The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
THE END GAME
Battle of the Sambre
For Lieutenant Colonel Francis Anderson, commanding the 1st Battalion, The Black Watch, four years had passed since he commanded D Company that had been reduced to 45 men holding a strong point on November 11 1914 at Nonne Bosschen.
There he played a crucial part in breaking the cohesion of the Kaiser’s Prussian Guards’ last-ditch attempt to take Ypres, thus bringing an abrupt end to the German Schlieffen Plan. From that day, it would take four long years of hard fighting to rid the German army from France and Flanders.
Early in November 1918, with the German campaign on the Western Front crumbling, and its allies Turkey and Bulgaria having already surrendered, and with the knowledge Austria would soon fall, Field Marshal Haig was mindful the German army would put up a desperate rear guard action to check the Allied advance into Germany. Haig, to put even greater pressure on the German retreat, instructed the 4th Army to force a crossing over the Sambre Canal.
The 1st Infantry Brigade consisting of the 1st Black Watch, 1st Camerons and the 1st Loyal North Lancs, alongside the 2nd Infantry Brigade, were tasked to cross the Sambre Canal. The canal was a formidable obstacle, 70 feet from bank to bank; all the bridges had been destroyed or mined. To cross, the brigade used material to construct four bridges salvaged from a dump, and each one fitted with a ladder for scaling the steep side of the far bank.
The 1st Brigade’s task was to cross the canal supported by artillery and machine-gun barrage. The Loyal North Lancs on the left, the Camerons on the right with The Black Watch in support, to establish a temporary bridgehead, and once established continue the advance.
The troops were in position by midnight undercover of a wet dark night. Obscured from the enemy, 1st Brigade’s bridges formed up. On November 4 at 5.45am, the 1st Black Watch attacked for the last time in the Great War.
The Camerons and the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment had arranged to race across the canal. The Camerons won by half a minute, in the very good time of six minutes.
The German gunners had been slow to react to 1st Brigade’s attack. By 8am, 1st Brigade had established the bridge-head. The advance continued, Black Watch on the left, Camerons on the right and the Loyal North Lancs in support.
The countryside they now encountered consisted of thick orchards and high hedges, making command and control difficult.
The British Expeditionary Force, after four years of war, learned well from their bloodied lessons. Large and complicated though the Fourth Army operations were, on this day they went in with accuracy and precision. No more so than the accuracy of the artillery barrage that was landing just ahead of the advancing troops. The Black Watch was only once seriously held up by a German strong point, which was quickly bombed out by a patrol of six aircraft, thus showing that the ground troops had intimate support from the RAF. D Company met with some resistance at Grand Galop and Petit Galop farms, but the men pressed steadily forward.
At the village of Mezieres, B Company fought its way into the village. A group from C Company, while attempting to capture two guns, were fired on by the enemy gunners waving a white flag, wounding Lieutenant WH Grant. Their action was to no avail, 50 Germans were captured.
And thus the final attack of the 1st Black Watch ended in success. Four men were killed, including Private William Hauchie from Dundee.
The battalion had captured five officers, 128 other ranks, five field guns and 11 artillery horses, as well as much material, and had successfully driven the enemy back 3,000 yards.
By November 11 the battalion were out of harm’s way at Fresnoy-le-Grand in the Aisne region.