May JO, 191 7 
LAND & WATER 
moon in the earlv Jiours ofnlnirscray.'Jra'y .fr'd', tliit the" 
bombardment lifted and the signal for the attack was given. 
The' first success consisted in the Canadians .seizing, the 
village of Fresnov. It is remarkable that at this point, upon 
the extreme north of the line, a German concentration was in 
process and was timed for attack exactly two hours later ; 
three regiments, fresh, and hitherto forming part of the 
reserve, two of them new ' formations, had been gathered 
coming up from Douai the day before. Their prisoners 
report as usual the heavy loss from the British artillery upon 
the way. The number of jirisoners taken was small, but the 
enemy's losses in killed and wounded very heavy. 
All" comments upon this fine piece of work — including that 
of the enemy,— have remarked that the Canadians wlio 
accomplished it have been fighting continuously since their 
first great success a month ago in seizing the Vimy Ridge, the 
key to all that has followed. 
in the centre Oppy was attacked, the enemy making a 
very stubborn resistance through his possession of the little 
wood immediately to the west of the ruins, and here the British 
troops met the German Guards. The first rush of the British 
carried them right into the village and almost through it, 
but the wood behind them was not cleared, and so far as one 
can gather from the accounts to hand, the line here was not 
permanently advanced. It was a swaying fight. 
Gavrelle, immediately to the south, which was in British 
hands at the beginning of the blow, was continuously held, 
but there were very heavy (German efforts to re-take it. The 
Germans concentrated at the farm called Mauvillc upon the 
rising ground just north of Fresncs, wlience there is a low 
very fiat back or ridge running towards Gavrelle, marked, 
close to Gavrelle village, by the ruins of Gavrelle windmill. 
From the farm to the mill is just over ;],ooo yards. This 
concentration and the advance over the open towards the mill 
was subjected to very heavy British artillery fire, but it got 
home and the mill was fought for all the morning, changing 
hands no less than four times. The fight round it continued 
to rage all during the day. It remained in British hands. 
Further south the Germans also hung on successfully to the 
ruins of Koeux on the Scarpe, but again at a tremendous cost ; 
because the ruins of this village, though hidden in the hollow 
of the Scarpe vallcv, are subject to a converging fire from 
west and north. Further south again the J^ritish pushed 
on a few hundred yards to the little rise just in front of the 
Bois du Vert, seized the factory of St. Kohart on the Cojeul 
River and the village of Cherisy on the Sensee. 
In this sector between the Cojeul and the Sensee rivers, a 
very heavy German counter-attack achieved the only (lerman 
success of the day. The 15ritish were com])elled to retire before 
night, apj)arentiy to aijandon the factory, and certainly to 
abandon the village of Cherisy. It would seem to be an 
almost invariable rule in these re-actions of the enemy that 
there is thus some one narrow sector of the whole line (in 
this case about 2,000 yards out of 20,000) in which at a very 
heavy price he can sliow superiority of weight. We had an 
example of this at the beginning of these great actions of the 
Artois, in front of BuUecourt. But these exceedingly expen- 
sive occasional local successes never hold. The abandonment 
of Cherisy had saved Fontaine, but meanwhile the Australians 
had seized the ground to the north of BuUecourt 3nd held it, 
a very important matter, because it was another breach in the 
original Hindenburg line. 
With this success on the extreme south, ends the story of 
""t'lie/Thiifsd'ay. "The main blow had been delivered arid-the 
re-action was to come. The results in prisoners were in- 
significant. A few hundred men, man\- of thgiii wOUnded, 
picked up on both sides as the battle swayed at one point 
or another, nor did either party claim captured guns. But 
the whole point of the blow was the nature and reception of 
the counter-blow which it designed to provoke, and this 
counter-attack was Jjrefaced by a renewed German bombard- 
ment during the night, and launched upon the Friday 
morning. 
The counter-attacks had indeed begun after dark of the 
night before in a very heavy attempt to recover the trenches 
lost near BuUecourt. It failed under the murderous fire that 
met it, but the principal work belongs to the Friday when the 
enemy made a determined eft'ort against the Canadians stand- 
ing in the captured ruins of Fresnov. The total number of 
counter-attacks delivered against F'resnoy we are not told, 
but there were several. The Guards in front of Gavrelle 
were too exhausted by the fighting of the day before to renew 
their effort seriously, and no new troops could be brought up 
in- time to begin again on that sector. But Polish troops 
from Roeux were sent forward with no result, and in general 
the counter-attacks of the Friday left the line where it was. 
Nowhere did the enemy obtain anything b}' his re-action 
except at tremendous loss, and the warding of the (}ueant 
Drocourt line behind him. 
On the Saturday the counter-attack continued, shifting this 
time to the south and directing the weight of their men against 
BuUecourt. The losses here were remarked as being higiier 
even than in the corresponding attack to. the north against 
Fresnoy of the day before. 
All through the night between Saturday and Sunday this 
Cierrnan effort against BuUecourt continued. So far from 
obtaining any success it actually lost ground, especially to 
the South of the village. The official despatch comments 
upon the exceedingly severe los.ses of the enemy at this point. 
On Monday yet another counter-attack with two divisions 
on the extreme north was broken in its turn. 
The whole operation, therefore, was of the type whicii 
now governs all this work over the 125 miles between Lens 
on the north, and Auberive, in Champagne, but especially 
upon the two flanks of the line : A blow, the power of which 
is based upon the superiority of artillery (and to some extent 
of mofal in the troops) provokes, now that the main first 
defences have gone, counter-attacks, lacking which the whole 
ill-protected line would go. The counter-attacks cannot ba 
avoided by the enemy and yet are, to his full' knowledge, 
enormously expensive. First, because his concentrations for 
the (jurpose of delivering them are at the mercy of the superior 
Allied air work, and the far superior Allied artillery ; secondly, 
because in the delivery of them lie cannot prepare the same 
weight of fire that the Allies can, and the troops which he sends 
to the shock lose enormously just before contact and on contact. 
There is nearly alwa\'s some point (this time it was Cherisj', last 
\ time it was BuUecourt, and against the French the other 
day it was on the Nauroy Road) where the weight of the 
counter-attack just manages to tell, arid the test of it is loss of 
ground. But even for such success, the price paid is too high ; 
wliile along the mass of the line there is mere disproportionate 
loss without any compen.sating advantage at all. After each 
such blow the dwindling reserve must be further drawn upon 
and the process continued inexorably (short of political failure) 
to the military end of disintegration. 
The French Blow 
In its very broadest aspects the French blow deli\-ered 
this week conforms to the same type. It is the tremendous 
shock of a superior artillery and better troops comparable to 
the fall of a weight which drives a pile into mud ; it is the 
consequent re-action of counter-attack and the massacre thereof 
when it develops. 
But there were particular features in the Frencn anair 
which differentiated it. 
In the first place, there was the exceedingly important 
capture of Craonne ; in the second place, there "was the un- 
expectedly large number of jjrisoners. 
When the Canadians took Vimy fridge in the very first 
day of the British offensive on liastcr Monday, they captured 
the key points for observation and made the British mas- 
ters in artillery of the Uouai Plain and of the Lens region. 
The French did not obtain an advantage of this kind 
when their effort followed a week later ujxm April ibth. 
They reached at certain points tin; ridge of the Craonne 
Plateau, wliich is followed by the Chcmin des Dames, and 
that was immensely valuable" as against tlie counter-attacks 
that were to follow. But as regards obsei'vation they did not 
seize the capital point. It will be remembered that I pointed 
out in a prexious article the very high value of the flat pro- 
montory in which the ridge terminates, a promontory whicli 
bears immediately upon its edge the village of Craonne. In 
the old wars it was a decisive position for anv fighting in this 
'region, for it dominates the whole plain. Even with tlie enor- 
mously increased, ]wwer of the modern defensive the pos- 
session of the Craonne terminator has the supreme advantage 
of observation. I have already compared it in a previous 
article to Black Down in the South of England, from whence 
one overlooks Su.ssex and Hampshire. Another parallel 
is I the position of the town of Shaftesbury. The Craonne 
terminator hangs over the whole jilain of Western Champagne. 
You see everything from it. From the rest of the ridge you 
■ Kjok down into the Ailettc valley, but you see no more," for 
beyond the valley is another high and steep ridge of wooded 
liills to the north A -B on Map II. But this range to the 
north docs not project eastward beyond the Craonne Plateau, 
and therefore does not mask the view from the latter. 
When the French attacked on Friday, the 4th of May, they 
seized the ruins of Craonne and the promontory 1 have de- 
scribed—not quite :dl the western part of the hill on which is 
the still disputed and half retained German redoubt called 
