12 
Land & Water 
August 15, 19 1 8 
the Avre River at Hailcs. The northern part of tliis ground 
between the brook Luce and parallel course of the Somme is 
a bare plateau diversified only by a few small woods, a mass 
of cornland without hedges, dotted with a few villages and 
nowhere presenting any serious natural obstacles. Its name 
is the Plateau of Santerre, which last word is the local title 
of the whole countryside. 
The valley of the Somme, which bounds this plateau on 
the north, is wide and very marshy ; the river itself is re- 
duced there to Httle more than a slugeish brook, the main 
part of its water being taken for the tmlial which has been 
dug all along the depression and which is flanked everywhere 
by broad shallow ponds, which are impassable on account 
of the deep mud they cover and which surrounds them. 
It is important to appreciate this character of the Somme 
valley as it plays a great part in the story of the action. 
South of the Lvice, the plateau (which still bears the name 
of Santerre) reproduces the character of its northern part, 
save that it is slightly more wooded., and though the woods 
are small and isolated they afford considerable obstacles to 
an advance, or rather they would have afforded it had they 
been fully organised. A small portion of the battlefield lies 
outside the Santerre district to the north. It is beyond the 
Somme and consists in the triangle between Villc on the 
Ancre below Albert and Chipilly above the Somme valley 
to the south. It is, as we shall see in a moment, the portion 
upon which least advance was made, and where the enemy 
had his best chances of reaction. But it is only a very small 
belt, 6,000 yards round by less than 2,000 deep. All the 
main development of the action took place south of the 
Somme. The original line of the sector from which the attack 
was launched ran thus : 
Leaving the valley of the Ancre at Ville it passed west 
of Morlancourt ; it came down between the two Sailly's 
(Sailly-le-Sec and Sailly Laurette), then struck south-west- 
ward covering Villers-Bretonncux — where the enemy made his 
big effort some weeks ago to push on to Amiens— continued 
west of south through the wood of Hangard, and passed the 
ruins of that village where it came to the Luce valle}', with 
the Roman road from Amiens to Roye and Noyon immedi- 
ately on the far side of the marsh. All this portion of the 
line, riot quite 20,000 yards as the crow flies, and perhaps 
22,000 or 23,000 counting its sinuosities (that is, rather more 
than 12 miles) was held by the British 4th Army under 
the command of Sir Henry Rawlinson. There faced it a 
fairly dense enemy formation — as was to be expected on the 
most important sector of all the west — or, at least, the sector 
upon which had the enemybeen able to attack later the most 
important results would be obtained. 
No less than seven enemy divisions — that is, a division 
to less than two miles— were aligned upon this front. They 
were the following, counting frorn north to south : 
The 27th north of the Somme, then, in order southward 
down to the Luce, the 43rd, the 13th, the 41st, the 109th, 
the 25th. and the 14th. The latter was in process of relief 
by the iiyth Division at the moment when the battle was 
engaged, a circumstance which led to the complete dis- 
array of both units with large captures of prisoners from each. 
From beyond the Roman road where it crosses the Luce 
valley, the French ist Army under General Debeny held the 
line cutting across the high land in the triangle between 
the Luce and the Avre, crossing the Avre valley at Castel, and 
then coming along the escarpment which overlooks that valley 
west of Morisel, upon the positions that were talcen from 
the Germans some weeks ago by one of those local attacks, 
the importance of which we have always emphasised here 
because they lay the foundations for these great offensive 
movements. 
THE FIRST ATTACK 
The French ist Army thus engaged on only some three miles 
of line and made the whole extent of the front about to be 
attacked from Ville down to Braches a trifle over 15 miles. 
Concentration had been effected under cover of darkness 
upon a moonless night, and though the troops had not the 
advantage which had been enjoyed in the great counter- 
offensive of July i8th — the cover of a forest — the enemy 
got no hint of the gathering that was taking place against 
him. The rain of the previous days had ceased, but at the 
end of the night a dense mist favourable to the intended 
operation arose over the whole ground. Just in the grey 
of the darkness, before it was fully light, A sudden and most 
intense bombardment was opened against the enemy lines 
all the way down from Villeto Braches. It lasted but three or 
four minutes, after which the attack was delivered with many 
hundred tanks and light armoured cars ("machine guns on 
wheels," as they have been called), and the whole enemy line 
was taken completely by surprise. The forward move unrolled 
itself from north to south, beginning on the left or north 
at half-past four ; launched on the right or south bej'ond 
Moreuil nearer five. It was distinguished by the general 
feature that on the two wings there was serious German 
resistance, but in the centre complete Allied success and very 
rapid movement forward. 
Before dealing with the events of this first day, Thursday. 
August 8th, we must return to certain ]:)oints in the character 
of the ground which make comprehensible what follows. 
The northern part of the Santerre Plateau is traversed by 
the great Roman road from Amiens to St. Quentin as by an 
axis. The southern part is traversed in similar fashicjn 
b}' the great Rornan road to Roye and Noyon. Both these 
roads have been continuously kept up and are broad first- 
class highways to-day. The whole countryside is well 
provided with hard roads and is dry in the nature of its soil. 
Now as the success of this attack has very largely depended 
upon the use of wheeled vehicles, the armoured car and the 
new light and rapid type of tank, not to speak of the very 
rapid advance of the field artillery, both the nature of the 
ground and the presence of roads was of importance. But 
what we have particularly to note is the part played by the 
two great Roman roads diverging from Longueau near Amiens, 
the one going due east to St. Quentin and the other south- 
east towards Noyon. These were the sreat arteries of advance 
for the British in the north and the French upon their right 
to the south, and it was along them that the chief results 
were obtained. The two pieces of ground where resistance 
was likely to be strongest and was, in fact, most thoroughly 
developed, were on the Avre and noith of the Somme, that 
is, on the two extremes, right and left of the German line 
opposed to us. The reason of this was two- fold. First, 
the ground lent itself to defence, and secondly, in both sectors 
the enemy had recently been una\'oidably kept upon the 
alert by the preparations which were made for this great 
attack. It will be remembered that one of the local actions 
which laid the foundation of it took place recently at Morlan- 
court on the north, and that on the south in the Avre valley 
the enemy had withdrawn eastward to secure his positions, 
being in a natural dread, after what happened in the pocket 
of the Marrie, of assault at the place where assault would 
bear the most fruit. 
But this slight forewarning of the enemy, as it were, at 
the northern and southern ends of the sectors attacked, was 
less important than his advantage of position. From Mor- 
lancourt he looks down an open valle\' completely swept 
by his fire towards Ville, and from the height above the village 
and just south of it he has a similar glacis sweeping down to 
Sailly Laurette on the Somme valley below. 
Meanwhile the ground for attack is cramped by the impos- 
sibility of rapid commvmication and support across the broad 
and marshy Somme valley. At the other end of the line by 
Moreuil there are two disadvantages. First, the fact that 
bare slopes run down in a glacis to the river Avre, sweeping 
everywhere by fire from above, and secondly, that the tanks, 
which were the great tactical instrument of this battle could 
not be used jintil the Avre itself had been crossed and held 
and passage across it established. Therefore it was that we 
shall see the extreme left and the extreme right of the action, 
the end by Morlancourt on the north and the end by Moreuil 
on the south, the scene of stubborn and at first inconclusive 
fighting. 
RESULTS OF THE SURPRISE 
The complete surprise which the enemy suffered had at 
the first blow this main result : The centfe, composed of 
British troops led by the new rapid and small tanks, swept 
a± an extraordinary pace forward along the axis of the Roman 
road from Amiens to St. Quentin. We have no details as 
yet as to the stages of the movement, but we know that before 
evening the advance positions lay beyond Framerville, and 
therefore just across the main road from Albert to Montdidier. 
The great importance of this crossing was that it cut the 
enemy's lateral road communication ; for the moment we 
are only concerned with ground. Behind the rapidly 
advancing tanks the cavalry moved on either side of the road 
and rounded up masses of prisoners and material, including 
in one case a whole train, which was being Sent up along the 
line from Chaulnes to try to save the broken front. Cor- 
respondents have noticed the comparative ^veakness of the 
defence all across the Santerre Plateau. 
It was a series of isolated po.sitions thinly wired and depend- 
ent mainly upon organised shell holes. The surprise was so 
complete that at Bayonvillers, nearlv three miles from the 
point of departure, the tanks found a German regimental 
mess at breakfast, and we have numerous stories how in 
