Chapter 31

THE BRITISH RETREAT,

MARCH, 1918.

Rear-guard actions.--The Somme crossings.--Bennett relieved by the 20th Division at Voyennes.--Davenport with mixed troops ordered to counter-attack at Ham.--Davenport killed.--The enemy crosses the Somme.--The stand by the 184th Infantry Brigade at Nesle.--Colonel Wetherall wounded.--Counter-attack against La Motte.--Bennett captured.--The Battalion's sacrifice in the great battle.

After the battle for the Beauvoir Line the 184th Infantry Brigade was ordered back to Nesle. At Languevoisin on March 23 we find the relics of the 2/4th Oxfords under the command of Major Bennett, who with a force including other members of the Battalion had been providing rear-guards at the crossings of the Somme. What force was this? To understand the story it is necessary to go back a little and see what had been happening behind the line since March 21.

When the attack was known to have commenced, all transport, quartermasters' stores, and men left out of the line were ordered back to Ugny, where Bennett as senior Major present formed all our divisional details into a composite Battalion some 900 strong. Early on March 22 Colonel Wetherall, limping and tired, arrived. He bore the tale of his adventure. During the 21st we saw him disappear from Enghien Redoubt to go on a reconnaissance. Near Holnon he was surrounded by an enemy patrol and led a prisoner towards St. Quentin; but when the fire of 6-inch howitzers scared his escort into shell-holes, the Colonel escaped, and the same night, choosing his opportunity to slip between the German digging parties, contrived to reach our lines.

As March 22 lengthened out, the tide of battle rolled nearer and nearer towards Ugny, above which air fighting at only a few hundred feet from the ground was taking place. At 7 p.m. Bennett had orders to move his men westwards across the Somme. Soon afterwards a runner came post-haste. He told of the fighting on the Beauvoir line; the intrepid General had been wounded in the head while with his shrapnel helmet in his hand he waved encouragement to his men. Colonel Wetherall had already started on the way to Languevoisin but was caught up at Matigny. He the same night (22nd) regained the Beauvoir line and took command of the Brigade. As we have seen, he moved back with the Brigade on the next day.

Further developments soon diverted Bennett's force, whose fortunes we are following. At Matigny he was ordered by the Major-General with half his force to guard the Offoy bridgehead and with the other half to hold Voyennes. The Offoy garrison was despatched under Moberly, who was commanding the details of the 184th Brigade, including a hundred Oxfords. Moberly's force comprised many administrative personnel. 'What your men lack in numbers they must make up in courage,' was the Major-General's encouragement.

But the men were not at once put to the test. The 20th Division, which was covering the retreat across the Somme, relieved the Offoy rear-guard, of which Davenport had now assumed command, early in the morning of March 23, and Bennett was likewise relieved in his duties at Voyennes, where the bridge was blown up. Though the Offoy bridgehead had been taken over by the 20th Division, Davenport's troops were kept in support along the railway embankment at Hombleux, for it was feared that the enemy had already commenced to cross the Somme at Ham. During the morning of the 23rd Davenport received peremptory orders to make a counter-attack against the town with the object of regaining possession of its bridgehead. Considerable success resulted; Verlaines was cleared of the enemy's patrols, and the advance reached the ridge east of that village.

With fresh troops acting on a concerted plan something might have been accomplished. Davenport's men were a disorganised mixture of many battalions, including, besides the Oxfords and other representatives of the 184th Brigade, a number of Cornwalls and King's Liverpools. They were unfed, and the demoralisation of the retreat was beginning to do its work. As always on these occasions, when officers of different services were thrown together, divided counsels were the result. Moberly, an officer who could have been relied upon to make the best of the situation, was wounded in the leg during a moonlight reconnaissance with Davenport.

By March 24 the position was unaltered; the troops were still lining the ridge east of Verlaines and awaited the enemy's next move with their field of fire in many cases masked by, or masking, that of their comrades. Against this type of defence the enemy's tactics did not require to be as infallible as they perhaps seemed. Our pity is drawn to these English troops, disorganised, without their own proper commanders, unsupplied with rations--the stop-gaps thrust forward in the last stages of a retreat.

At 9 a.m. the enemy, whose patrols had during the night of March 23/24 been feeling their way up the slopes from the Somme Canal, commenced to press forward in earnest. The mixed troops, who were lining the ridge, had been 'down' too long to offer much resistance. They melted away, as leaderless troops will. Davenport, a gallant officer who to the very last never spared himself, was killed, shot through the head at Verlaines. The enemy, whose advanced artillery was already in action from behind Ham, had secured Esmery Hallon by the evening. Nesle was threatened.

On the same day of which I was last speaking--March 24--the 184th Brigade, minus those Oxfords who were in action with the 20th Division, though sadly wasted in numbers, formed up again to make a stand. Colonel Wetherall, the acting Brigadier, had received orders to hold the line of the Canal east and south east of Nesle. On the left of this line stood the Oxfords under Bennett, 200 Berks under Willink were in the centre, while the Gloucesters, about 120 strong under Colonel Lawson, guarded the right. At 11 a.m. on March 25 the enemy attacked. As often during these days, when a line was held solidly in one place, it broke elsewhere. By noon the enemy had captured Nesle, and the left flank of the Brigade was turned. During the fight Colonel Wetherall was wounded in the neck by a piece of shell and owed his life to the Brigade Major, Howitt, who held the arteries.

The line was driven back to Billancourt and the same night (25th) the remnants of the XVIII Corps withdrew in darkness to Roye, a town where our hospitals were still at work, evacuating as fast as possible the streams of wounded from the battle. One of the last patients to leave by train was Wetherall, who at this crisis passed under the care of Stobie, the Oxfords' old M.O.

On March 26 we see the 184th Brigade held in reserve near Mezières, to be suddenly moved at midnight of March 27/28 by lorries. The lorries made towards Amiens, and it appeared that the battered relics of the Brigade were being withdrawn. The belief was disappointed. At Villers Bretonneux Bennett received orders from a staff officer to go to Marcelçave, where the 61st Division was being concentrated for a counter-attack at dawn against the village of La Motte. In the darkness the route was missed and the convoy drove straight into our front line. Marcelçave was reached eventually, but so late that a dawn attack was impossible. At 10 a.m. on March 28 the forlorn enterprise, in which the 183rd Brigade, the Gloucesters, and the Berks shared, was launched from the station yard. The troops were footsore, sleepless, and unfed. They were mostly men from regimental employ--pioneers, clerks, storemen--to send whom forward across strange country to drive the enemy from the village he had seized on the important Amiens-St. Quentin road was a mockery. Such efforts at counter-attack resulted in more and more ground being lost. Still, the men staggered forward bravely, to come almost at once under fierce enfilade machine-gun fire. The losses were heavy. Craddock, a young officer now serving under Bennett, moved about among the men, encouraging them by his example of coolness and gallantry.

When 350 yards short of La Motte the advance was driven to take cover. It was useless to press on; in fact, already there was real danger of being surrounded. Bennett, whose leadership throughout was excellent, with difficulty extricated his men by doubling them in two's across the open. Towards evening those that got back were placed in trenches outside Marcelçave.

By now that village was being severely shelled and bombed, and in danger of becoming surrounded by the enemy. Soon after dark it was attacked in earnest. Bennett stayed too long in Marcelçave attempting to get news of the situation and some orders. Brigade Headquarters had in fact already left, before Bennett, instead of returning to his former headquarters, decided to join his men in the trenches before the village. Those trenches were no longer being fought for. Near the railway bridge he ran straight into the enemy as they swarmed towards the village and was captured. The remains of the Battalion were driven back on Villers Bretonneux, the contents of which village had to make up for absent rations. Robinson, who had returned from leave in time to take part in the La Motte affair, assumed command. The Australians were at hand; fresh troops arrived to relieve those worn out by a week's continuous fighting. After four days at Gentelles all that were left of the 2/4th Oxfords, together with the other fragments of the 61st Division, were withdrawn for rest and reorganisation west of Amiens.

A Battalion is too small for its historian to enter into any controversy upon the measures taken for the defence of the St. Quentin front. Whatever else the Oxfords could have done would have had no effect upon the main issues of this great attack. But for the mist the German onslaught, delivered in the preponderance of four to one, would hardly have achieved the same historical result. The Battalion had stood in the forefront of the greatest battle of the war. Accounts, already growing legendary, tell how our men acquitted themselves that day. Some posts fought on till all were killed or wounded. There were few stragglers. Of B Company, only one man returned from the front line. It is said of A Company that, when surrounded by the enemy, Brown formed the men into a circle, back to back, and fought without surrender.

The monument which stands above Fayet is happily placed. It is inscribed to the sons of France who fell in action nearly fifty years ago. On March 21, 1918, it was enriched by its association with a later sacrifice. The credit won in this lost battle gives to the 2/4th Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry a share of honour in the war equal to that which has been earned by our most successful troops in the advance.

The loss in all ranks had been so heavy that the killed and missing could only be computed by counting over those few that remained. Bennett and all four company commanders in the line were missing. The Colonel and Moberly had been sent to England wounded. Jones was the only officer from the front line who remained safe. Cairns, the Sergeant-Major of A Company, had come through and earned distinction. The loss in Lewis gunners, signallers, and runners had been especially heavy. Douglas, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, after most valuable work in the Battalion, had been killed. Transport and stores, for extricating which credit was due to Abraham and Murray, alone came out complete.