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Heavy fighting continued for several days at the apex of the wedge driven into the German line, especially at Bourlon Wood and the village of Fontaine, where attacks and counter-attacks followed in rapid succession. Up to November 30 the British held their gains near Cambrai and that city lay under their guns.
But for the former, Byng might have mastered the vital Bourlon position, and but for the latter have crossed the canal in force, broken the last of the German lines, and taken Rumilly, Crèvecoeur, and possibly Cambrai. For the Germans had been completely surprised and needed two days to bring up any adequate reinforcements. The advance continued at a slower pace on the 21st.
On the last day of November the Division was withdrawn from the Arras sector: its move to relieve some of the troops who had been severely handled by the enemy at Bourlon Wood seemed probable. Events occurred to change the destination. The Battalion, after two nights at Arras, entrained amid all symptoms of haste on the morning of November 30 and travelled without the transport to Bapaume.
On the night of December 5 the British strengthened their line by abandoning certain untenable positions near Cambrai, falling back deliberately and successfully, unknown to the enemy, upon a well-chosen line which ruled out the dangerous salient made by Bourlon Wood. Here they prepared to maintain their hold upon the captured length of the Hindenburg line against any pressure.
The barrage opened just before daybreak and as the light increased we saw that the tanks had got across the canal and were labouring up the hill beyond, all very busy shooting and none knocked out. As the result of this attack, Bourlon Wood was evacuated by the enemy and positions established by our troops beyond and on both flanks of the wood.
So too Bourlon Wood, high and dark against the evening sky; the unspeakable desolation and ruin of the road thence to Bapaume; Bapaume itself, under the moon, its poor huddled heaps lit only, as we walked about it, by that strange, tranquil light from overhead, and the lamps of our standing motor-car; some dim shapes and sights emerging on the long and thrice-famous road from Bapaume to Albert, first, the dark mound of the Butte de Warlencourt, with three white crosses on its top, and once a mysterious light in a fragment of a ruined house, the only light I saw on the whole long downward stretch from Bapaume to Albert.
At the end of February his Majesty went to stay for some time at the palace of the Elysee; and there I think was signed the marriage contract of one of his best lieutenants, Marshal Augereau, recently made Duke of Castiglione, with Mademoiselle Bourlon de Chavanges, the daughter of an old superior officer; and there also was rendered the imperial decree which gave to the Princess Eliza the grand duchy of Tuscany, with the title of grand duchess.
On the 27th September the Battalion took part in the advance. The men got to the position of assembly in the Hindenburg Line and then passed through Moeuvres, crossed the Canal du Nord and advanced in artillery formation towards the southern corner of Bourlon Wood.
General Byng, "Bungo Byng," as he was called by his troops, won the admiration of the Canadian Corps which he commanded, and afterward, in the Cambrai advance of November, '17, he showed daring of conception and gained the first striking surprise in the war by novel methods of attack spoiled by the quick come-back of the enemy under Von Marwitz and our withdrawal from Bourlon Wood, Masnieres, and Marcoing, and other places, after desperate fighting.
He was losing more men in machine-gun actions round Cambrai than in bigger battles. I watched those actions from Bourlon Wood, saw the last German railway train steam out of the town, and went into the city early on the morning of its capture, when there was a roaring fire in the heart of it and the Canadians were routing out the last Germans from their hiding-places.
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