The British army has struck the enemy another heavy blow north of the Somme. Attacking shortly after dawn yesterday morning on a front of more than six miles north-east from Combles, it now occupies a new strip of reconquered territory including three fortified villages behind the German third line and many local positions of great strength.
Fighting has continued since without intermission, and the initiative remains with our troops, who made further advances beyond Courcelette, Martinpuich, and Flers to-day. After the first shock yesterday morning, when the enemy surrendered freely, showing signs of demoralisation, there has been stubborn resistance, and much of the ground gained afterwards was only wrested from him by the determination and strength of the British battalions pitted against him. The Bavarian and German divisions have fought well, but nevertheless they have been steadily pushed backwards from the line they took up after their first defeats in the Somme campaign.
British patrols have approached Eaucourt l╒Abbaye and Geudecourt, and while no definite information is obtainable to-night regarding the exact extent of our gains they are rather more than the territory described in detail in this despatch. The battle is not over. Famous British regiments are lying in the open to-night holding their position with the greatest heroism. All that the enemy can do in the way of artillery reprisals he is doing to-night. But despite the tenacity with which the reinforced German troops are clinging to their positions everything gained has been maintained. Progress may not be at the same speed as in the first assault yesterday morning, but it is thorough and none the less sure.
TAKEN STREET BY STREET.
The story of the capture of Courcelette and Martinpuich, which were wrested from the Bavarians virtually street by street yesterday, will be as dramatic as any narrative told in this war. They are the chief episodes in the first two days of this offensive, but I can only give a bare summary now of the furious conflict which raged for possession of these obscure ruined villages. There are evidences that the unexpected British offensive disorganised the plans of the German higher command for an important counter-attack to recover the ground lost since July 1. Heavy concentrations of infantry were taking place, and the unusually strong resistance on the British left was due to the presence of an abnormal number of troops behind Martinpuich and Courcelette. In spite of this the divisions taking part in yesterday╒s attack splendidly achieved their purpose.
Particularly heavy and somewhat confused fighting has continued throughout to-day in the region between Combles, Morval, and Ginchy. We have pushed northward west of Lesboeufs to a point about opposite the centre of the village, and other gains have been made in this area, but at certain points the Germans cling to their shallow trenches and craters, and the enemy is directing a continuous and terrific fire from the east with both heavy howitzers and machine-guns, and elsewhere behind his new line his artillery ╤ approximately a thousand guns in this sector ╤ has been indulging in profuse counter-bombardments.
THE ARMOURED CARS.
Armoured cars working with the infantry were the great surprise of this attack. Sinister, formidable, and industrious, these novel machines pushed boldly into ╥No Man╒s Land,╙ astonishing our soldiers no less than they frightened the enemy. Presently I shall relate some strange incidents of their first grand tour in Picardy, of Bavarians bolting before them like rabbits and others surrendering in picturesque attitudes of terror, and the delightful story of the Bavarian colonel who was carted about for hours in the belly of one of them like Jonah in the whale, while his captors slew the men of his broken division.
It is too soon yet to advertise their best points to an interested world. The entire army nevertheless is talking about them, and you might imagine that yesterday╒s operation was altogether a battle of armed chauffeurs if you listened to the stories of some of the spectators. They inspired confidence and laughter. No other incident of the war has created such amusement in the face of death as their debut before the trenches of Martinpuich and Flers. Their quaintness and seeming air of profound intelligence commended them to a critical audience. It was as though one of Mr. Heath Robinson╒s jokes had been utilised for a deadly purpose, and one laughed even before the dire effect on the enemy was observed.
STROLLING DOWN THE HIGH STREET.
╥Walking wounded╙ grinned through their bandages and grime as they talked of these extraordinary beasts while waiting their turn at the advanced dressing stations. Even the stretcher cases chuckled as they lay in the ambulances. I heard the fragment of one conversation as a grievously wounded man was lifted out at a casualty clearing station..... ╥And he says, ╘Lord, there was one of them iron boxes strolling down the high street of Flers like it was Sunday afternoon.╒......╙ The man who invented these new and efficient machines of destruction deserves much of the army, if for no more than that he has made it laugh as it fought, not the laughter of ridicule but of admiration.
ALL THE PLATEAU HELD.
This victory means more than the mere piercing of the enemy╒s third line. At last we are sitting on the coveted plateau looking down on the country around Bapaume. No longer are British troops dominated by a watchful foe who could watch every movement in their lines while artfully screening his own. Posieres was the first slice bitten out of this German stronghold, with its chain of redoubts and fortified rubbish-heaps. With it was won the end of the ridge, but farther east the British line dipped below it to High Wood and beyond, and not until the fighting around Ginchy this week did it struggle up to the edge of the plateau before dropping again below Morval to the outskirts of Combles, which are lower still.
Immediately behind the German third line which protected this ridge lie the ruined villages of Martinpuich, Flers, Lesboeufs, and Morval, which had been transformed into nests of subterranean forts of the usual type, connected always with hidden emplacements for machine-guns and snipers and concrete, steel-sheathed observation posts for artillery officers. Small plantations and isolated clumps of trees between these points gave shelter to other groups of machine-gunners, while such landmarks as the windmill north-west of Lesboeufs and the quarry sugar factory and mill of Martinpuich, afforded additional opportunities for defensive works. Of the villages themselves no vestiges remain. They disappeared long before yesterday morning╒s bombardment and the complete effacement of certain familiar marks added to the difficulties of the troops which had to advance from one designated point to another.
SUPREMACY IN THE AIR.
At the very commencement of the battle the triumphant supremacy of British aeroplanes in the sky above was clear to every observer. While batteries of all calibres were pouring a deluge of red-hot metal into the battered German trenches air squadrons passed back and forth unhindered by the wild efforts of German gunners to drive them off. It was a beautiful sight as the British machines, shimmering like silver birds poised gracefully against the morning sun, steered serenely through the belt of bursting shrapnel, patrolling the heavens and frequently darting down to within a few hundred yards of the advancing troops to fire their machine-guns at the Bavarian infantry sheltered beyond the barrage. White puff balls burst angrily below them, behind them and in front of them, but the pilots sailed where they would though the horizon was pitted almost to its furthest edge and the German gunners hurled shells aloft profusely and recklessly.
Not a single enemy aeroplane ventured beyond the dead-line, and the batteries they should have served were half-blinded by their failure. Hostile sausage balloons swung at a cable╒s end, but far from the British guns they sought to silence. There were fierce aerial combats in the first tremendous hour of battle and afterwards. German headquarters establishments in the villages behind were bombed, an enemy train burned furiously at Bapaume station. Fokkers and Rolands and other hostile aircraft were attacked wherever they lifted their wings above the fields. Thirteen destroyed and four others down, and three kite balloons sent blazing to destruction ╤ that is the summary of what the ╥eyes of the army╙ accomplished as our troops pressed forward.
SlOW, STEADY ADVANCE.
No phase of the advance itself would have appeared to an eye-witness as dramatic, even though he had followed it step by step. Could you have looked beyond the veil yesterday morning at the creeping barrage and the men who came after you would have seen nothing more than single figures strolling across the fields, stepping rather carefully as they went. No one ran. A group might pause for a talk together and then resume the promenade. Some-times a group was thinned imperceptibly. You would not have seen men dropping while their comrades dashed ahead. A man was there in the sunlight ╤ and then he was not. The craters swallowed up dead and wounded alike. Just bare fields and a crowd of men out for a morning walk ╤ that was how the attack looked.
The Taking of Flers.
Flers fell into British hands comparatively easily. The troops sent against it from the north of Delville Wood, astride of the sunken road leading to its southern extremity, reached the place in three easy laps supported by armoured cars. As a preliminary measure one car planted itself at the north-east corner of the wood before dawn and cleared a small enemy party from two connected trenches. It was not a difficult task for the ╥boches╙ promptly surrendered. The first halting-place of the Flers-bound troops was a German switch-trench north-east of Ginchy, part of the so-called third line, which they reached at the time appointed. There was a slight obstacle in the form of a redoubt constructed at the angle of the line where it crossed the Ginchy-Lesboeufs road. Machine-gun fire was well directed from this work, but two armoured cars came up and poured a destructive counter-fire into it, and then one of the many watchful aeroplanes swooped down almost within hailing distance and joined in the battle. The dismayed Bavarians promptly yielded to this strange alliance. Armoured cars and aeroplane went their several ways and the infantry carried on. The redoubt sheltered a dressing station where there were a number of German wounded.
The second phase of the Flers advance brought the attackers to the trenches at the end of the village. Little resistance was offered. Here, again, the armoured cars came forward. One of them managed to enfilade the trench both ways, killing nearly everyone in it, and then another car started up the main street, or what was the main street in pre-war days, escorted, as one spectator puts it ╥by the cheering British army.╙
It was a magnificent progress. You must imagine this unimaginable engine stalking majestically amid the ruins followed by the men in khaki, drawing the dispossessed Bavarians from their holes in the ground like a magnet and bringing them blinking into the sunlight to stare at their captors, who laughed instead of killing them. Picture its passage from one end of the ruins of Flers to the other, leaving infantry swarming through the dug-outs behind, on out of the northern end of the village, past more odds and ends of defensive positions, up the road to Gneudecourt, halting only at the outskirts. Before turning back it silenced a battery and a half of artillery, captured the gunners, and handed them over to the infantry. Finally, it retraced its foot-steps with equal composure to the old British line at the close of a profitable day. The German officers taken in Flers have not yet assimilated the scene of their capture, the crowded ╥High Street,╙ and the cheering bomb-throwers marching behind the travelling fort, which displayed on one armoured side the startling placard, ╥Great Hun Defeat. Extra Special!╙
