8 
LAND & WATER 
April 19, 1917 
Monday and all the Tuesday. The German battalion holding 
Monchy had the fullest information of that action's progress. 
Thev knew by Tuesday night that \'imy Ridge from seven 
to eight miles north of them had been lost for 36 hours. 
They none the less believed that Monchy could be held and 
were most undoubtedly i)Oth instructed to hold it and told 
by their Higher Command that the advance would fail to 
take it. 
The Command of this battalion made their plans, as we 
know from witnesses, to take up the defence if an attack should 
come upon the Wednesday morning. The attack came and was 
successful before they were prepared for it, and Monchy was 
lost under sucli conditions that a mass of material was left 
l)ehind ;^hat many of the telephone wires were found uncut ; 
tiiat the personal effects of the officers were sacrificed, and 
that cavalry were able to take a great part in the work. The 
whole episode, I say, is typical. Monchy, when it was about 
live miles behind "the lines in the old days, was the head- 
quarters of a division ; as the battle front approached it, 
it still remained the garrison, first of a regiment, and then of 
a battalion ; but in its last phase it was intended to hold 
and failed to hold. Had it held it would have checked that 
breach in the original line — I mean that turning of the 
positions to the south— which in point of fact took place, 
l-'or when Monchy fell the sharp salient of which I have spoken 
was created and next day there went, as a consequence, 
Wancourt and Heninel and ground up to the tower of 
Wancourt on the heights beyond. 
From Wednesday onwards the British in possession of 
Monchy Hill saw allthe plain spread out before them between 
the flurries of snow. When the weather changed at the end of 
the week they must,|I think, have had their lirst distant sight 
of Douai. 
The loss of Monchy was so very serious to the enemy that it 
provoked them to their first serious reaction, and a consider- 
able concentration was effected by them partly under the cover 
(such as it as) of' the Wood of Sart in the plain below the 
town, partly in the plain between the Chateau and the 
Scarpe river. This double concentration was badly mauled by 
the British artillery while it was taking place. It was none the 
less continued, and from both jilaccs there was launched a 
severe converging attack for the recapture of Monchy, which 
was heavily pressed but happily broke down altogether with 
the loss of some 4,000 men. On the same day, however, 
a contemporary German counter-attack to save the junction of 
their switch line in front of Oueant unfortunately succeeded. 
It would seem to have been delivered against an Australian 
contingent, which was pressing forward to Bullecourt, and to 
have owed its success largely to a sudden snow storm in which 
the British forces lost some hundreds of prisoners and not a 
lew machine guns. 
All that day, Wednesday, the snow and gale had still 
continued with even greater intensity than before, and it is 
remarkable that the British Air Service continued to fly 
•in such weather while, as the official despatch informs, us, 
the enemy's machines were almost entirely absent. 
Thursday, April 12th 
On the next day, Thursday the 12th, the effect of the 
Scarpe advance began to be felt both to the north and to the 
south. On the north the two woods oh either "side of the - 
Souchez River were carried, clearing the northern end of the 
Vimy Ridge from all further danger. The enemy had counter- 
attacked \ery heavily during all this period since the \'imy 
' Ridge had been carried, ' and had especially concentra/ted 
against the northern spur by Givenchy. He was now 
ihcapable of continuing these attacks up the slope, andi he 
abandoned them. The threat .to the Lens salient was thiere- 
fore developing, while to the south, with the aid of a nwn- 
ber of tanks the enemy was driven from Wancourt and Heninel 
and the Hindenburg line was lost as far as the neighbourhood 
of Bullecourt. It would perhaps have been lost right down 
to the pfnnt where the new switch line leaves it at Queant but 
for the clieck received during the previous operatioti/ at 
Bullecourt itself. i/> 
' The next day, IViday, saw the beginning of the breakdown 
(if the (KTiiian -alient north of the Scarpe. . 1 ' -d; 
Friday, April 13th 
!r// 
.rit 
On that Friday, the fifth day of the operations, the effect of 
the capture of the woods on either side of the Souc:he7, Brook 
was at once felt and the whole line advanced somewhat from 
neac Loos to this pojnt. One of these woods, that ort'the south 
which is the Wood of Givenchy, climbs right up the northern 
i)ur of the Vimy Ridge, more than 200 feet above the 
Souchez River. The other, called from its shape the 
"Axe Wood,' is lower but well overlooks th€! plaitr and 
from both there is complete observation of Liicvin, the 
eastern suburb of I^ns. and a great mining centre. The 
possession^of these woods further turned the group of ruins 
called Angrt-s into a very small, sharp, and awkward salient, 
which the (ifrmanshad to leave and did leave on the Friday. 
On the same day the ruins of all the villages under the Vimy 
Ridge were occupied, (iivenchy, Viiny, the little hamlet of 
Willerval, and all the ruins of iiailleuL To tlu; south of the 
ScarjHi the capture of \\'ancourt tlie day before was confirmed 
and completed by an advance on to the heights beyond the 
Cojeul River as far as the crest marked by Mancourt Tower, 
from which point one looks right down the valley of the Sens6e 
as far as the weather will let one. 
By the evening of IViday the total of the captures that 
could be enumerated exactly already came to more than 13,000 
men, includii\^ 285 officers, iO() guns, of which no less than 
eight were the'large eight inch howitzers, and the surprisingly 
large number of twenty-eight 5c/s, which may be (regarded as 
the enemy's standby in the more mobile and smaller heavy 
artillery. It has the reputation of being his most accurate 1 
and most useful piece. Of field guns and howitzers 130 have 
been captured. What number of heavy pieces and field pieces 
may up to that date have been destroyed under the bom- 
bardment we cannot accurately tell. But in this category' the 
machine guns are the least easy to count. 250 had certainly 
already fallen into the hands of the British. But a very much 
larger number must be lying buried and blown to pieces over 
so wide an area of operations. 
Saturday, April 14th 
On last Saturday the enemy Ix-gan rapidly falling out of 
the Lens salient. He had to give up Lievin, the mining 
suburb of St. Peter was also evacuated, and our foremost 
troops in this region were within distant rifle shot of the out- 
skirts of the big coal city. Meanwhile, for the first time 
during these operations, special weight was given to the 
district round St. Quentin. Gricourt was carried ; Fayet 
having been carrierl the niglrt before ; the resistance here 
was determined, the enemy losing very many counted dead 
and 400 prisoners. 
All along the line by that week-end the advance was 
registered. Gouzeaucourt village and wood had been taken 
24 hours before as well as all.Bailleul, \'imy and its station, 
Givenchy and /Vngres, as we have seen, and the heights, most 
important to this part of the line, of the Ascenscion Farm 
south of Havrincourt Wood. The advance patrols had 
reached from two to three miles east of the V'imy liidge, 
while to the north, under pouring rain, the troops already in 
occupation of the St. Pierre suburb pushed on and came 
into touch with the outskirts of Lens itself. And our ob- 
servers could witness the hurried efforts the enemy was mak- 
ing to evacuate his material and men from the town. 
On the Sunday the (iermans had at last been able to effect 
a really serious concentration with the object of a counter- 
attack which might, had it gone through according to their plan , 
have partially restored the situation, .\lthough the details 
of that great action are lacking we are already able to see that 
it was of capital importance and formed the conclusion 
as it were, of the whole operation. The Germans mustered 
a force equivalent to the infantry of four divisions and thre%v 
it along the Cambrai-Bapaume road from' just south of 
Queant near -T,agnicourt to a point nearly 10,000 yards 
south of Hermies. It was a very formidable effort, made, 
presumably, with something like 40,000 to 50,000 bayonets 
and corresponding artillery power behind them. The British 
force here opposed to the Germans would seem to ha\'e been 
principally composed of the .\ustralian contingent. 
For what reasons was this point chosen ? 
Because it was central, and because, Monchy being lost, it was 
hopeless to try and save the northern positions and in par- 
ticular the neighbourhood of Lens into which at that verv 
moment the British were lighting their way 22 miles off to 
the north. It is possible that, as in the case of the attack ol 
April 1915 near Ypres, the enemy was not uninfluenced by 
the knowledge that he had against him Colonial troops, for 
there is nothing which the German Higher Command Jias 
taken longer to learn than the value of the new armies, and it 
remains apparently still rooted in the conception that the 
■ creation out of nothing, as it were, of a great military force, 
would prove beyond the task of the British Fmpire. 
He may have had other reasons for choosing this point 
which we do nOt know, but, at any rate, he attacked here in 
very great force and with what he believed to be the best 
troops at his command. I'or here, again, we have the singulat 
fact that the German Higher Command is still attached to 
the tradition of the Guards, although that famous corps has 
had more bad luck, or bad management, to its credit tlian 
any two other equivalent bodies of the crtemy's forces put 
together. It is still treated as a sort of talisman. It was in 
particular responsible for, the disaster of the Marne in 
