TANKS AND CAVALRY IN ACTION

The break through of Tuesday has been followed by a ding-dong struggle along 12 miles or more of open country, from Pronville to the east and south of Masnières; but it is a battle unlike anything since the early days. It is open fighting again, away from trench systems. It is in a great sweep of undulating country, where there is grass instead of shell pits and blasted earth, where one may stand in fields, watching the battle in progress in villages and woods, seeing our guns moving forward to new positions and gun limbers galloping up with supplies; tramping alongside tanks going into action. I was passed by patrols of cavalry scouting round hamlets and woods, or bringing back captured men. I watched the progress of the day, German barrages suddenly opened upon a new attack, with our batteries bursting out into long volleys of drumfire to repel a counter-attack, and all the movement and drama of oldfashioned warfare, before armies were locked between trenches and a battlefield was the loneliest place in the world, because between one short rush and another, from one trench to another, no man could be seen above the ground, and all guns were hidden. Before describing these wonderful scenes – which seem as unreal to me as faked war pictures on a foreign cinematograph – I must deal with the facts of the fighting on Friday and Saturday, working up to the capture of Bourlon Wood. It was essential for further progress to gain that black forest, which covers 600 acres of high ground to the west of Cambrai. The difficulty of capturing it was increased by the loss of Fontaine-notre-dame, and by the strong defence of fresh German troops round Moeuvres and Inchy. Our cavalry had not been able to make a great sweeping movement, though they fought gallantly. The enemy had been quick in rushing up guns. The weakness of his artillery on the first day, due partly to the counter-battery of our gunners, to the capture of over 100 guns on the first two days, and to the concentration of the enemy’s artillery in Flanders, is no longer a great fact in our favour.