in good order to the Hindenburg Line, where he hoped to stand on the defence over the winter. But these key positions were now being rushed too fast to permit of an orderly retreat, and so the Hindenburg defences proved of no avail, and before the end of October the Germans were a defeated army.
Of all the key positions the strongest was that of Mont St. Quentin, which commanded the old town of Péronne on the north. Péronne, as readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember, was the scene of some of the adventures of Quentin Durward. It had fallen into British hands in March 1917, when the Germans first retired to the Hindenburg Line. It had been lost in the great enemy onslaught of the following March. It was a very strong place, defended on the south and west by the links of the marshy Somme, and on the north by the low ridge called Mont St. Quentin, which provided superb gun positions. The place was held by one of the best of the German Divisions brought up from the reserve, the 2nd Prussian Guards. Their orders were to maintain it at all costs, for unless Mont St. Quentin was held, Péronne would fall, and if Péronne fell it would be a very battered remnant that would struggle back to the main Hindenburg Line.
Sir Henry Rawlinson, the commander of the British Fourth Army, believed that the fight for Péronne would be long and difficult, and he entrusted it to the Australian Corps, who were unsurpassed for their fighting quality by any army in the world. This corps now performed the impossible, and in a single day's fighting, and with few losses, swept the enemy from Mont St. Quentin, took Péronne, and shook the German II. Army to its foundations. Sir Henry Rawlinson has described their exploit as the finest single action in the war.
No man who once saw the Australians in action could ever forget them. In the famous landing at Gallipoli, in a dozen desperate fights in that peninsula, in the fight for Pozières during the First Battle of the Somme, at the Third Battle of Ypres, and in the action at Villers-Bretonneux just before the final advance, they had shown themselves incomparable in their fury of assault and in reckless personal valour. They had more than gallantry; they had a perfect discipline and a perfect coolness. As types of physical perfection they have probably not been matched since the time of the ancient Greeks—these long, lean men, with their slow, quiet voices, and often the shadows of great fatigue around the deep-set, far-sighted eyes.
Their first task was to cross the Somme—no easy task, since Mont St. Quentin commanded every reach of it. Sir John Monash, the Australian commander, decided not to attempt to force the river south of the town; but in the darkness of night a brigade of the 2nd Australian Division managed to cross and seize the German trenches at Cléry. This placed two of the three Australian Divisions of attack on the east of the river, directly under the ridge of St. Quentin. General Rawlinson visited the Australian headquarters that evening, and whetted their keenness by frankly expressing his disbelief in their success on the morrow. "You think you are going to take Mont St. Quentin with three battalions! What presumption! However, I don't think I ought to stop you. Go ahead and try."
Very early on the morning of 31st August the Australian 2nd Division lay just under the ridge, with the 3rd Division on its left, and on its right the 5th Division south of the Somme. The plan was that the 2nd Division should take Mont St. Quentin, while the 3rd Division completed the capture of the high ground towards Bouchavesnes on the north, and the 5th Division passed troops across the river for the assault on Péronne. There were no Tanks to assist the infantry, and very few heavy guns, for the men had marched far ahead of the artillery.
At 5 a.m. on the 31st, while the morning was still quite dark, the 5th Brigade of the 2nd Division opened the attack. It advanced straight up the hill with the bayonet, and at 8 a.m. Sir John Monash was able to report to General Rawlinson that his men had obtained a footing on Mont St. Quentin. All day the heroic brigade beat off desperate counter-attacks, and by nightfall it still maintained its position.
Meantime the 14th Brigade from the 5th Division crossed the Somme, and passed through the 2nd Division area for the assault on Péronne, for Monash had determined that the right course was to take the defences of the town by a rush while they were still being organized by the enemy. The 14th Brigade had a march of 7 miles before it could be in position to deploy for the attack. It was ten hours on the road, and reached its jumping-off ground in the darkness of the night. There it had on its left the 6th Brigade of the 2nd Division, whose business was to complete the capture of Mont St. Quentin.
The final success came on 1st September. The 6th Brigade advanced well over the crest of Mont St. Quentin, and that fortress was now wholly in British hands. The 14th Brigade took Péronne. Ever since the attack of 8th August it had been the misfortune of that brigade to be the reserve unit of its Division, and therefore it had not shared in any serious fighting; but this day it made up for lost opportunities. "You see," said one company commander, "we had been trying to buy a fight off the other fellows for a matter of three weeks, and that day we got what we had been looking for, so we made the most of it."
Meantime the 3rd Division, on the left, completed the capture of the Bouchavesnes spur. By 3rd September the whole of the Péronne area was in British hands, and the enemy was in headlong retreat. It was clear that he could find no resting-place short of the main Hindenburg Line, and a month later Sir Douglas Haig proved that not even in that position was there an abiding sanctuary.
The actual capture of Mont St. Quentin was achieved by two brigades. It was a straightforward fight with the bayonet—the cream of the British Army against the cream of the enemy. For so resounding a success it was singularly economical of human life; on the hill itself nearly 2,000 prisoners were taken at the expense of some 200 Australian casualties.
CHAPTER XV.
THE LAST BATTLE.
By the 25th of September the German armies were back on the great line devised by Hindenburg in the autumn of 1916. The one chance left to them was to hold out there during the winter, in the hope that they might be able to bargain with the Allies. If the Allies attacked, there were two sections which Ludendorff viewed with anxiety. One was his left wing on the Meuse, where, if the Allies broke through, the Hindenburg Line would be turned on its flank. The other was the German centre from Douai to St. Quentin, the main Hindenburg Line, which was not only the fortress where he hoped to pass the winter, but the one protection of the great railway from Lille by Valenciennes to Mezières, on which his whole position depended. He therefore laboured to keep his left and centre as strong as possible; for, in spite of his experience in August and September, he could not conceive the possibility of an assault on every section.
For Foch this was to be the crowning battle of the war. If he could break through the German centre, and at the same time turn the German left, defeat would stare the enemy in the face, and there would be victory long before Christmas. If the Americans on the Meuse succeeded, they would make retreat imperative; but if Haig in the centre succeeded, he would make retreat impossible, and disaster must follow. The British were assigned the most difficult part. They had to attack in the area where the enemy defences were most highly organized and his forces strongest. If the Hindenburg Line held, the German courage might yet recover, and a new era of resistance begin. Haig's armies had already borne the heaviest share of the summer fighting, and every division had been sorely tried. Yet the attempt must be made, for it was the essential part of the whole strategy, and the measure of difficulty was the measure of the honour in which Foch held the fighting qualities of his British allies.
In deciding to make the attack, and to break the Hindenburg Line at one blow, Sir Douglas Haig stood alone. So difficult seemed the operation that the British Government were in the gravest doubts, and left the burden of responsibility upon the Commander-in-Chief. Even the French generals hesitated. The movement was undertaken on Sir Douglas Haig's initiative; he bore the whole burden of it; and therefore to him belongs the main credit of what was destined
