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The growing superiority of the Allies in artillery had begun to count, and the retirement, while announced from Berlin as strategic, was undoubtedly forced by the development of Allied strength. The capture of Bapaume soon followed. By March 2 the Germans had retreated on a front of miles to a depth of from two to three miles, and the British were still pushing forward.
If on the Somme the anvil was to some extent escaping from the hammer, in the coming battle of Arras the hammer was to take its full revenge. These things, however, were still hidden from all but the few, and in the first days of March the Germans had not yet begun to retire in front of the French line further south. The Somme advance was still the centre of things, and Bapaume had not yet fallen.
"Captain John Lauder, killed, December 28. Official." Aye, I'd gone all ower that land in which he'd focht. I'd seen the spot where he was killed. I'd lain doon beside his grave. And then, in the spring of 1918, as I travelled back toward New York, across America, the Hun swept doon again through Peronne and Bapaume.
The adventures of Creme de Menthe, Cordon Rouge, and the Byng Boys, on both sides of the Bapaume road, when they smashed down barbed wire, climbed over trenches, sat on German redoubts, and received the surrender of German prisoners who held their hands up to these monsters and cried, "Kamerad!" were like fairy-tales of war by H. G. Wells.
It will wave over Péronne what was Péronne, and what will again be Péronne while the world goes on making history for free men. After Péronne, Bapaume: the battered corpse of Bapaume, murdered in flame that reddened all the skies of Picardy before the British came to chase the Germans out! In old times, when a place was destroyed the saying was, "Not one stone is left upon another."
I have heard men who fought in France speak of a certain road between Bapaume and Peronne with a metaphorical lift of the cap; a famous Irish division who came to Egypt from Salonica, utter winged words when they refer to a heart-breaking road in that malaria-stricken hole; and presumably it is the same elsewhere. We, too, have our road perhaps the most famous, as it is the oldest, of them all.
Their first O.P. was just south of Bertincourt, and the following days near Neuville-Bourjonval. For this expedition Pte. King was awarded the Military Medal. On September 3 I went with Pte. Turner to some high ground just south of Bapaume and stayed there several hours. From here little shelling could be seen, the main body of the enemy must have retired as far as Havrincourt Wood.
The line marked on their map from the Bapaume Road to the east of the sugar factory as their objective was theirs. In front of them was the village of Courcelette and in front of the British line linked up on their right was Martinpuich. Spades now! Dig as hard as you have charged in order to hold the freshly won position, with "there" become "here" and the Ridge at your backs!
As soon as he arrived at Bapaume, he changed horses; the commander of this place showed him the greatest respect, assuring him that no person had yet passed; that he would keep the secret, and that he would retain all that followed him, except the couriers of Monsieur de Turenne.
Had that thrust eastward towards Bapaume been successful, the Germans facing the Somme would have been taken in the rear, and the painful and costly climb up the slopes to Bapaume, which lasted throughout the summer and autumn, would have been achieved in a couple of days.
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