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The enemy was demoralized the first day and made only slight resistance. The chief losses of the tanks were due to a German major of artillery who served his own guns and knocked out a baker's dozen of these monsters as they crawled over the Flesquieres Ridge. I saw them lying there with the blood and bones of their pilots and crews within their steel walls.
Other English county troops stormed the village of Ribecourt and fought their way through Coillet wood. In severe hand-to-hand fighting at Flesquieres near Cambrai, on the 21st, British troops, preceded by tanks, stormed the town. The Germans fired on the tanks with seven big guns at short range. The British infantry charged the guns, captured them, and killed the crews.
Flesquières was taken and then Cantaing and Fontaine-Notre-Dame; but the bid for Bourlon developed into a costly, stubborn, and indecisive struggle for five days while the Germans were being steadily reinforced. On the right Byng pushed out to Banteux, but the end of our advance on the 29th left us with a rectangular block of territory loosely attached to our original front.
Three other big guns were captured in a similar manner at Premy Chapelle. British cavalry captured a battery at Rumilly, sabering the crews. Highland territorial battalions crossed the Grand ravine and entered Flesquieres, where fighting took place.
It was this check at the Flesquieres Ridge, followed by the breaking of a bridge at Masnieres under the weight of a tank and the holding of a trench-line called the Rumilly switch by a battalion of Germans who raced to it from Cambrai before our men could capture it, which thwarted the plans of the cavalry.
The flies in the ointment of success were a check in front of Flesquières and a serious lack of foresight on the Scheldt canal, where the single bridge was broken at Masnières and the cavalry were held up on a front of several miles.
Gouzeaucourt was retaken later in the day, and at Bourlon, where the new tactics were not employed, the gallantry of our troops retained the position. More ground was also recovered next day on our right, and the German counterattack seemed to have been exhausted. But it had left us with an untenable front, and on 4-7 December Haig withdrew from Bourlon and Marcoing to the Flesquières ridge.
It was the greatest and most successful surprise of the war. There was no preliminary bombardment to warn the enemy, and the advance continued steadily for two days, when the towns of Masnieres, Marcoing, Ribecourt, Havrincourt, Graincourt, and Flesquieres, long occupied by the enemy, all were behind the British lines. Just before dawn on the 20th there was absolute quiet along the whole line.
The field of view extended along the left flank of the Corps and Divisional front, and went a long way back to the high ground between Niergnes and Esnes. Flesquières, Ribécourt, Marcoing, Rumilly, and Masnières could all be seen. The next few days were spent in locating our surroundings and in reporting the traffic seen on the back roads.
In Pall Mall he came upon Tony Grandell, whom he had last seen playing bridge in the company dugout on the Flesquieres Kidge. Then he had been in "battle order," camouflaged as a private soldier, as officers were ordered to go over the top in the latter phases of the war.