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Meanwhile the Third Army captured Masnières and penetrated into the western outskirts of Cambrai while the Canadians threatened to outflank it on the north. On the 30th the Germans had to withdraw their centre at Villers Guislain and Gonnelieu, while the Fourth Army extended its gains southwards by the capture of Thorigny; and, thus menaced, the Germans had to abandon St.
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.
Our tired men, who had gained the first victory, fought heroic rear-guard actions back from Masnieres and Marcoing, and back from Bourlon Wood on the northern side of the salient.
Fritz tried the flank, came on in waves stretching far over the hill crest. A fire stopped him COULD there be only ONE corps before him. He rallied, swept on again, swarming over the canal banks and close up into the outer Masnières' defences; but on his lines hailed a rapid fire from the Normans, the like of which he had never deemed possible.
The old marching rallies of the Ten Hundred were roared out from every tiny house ablaze with light, echoed out into the inscrutable pall of black and wafted far away into the shadows. And they toasted the "Old Battalion," the warriors who were lying in the damp Masnières soil; the Future; and God's own Isle their little motherland. It hurt, how it hurt!
Fritz 'planes were up in scores flying in formation, and, having no opposition, were frequently at an altitude of a mere sixty or eighty feet. The scouts, peering down on the situation at Masnières, took in at a glance the wide area that had to be covered by the solitary Norman Battalion without support of any kind. This information was communicated to the German Command.
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.
When we were ordered to evacuate Masnières on the night of December 1st, it being a dangerous salient, with the enemy on three sides, it was the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry which covered the withdrawal. Guernsey has every reason to feel the greatest pride in her sons, and I am proud to have them under me fighting alongside my staunch veterans of three years' fighting experience.
Tho cause of this may, of course, be found in the knowledge that right up and during the British attack all these towns Marcoing, Noyelles and Masnières unvisited by shell fire, were still occupied by their owners.
In response to that message the Ten Hundred turned out. They swung out into Masnières' cobbled hill, rifles slung, and marched with all the nonchalance in the world towards the bridge, cigarettes and pipes going, laughing and joking thus have I a hundred times watched them go on parade. That march, a classic; let it go down into history as an emblem of the old Ten Hundred.
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