shells from the German Tanks.

The one male Tank, under Lieutenant Mitchell, was now opposed to three undamaged enemy machines, each more heavily armoured than the British Tank. Lieutenant Mitchell, however, immediately engaged them and, after some dodging of the salvos of his three antagonists, who seemed to be trying to close upon him, he managed to obtain a direct hit with one of his six-pounders upon the leading German. Twice again he fired, each time hitting the same machine. The third shot completed its discomfiture; in its efforts to get away it fell into a sandpit, where it lay on its side, its tracks still rattling round ineffectively.

With its first enemy definitely out of action, the British Tank turned upon the other two.

But they had not waited, and had already discreetly turned tail, leaving Lieutenant Mitchell master of the situation.

Such was the rather inglorious end of the Germans’ first endeavour to meet the British Tank Corps with its own weapons.

It was not far from the scene of this strange encounter that about half an hour later seven Whippets came into action, debouching from north of Cachy, attacking the enemy on the ridge between Villers Bretonneux and Hangard Wood. The ridge was held by machine-gun groups concealed in shell-holes, while on the eastern slopes two German Battalions were forming up in the open ready to attack. The Whippets moved from shell-hole to shell-hole, destroying the machine-gun groups, and then proceeded to deal with the infantry. Their success was terrible. They got right in among the enemy, who had absolutely no cover, and mowed the unhappy Germans down in ranks as they stood. At least 400 of the enemy are estimated to have been killed, and the rest at last fled in confusion, the threatened attack being completely broken up.

Not only were these two Battalions disposed of, but by nightfall it was clear that for the time being at least some circumstance had definitely held up the German advance. We did not know it, but our defences had withstood and survived the last hungry lickings of the great spring tide.

Its impulse was too far spent to overflow the frail dam of our Villers Bretonneux positions. The German advance had reached slack water.

There had been one incident which had genuinely cheered the hard pressed men of the Tank Corps. At the very blackest moment of the retreat, when machines were being sacrificed by the dozen, and when the grey waves of the German infantry seemed to pursue our weary men with endless, tireless iteration, General Elles received a telegram from Mr. Docker, the chairman of the Metropolitan Carriage Company of Birmingham:—