A German offensive against our front has opened. At about five o╒clock this morning the enemy began an intense bombardment of our lines and batteries on a very wide front, something like 60 miles, from the country south of the Scarpe, in the neighbourhood of Croisilles, as far south as our positions, between St. Quentin and our right flank.
After several hours of this hurricane shelling, in which it is probable that a great deal of gas was used with the intention of creating a poison-gas atmosphere around our gunners and forward posts, the German infantry advanced and developed attacks against a number of strategical points on a front of about 25 miles between the Scarpe and Hargicourt (ten miles north of St. Quentin). Whether they have attacked still further south I do not yet know.
Among the places against which they seem to have directed their chief efforts are three west of Cambrai ╤ Bullecourt, the scene of so much hard fighting last year by the Australians, Scottish and London troops, and Lagnicourt and Noreuil, where they once before penetrated our lines and were slaughtered. The St. Quentin ridge, which was on the right of the Cambrai fighting, and the two villages of Roussoy and Hargicourt, south of the Cambrai salient, have also been attacked.
The Great Offensive?
It is impossible to say yet how far the enemy will endeavour to follow up the initial movement of his troops over any ground he may gain in the first rush or with what strength he will press forward his supporting divisions and fling his storm troops into the struggle. But the attack already appears to be on a formidable scale, with a vast amount of artillery and masses of men, and there is reason to believe that it may be indeed the beginning of a great offensive advertised for so long a time and with such ferocious menaces, by the enemy╒s agents in neutral countries. If so, it is a bid for a decisive victory on the western front at no matter what sacrifice and with the fullest brutalities of every engine of war, gathered together during months of preparation and liberated entirely for this front by the downfall of Russia.
To-day I can give no details of the fighting, but will reserve all attempts to give a clear insight into the situation until my next message, when out of the hurricane of fire now spreading over 60 miles or more of the battlefields there will come certain knowledge of the fighting. At the moment there are only scraps of news from one part of the front and another ╤ unconfirmed rumours, reports of ground given or taken, and the vague tidings of men hard pressed but holding out against repeated onslaughts. It would be a wicked, senseless thing to make use of these uncertain fragments from many sources, and some hours must pass before it becomes clear how much the enemy has gained by his first blow and how much he has failed to gain against the heroic resistance of our troops.
Cambrai ╥Pincers.╙
The immediate endeavour of the enemy seems obvious. It is an enlargement of his strategical plan in the attack of November 30 against the lines we held after the first Cambrai battle, and it covers the same ground on a much wider boundary. He appears to be assaulting both wings of the salient between the Scarpe and the south end of the Flesquieres ridge in order to cut off all the intervening ground, which includes Havrincourt Wood and Velu Wood, the line south of Morchies and Beaumetz, and a stretch of the country east and south-east of Bapaume which he abandoned to us in his retreat last March after the battles of his Somme. By a rapid turning movement from both wings he would hope to capture many of our men and guns.
It is a menace which cannot be taken lightly, and at the present moment our troops are fighting not only for their own lives but also for the fate of England and all our race. During the last few weeks I have been along the sectors now involved in this battle, and have met the men who to-day are fighting to hold their lines against the enemy╒s storm troops under the fury of his fire. I have observed the spirit of these men of ours, their confidence, their splendid faith, their quiet and cheerful courage, their lack of worry until this hour should come, the curious incredulity they had that the enemy would dare to attack them because of the strength of their positions and of our great gunfire.
Fully warned and fully trained.
But though many of them were incredulous of a great attack, they had been fully warned and fully trained, and were on the alert day and night. By labour that never ceased, they wired-in their positions with acres of wire and strengthened their defences and made their gun positions, and they wore their gas masks so often and so long that it has become a habit with them.
The enemy╒s attack to-day has been no surprise, for it has been expected every day, though many people at home have suspected that the German threats were all bluff. It is not bluff so far as to-day╒s battle shows, but appears to be the real thing in all its brutal force.
The heart of all the people of our race must go out to these battalions upon whom our destiny depends, and who now, while I write, are making a wall with their bodies against the evil and the power of our enemy.
