BRITISH TROOPS IN THE AISNE CONFLICT.
HEROIC DIVISIONS.
From G. H. PERRIS. WITH THE FRENCH ARMIES, Wednesday.
Before dealing with the general situation I must do justice to the British divisions which had to bear the brunt of one of the fiercest parts of the German assault on the Aisne yesterday. Not merely because they are British. Nowhere could national pride be more out of place than on this battlefield, where the best manhood of the two races stands shoulder to shoulder, united in a common effort and endurance, serving under the same chiefs with the warmest loyalty, and showing in many ways that they realise as never before the equality of their virtues and the good fortune of the partnership. Watch them on the road going up to the lines, exchanging little gifts and greetings or coming down and joining hands to help some party of refugees on its way. Hear their stories of each other, how one was “Epatant!” and the other “Splendid, by Jove!” and you will begin to understand the growth of a comradeship that should shame ever the whispers of a petty jealousy, sometimes audible outside the danger-zone.
“FELL TO A MAN.”
Last evening, when the enemy had got across the Aisne near Pontavert, part of a British brigade was falling back along with a group of French Territorials, tiring continuously upon the swarming greycoats. Taking refuge in Germicourt Wood, and being gradually surrounded, the Englishmen and the older Frenchmen decide to make there a last stand, to die there together, or to beat the enemy off. A handful of the Territorials got away to tell the tale: the Englishmen fell to a man. The French officer who told me of this episode of the battle spoke also of the gallant work of a British Cyclist battalion fighting with the French before Fismes, and of the fate of some British officers who lost their lives in blowing up the Aisne bridges near Craonne. There was no time to take the usual precautions, but the thing had to be done, and they did it. My informant showed that he felt all the nobility and pathos of these sacrifices, and he wished as much as I that the folk at home should hear of them.
First reports seemed to indicate that the success of the German assault on the British sector led, by the threat of envelopment, to the retreat from the Aisne heights. This was not so. The Germans first crossed the river further west, and our left was therefore obliged to fall back.
As the numbers and positions of the four British divisions have been given in Marshal Haig’s communiqué, I can presumably speak with some definiteness of their part in the battle. It was the left, and particularly the 50th Division, that had to bear the heaviest of the shock. The bombardment, which lasted three hours, was of an indescribable intensity, the chill night air being soon saturated with poison gas, and when at dawn the German infantry, hideous in their masks, broke like a tidal wave upon our thin line it was overwhelmed. The 50th is a Territorial division. Never was North Country pluck more needed or more plentifully given than in this desperate encounter of yesterday. A counter-attack towards Craonne failed under flank fire from tanks and machine-guns. Step by step, the heroic line was then withdrawn through the wooded and marshy ground to the Aisne.