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Despite desperate rear-guard actions, and the strenuous efforts made by the Germans to hinder the advance, the British continued to press forward. The village of Ligny about a mile and a half west of Bapaume was occupied, as well as the village of Le Barque. North of the Ancre the western and northern defenses of Puisieux were wrested from the Germans.
He had taken eight or ten troopers, commanded by an officer of his acquaintance, to escort him half way to Bapaume, being persuaded that the greatest danger would lie between the camp and the first stage.
How plainly one catches through the words of the last speaker an eager prescience of events to come! the sweep of General Gough on Warlencourt and Bapaume the French reoccupation of Péronne. One word for the cathedral of Amiens before we leave the bustling streets of the old Picard capital.
The English officer listened and smiled in sympathy, and he remarked, after our reluctant departure, that America was an extraordinary land. He directed our chauffeur to Bapaume, across that wilderness which the Germans had so wantonly made in their retreat to the Hindenburg line.
Wherefore, to elude this snare, he hired two well-mounted horsemen at Bapaume, and as soon as he had got a league from that place, and after giving them each two louis d'ors, to secure their fidelity, he ordered them to ride on before, to appear very much terrified, and to tell all those who should ask them any questions, "that all was lost, that the Chevalier de Grammont had stopped at Bapaume, having no great inclination to be the messenger of ill news; and that as for themselves, they had been pursued by the enemy's troopers, who were spread over the whole country since the defeat."
And then at last, after five months of superhuman effort, enormous sacrifice, mass-heroism, desperate will-power, and the tenacity of each individual human ant in this wild ant-heap, the German lines were smashed, the Australians surged into Bapaume, and the enemy, stricken by the prolonged fury of our attack, fell back in a far and wide retreat across a country which he laid waste, to the shelter of his Hindenburg line, from Bullecourt to St.-Quentin.
The victory came as a fitting climax to the British achievements in France during the preceding three months' campaign. By the capture during that period of Bapaume, Vimy Ridge, Monchy Plateau, and now Messines Ridge, the British had completely changed the military situation on the western front. The area gained in this vast operation was a front nine miles long to an extreme depth of five miles.
When I arrived they had no particular news, but I was asked to send a post of observers again, if possible, to the east end of Logeast Wood, which was thought to be still in our hands. After this I returned to Bienvillers about midnight and arranged for an early start next day. He said he had just ridden over from Bapaume on a motor-cycle and he told us a sorry tale.
So we came, when we were, perhaps, half a mile from the Bapaume road, to a slight eminence, a tiny hill that rose from the field. A little military cemetery crowned it. Here the graves were set in ordered rows, and there was a fence set around them, to keep them apart, and to mark that spot as holy ground, until the end of time.
The Germans concentrated heavy shell fire on Irles, and showered high explosives on Miraumont and upon other places on the front from which they had withdrawn. The British were now less than a mile from Bapaume, in the rear of which the German guns on railway mountings were firing incessantly on British positions.
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