Land & Water 
March 28, i()iB 
In the course oi tlu'-c- iiist uiai<itions, covering three days, 
the line had remained intact. The enemy's total claim to 
prisoners and guns covered some 25.000 prisoners and 400 
pieces, the greater part of which, of course, are field pieces 
which had been pushed right forward to take their toll of 
the enemy masses. Unfortunately, we cannot at this early 
<tage estimate with any degree of accuracy the essential 
(joint of all. which is the expense to which the enemy has 
been put to accomplisli this preliminary advance. We know 
that it must, in the nature of things, be exceedingly high ; 
the attack w;is pressed with very dense masses, used deliber- 
ately under the theory that exceedingly heavy initial losses 
were worth while. The failure to reach the original objectives 
of the rin;t and second days must have involved an even 
higher casualty list than had been budgeted for, and the 
weakening of the 30 divisions thrown in to the first 48 hours' 
attack wa.s already sufficient, by Saturday, to compel the 
enemy to reorganisation and very large reinforcement for 
the n xt phase of the straggle. 
More than that we cannot say, but we note that the number 
of prisoners taken is less than those attaching to any corre- 
sponding great offensive in the war, front for front and 
nuiubers engaged for numbers engaged. The loss in guns, 
including, as it does, field pieces pushed up towards the 
front hne is more considerable. But the figures point to 
no decisive result upon any part of the line. They do not 
even, so far as we have liitherto received them from the 
enemy, point to any effective disorganisation upon the 
.sector west of St. Quentin, where they penetrated the third 
or main line of the defending army. 
The Action 
At half-past 5 — that is, just before dawn — on the morning 
of Wednesday, the 2rst of March, the enemy opened his 
intensive bombardment, stretching from his positions upon 
the River Oise upon the south to his positions upon the 
River Scarpe upon the north. 
The front upon which this preparatory bombardment was 
delivered exceeds in extent that of any other similar effort 
undertaken by either side in the course of the war. The 
distance, as the crow flies, from Roeux, upon the canalised 
River Scarpe, to Vendeuil upon th^ Oise is, as we have seen, 
76,000 yards, or somewhat over 43 miles ; and the front 
attacked, in all its sinuosities, to well over 50. The 
bombardment, though short, was of the most intense char- 
acter ; more severe, in spite of the very great extent of the 
line, than any which had preced^ed it. It included long- 
distance firing far behind the fronts and a particularly heavy 
destruction of the wire by the use of trench weapons which 
had been brought up in very great numbers to the most 
advanced positions upon the German side. Towards the 
dose of the bombardment the proportion of gas shells used 
was strongly increased and particularly directed against the 
British batteries and cross-roads and points of concentration 
beliind the line. The increase in the volume of gas delivered 
wa^ an indication that the infantry attack was at hand. 
This attack was not launched simultaneously along the whole 
line, but, according to separate orders, from just after nine 
till close on ten in the forenoon— with an exceptionally early 
movement in one place shortly after 8. The advance of the 
infantry was nearly co-extensive with the hne of bombard- 
ment. It stretched on the north to the valley of the Sens^e 
Stream (some 6,000 yards, or 3J miles, south of the Scarpe). 
On the southern end of the line the infantry attack was 
delivered up to the River Oise itself. 
If this front as it stood before the opening of the battle 
be examined, it will be seen that its trace formed a consider- 
able salient before Cambrai ; the most advanced point of which 
salient was the series of trenches which marked the end 
of the retirement from the Cambrai battle-field after the 
initial success and subsequent retirement of last November. 
The first effort of the enemy during the course of Thursday! 
March 2rst, was clearly designed to increase the curve and 
therefore the peril of this salient by attacking it to the north 
and to the south, the chief concentrations of German troops 
being discovered' in the valley of the Sensee, to the north, in 
front of Croisillcs, and in front of Epehy to the south. ' A 
sufficiently rapid advance upon either of these points might 
have cut off all that lay between and have resulted in a very 
considerable capture of men and guns in the intervening 
projection. The proportion of pressure exercised at these 
two points will be dealt with in a moment. 
Meanwhile, a third special effort designed to turn the 
Bntish line as a whole by its' right was begun on the extreme 
south just north of the Oise, with the object of throwing 
the British in that neighbourhood back upon, and beyond, 
the Crozat Canal: there was thus a repetition, on a large 
scale, of the attack on two distant points, with the object of 
"pinching" the intermediate portion and making a wide 
gap, which the enemy has invariably used in east and west. 
The number of the enemj' divisions between Switzer- 
land and the North Sea we have seen to be 186. There 
is a possible adtlition of four more divisions bringing 
the total up to 190, and others hitherto within the Central 
Empires may arrive. Of these 186 divisions, rather more 
than half, 96 divisions, were aligned against the British 
between the Oise and the lower reaches of the Yser, north 
of Ypres. Not all these 186 or 190 divisions can be used 
for active work on the front ; a certain proportion being 
composed of material inadequate to such a strain. No 
estimate save of the very roughest kind can be made of 
the proportion thus to be eliminated, because the fittest 
men can be chosen from units which are, as a whole unfit 
for use in the shock, a"nd because we are necessarily in doubt 
as to the exact condition of these units and can only judge 
them by their composition as indicated by their categories. 
But if we say that certainly less than 20 per cent, but a 
great deal more than 10 per cent., may be thus regarded 
as unable to appear on the front of shock even in the later 
developments of the struggle, we have the limits of the 
calculation defined as nearly as is possible. It is clear, of 
course, that all the best units available will have been chosen 
for this main effort. 
Of the 40 divisions originally mustered to strike the first 
blow all the way from the Sensee Brook to the Oise, the dis- 
tribution was very unequal. The work of this first day 
was mainly concerned, as I have said, with an attempted 
reduction of the Cambrai salient, and it was upon this work, 
though it was subsidiary to the main object developed the 
next day of turning the British by their extreme right upon 
the Oise, that the principal effort was made. More than 
half of the total force lay just north and just south of the 
Cambrai salient. Nor is it possible to regard so very large 
a force as designed for a feint even in the most, general sense 
of the term. 25 of the 40 divisions were to be found thus 
attempting to cut off the area of which the village of Havrin- 
court is the most prominent point, and if we add the 6 
divisions used south of St. Quentin there are only nine 
left for those intervening parts of the line which were less 
severely pressed. 
At the first onslaught, then, that of the Thursday, the chief 
sector of the whole front attacked and that to which we 
must particularly direct our attention, was the sector stretch- 
ing frdm the valley of the Sensee, near Cherisy, to the 
neighbourhood of Havrincourt village in front of Flesquiferes. 
This is a front of roughly 20,000 yards, over a quarter of 
the whole of the battle line, but much less than one-tliird. 
It was here that the enemy intended, if possible, to effect a 
breach at the very first shock, and certainly designed to 
reach objectives far beyond the third or main line of the 
British defensive system. He had massed altogether on 
these 20,000 yards no less than 17 divisions, or 42 per cent, 
of the whole of his original attacking force. The extreme 
right by Fontaine held. What followed between that point 
and the point 12 miles away by Havrincourt can only be 
gathered very imperfectly and with difficulty so early in the 
action from the brief dispatches sent home and from the 
longer descriptions of correspondents ; but the main facts 
would seem to have been these : 
From the valley of the Sensee, south of Fontaine, the 
object of the enemy was to reach the heights of Henin, where 
the land falls away from the Arras-Bapaume road and also 
beyond the brook the heights of St. Leger. Both these 
points were covered by the British main defensive or third 
hne. This line continued on southward and eastward, 
covering what were the points where once stood Vraucourt, 
Vaulx, Morchies, and Beaumetz, and so to the neighbourhood 
of Havrincourt. Of the 17 divisions used upon this total 
sector, the greater part, 9 divisions, were crowded into the 
crescent between the Sensee brook near Cherisy and the 
neighbourhood of the railway beyond BuUecourt, a distance 
of less than 9,000 yards ; and this exceedingly dense mass 
—by far the heaviest weight of men used anywhere on this 
field— broke right through back to the third line, but on the 
third line failed. 
I had almost written that it was the heaviest concentration 
for an assault which this war had seen. There was something 
like it, if wc allow for the larger size of the divisions in those 
days, when the Third Corps from Brandenburg and its neigh- 
bour upon the right stormed the Douaumont Plateau in the 
first days of Verdun, 25 months ago ; but that is the only 
parallel to the use of such dense masses. 
The result was achieved with very heavy losses indeed. 
How high must, of course, be a matter of guess-work until 
much more information is available^ but much of the firing 
