April 4, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
Upon this action a short digression may be permitted ; for 
though local, it was of extreme importance. 
The enemy mustered here no less than ten divisions with 
the special object of breaking the hinge, a success the effect 
of which would have been to shake the whole line and compel 
we know not what dangerous and rapid modification of it 
to the south. 
Not onlv the place, but the time, is worthy of special 
attention. By this, the seventh day of the action , it was already 
apparent that the enemy was prepared to throw in ultimately the 
full 100 divisions of which we have spoken, and much more than 
three-quarters of them had been already compelled to suffer 
the strain of the enormous conflict. His losses, which were 
in the ratio of anything between 2| to 3 times those of tlie 
defensive, had reached something like a quarter of a million 
and may have approached the larger total of 300,000. It 
may be an exaggeration to say that one man out of three 
in the troops used for attack had fallen ; but as a rough 
gauge of the proportion it would not be greatly in excess of 
the truth. We must remember in this connection that these 
gigantic totals have quite a different meaning in an action 
of this sort, compelled by political circumstance and therefore 
depending wholly upon rapidity, from what they had in the 
long .drawn out struggles of Verdun and the Somme. This 
is true not only from the obvious fact that time permits 
the training of new recruitment and its gradual absorption, 
and is still more valuable in permitting the return of wounded 
men, but also from the effect of such enormou.sly rapid losses 
upon organisation and moral. The Germans had certainly 
not reached the maximum loss which they had budgeted for as 
the very maximum they could afford for the price of complete 
success. They therefore certainly intended to throw in fresh 
units with equal vigour for many days more rather than 
abandon their hope of ultimately breaking the line. But tlie 
limit was approaching much nearer than had been allowed 
for in 90 short an interval and undoubtedly gave cause for 
anxiety. The enemy press was already being instructed 
to warn opinion within the German Empire of the severity 
of these losses and to say all it could to prepare opinion for 
their reception. 
Note, for all these reasons, the importance of the effort 
before Arras begun upon this Wednesday, and continued 
till Thursday evening. This first great assault upon the 
Arras hinge was fiercely prosecuted, but completely failed. 
On the north of the Scarpe if reached the foot of the Vimy - 
Ridge, and just touched the lower southern heights of it, 
but went no further. Here the British position was, of 
CpiauuzlBpi^ish£>ine 
Line ifKBTz w/iicA German 
Line wAere it/ai^ed 
■4000 VODO 
Yards 
Ikigh£s above 120/mirBS 
■Sooo ' ■ so ■■ ,////// 
course, strongest, and it is possible that the enemy did not 
envisage his principal success here, for by a success to the 
south of the Scarpe he would have turned the heights, could 
have compelled a retirement from the Vimy Ridge, and 
thus disengaged the whole area. In other words, he would 
have broken the hinge if he had succeeded, as he spent the 
utmost energy in attempting to do south of the Scarpe. 
The battle continued all during the Thursday, wher it 
reached its height, and was observed and directed by the 
enemy from the hill of Monchy, which he had capturedsome 
days before, and whence the whole of the country south of 
Arras lies below one to the west. 
By 9 o'clock of the Thursday morning the German 12th 
Reserve Division had gained somewhat over a thousand 
yards of ground, and reached what were their supporting 
trenches before the battle of Arras this time last year. It 
was behcved, on account of the importance of the point, 
that a second attempt would be made upon the Friday or, 
at any rate, upon the Saturday, when fresh troops could be 
brought up ; but no such development followed, and the 
last dispatches received — those reachiiig -London upon the 
Sunday — give no news of any continued effort to shake the 
pivot point in the north. But it may well be renewed by a 
continued attempt to turn Arras from the south. 
Captured documents during this action show — what was 
also obvious from its nature — that the enemy's purpose was 
to turn the Vimy Ridge from the south and to enter Arras 
itself, and in the course of the second day it was established 
that the total forces mentioned above — no less than six 
divisions engaged in the . first attack and four brought in 
later — had been engaged. In other words, upon this com- 
paratively narrow front — a sixteenth of the whole line^ — 
more than an eighth of the whole of the German units hitherto 
thrown in had appeared and had been broken without attain- 
ing the success they, had aimed at. The Field-Marshal 
characterised the whole operation as a severe defeat for the 
enemy. The phrase is a strong one, but not too strong for 
tTie result when we consider the very great importance to 
the enemy of attaining the objects he sought here. 
From this digression, we may return to the main action 
southward. 
We left the Allied line (after the enemy had forced, the 
crossing of the Somme near Chipilly, and thus compelled 
the falling back of the British to the neighbourhood of Hamel) 
running north with little indentation from the sharp comer 
just west and south of Montdidier, covering Pierrepont, 
Hamel, and west of Albert, near Rossignol Wood, and so 
near Bucquoy up to the positions in front of Arras, which 
were the scene of the action just described. The enemy 
counted at this stage, when the line had reached a fairly 
even trace from Montdidier to the Vimy Ridge, 70,000 
prisoners and over a thousand guns. 
On the Friday, the 29th, his activity north of the Somme 
slackened, but south of the Somme he fought very hard to 
advance his line, and a large and continuous concentration 
beyond it was observable proceeding during the whole day. 
He pushed forward to just beyond Hamel, some hundred 
yards west of Marcelcave, and reached his furthest western 
point in the fields just west of the ruins of Demuin. So much 
for the -British section upon that day — Friday, the 29th. 
Upon the heights just west of Demuin was the point where 
the French, relieving the English line, were in contact with 
them upon that day. The French held the ruins of Meziferes ; 
thence their line bent back towards the Avre, covering 
Laneuville, Pierrepont, and Gratibus. It stood, therefore, 
just in front of the little stream of the .\vre and upon the 
heights dominating its depression from the East. The 
stream is here not difficult to cross, and forms .no serious 
obstacle. Were it otherwise, the line would have been taken 
up upon the west of it. It crossed the small tributary of 
the Avre, the brook of Doms, somewhere in the neighbour- 
hood of Courtemanche and held the heights, the crown of 
which is marked by the village of Mesnil St. Georges, west 
of Montdidier. 
Jr From that point, as will be seen upon the map, the second 
and now quite separate southern face of the enemy's great 
angle begins. It runs round through the hamlet of Montchel, 
where it crosses the marshy little sources of the Doms Brook, 
uncovers Lassigny, and reaches the Oise in the neighbourhood 
of Pont L'Ev^que. 
Now, it is to this southern face that we should direct 
particular attention if we are to understand the enemy's 
position upon Saturday and Sunday last, after which dates 
we have no material upon which to study the action for the 
purposes of this article. 
This southern face is of the last importance to the enemy. 
It has developed in a fashion which he did not allow for 
when he laid down his plan for the great attack. 
