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April 2

Our troops have advanced since yesterday on to a line of high ground overlooking St.-Quentin and sweeping in a curve round the wood of Holnon, which is the last strong point between us and the trenches immediately before the cathedral city. This morning our outposts were in Bihucourt and Villecholles, and advancing to Maissemy, thereby holding all the roads except one on the western side of the Hindenburg-Siegfried line between Péronne and St.-Quentin. Our enemy is shelling the villages from which he has lately retired with long-range guns, and we are now drawing very close to his new line of trenches and fixed positions.

Northwards of Péronne and east of Bapaume our troops have taken Doignies, above the forest of Havrincourt, and hold Neuville and Ruyaulcourt to the south of it, so that this great wood is encircled like that of Holnon; and the enemy must escape quickly from the shelter of the trees or be trapped there.

Northwards again, above Bapaume, we have made to-day a heavy and successful attack south-east of Croisilles, where a few days ago there was sharp fighting and several German counter-attacks, because the position threatens that sector of the Hindenburg line which is immediately behind the village striking down at an angle south-eastwards in front of Quéant, from which we are three miles distant. Two small villages below Croisilles, named Longatte and Ecoust-St.-Mien, have also fallen to us.

Our attack to-day was preceded by great gun-fire, and the enemy has defended himself with desperate courage, acting upon Hindenburg's orders that the position must be held at all costs. We have brought back over a hundred prisoners, and have inflicted great losses upon the garrison.

One of the most interesting and extraordinary features in all the fighting east of Bapaume has been the work of our cavalry squadrons in reconnaissance and attack. I confess that, after two and a half years of trench warfare, I was utterly sceptical of the value of mounted troops, in spite of the little stunt (as they called it) south of High Wood, after we took the Bazentins and Longueval in July of last year, when the Royal Dragoons and Deccan Horse rode out and brought back prisoners. Conditions have changed since then by a great transformation scene, owing to the enemy's abandonment of his old fortress positions on the Somme under our frightful onslaught of gun-fire. The country into which we have now gone is beyond the great wide belt of shell-craters, which made the battlefields of the Somme a wild quagmire of deep pits and ponds. The roads between the ruined villages are wonderfully smooth and good where they have not been mined, and the fields are as nature and French husbandry left them after last year's harvest. Then there has been a glorious absence of heavy shell-fire while the enemy has been drawing back his guns to emplacements behind the Hindenburg line; and this to cavalry, as well as to infantry, makes all the difference between heaven and hell. So the cavalry has had its chance again after the old far-off days when they rode up the Mont des Cats and chased Uhlans through Meteren, and scouted along the Messines Ridge in the autumn of 1914.

There have been no great sensational episodes, no shock of lance against lance in dense masses, no cutting up of rear-guards nor slashing into a routed army, but there has been a great deal of good scouting work during the past three weeks. Eight villages have been taken by the Canadian cavalry under General Seely, and they have captured a number of prisoners and machine-guns. They have liked their hunting. I have seen the Indian cavalry riding across the fields with their lances high, and it was a great sight, and as strange as an Arabian Nights tale in this land of France, to see those streams of brown-bearded men, as handsome as fairy-book princes, with the wind blowing their khaki turbans.

Night after night our cavalry have gone out in patrols, the leader ahead and alone; two men following; behind them a small body keeping in touch. They ride silently like shadows, with no clatter of stirrup or chink of bit. They find the gaps in the enemy's wire, creep close to his infantry outposts, ride very deftly into the charred ruins of abandoned villages, and come back with their news of the enemy's whereabouts. A week ago one of their patrols went into the Forest of Holnon, which is still held by the enemy, and listened to Germans talking. Our men were undiscovered. They took the villages by sweeping round on both sides in a great gallop, with their lances down, and the enemy fled at the first sight of them.

When the cavalry charged at Equancourt, a body of British infantry, who had come on to the ground six hours earlier than they need have done, in order (as they said) not to miss the show, cheered them on with the wildest enthusiasm.

"Look at those beggars," shouted one man as the cavalry swept past; "that's the way to take a village. No blighted bombs for them, and hell for leather all the way!"

It was a difficult operation, this taking of Equancourt, and was carried out in the best cavalry style according to the old traditions. The village and a little wood in the front of it were held by Germans with machine-guns, and another village to the right named Sorel was defended in the same way, and commanded the field of fire before Equancourt. The cavalry had two spurs of ground in front of them divided by two narrow gullies, or re-entrants. One gully ran straight to the village of Equancourt, but was directly in front of the German machine-gun emplacements. The other gully was to the right, and it was through this that the cavalry rode, sweeping round in a curve to Equancourt. Before their charge of two parties, a third party was posted on the left on rising ground, and swept the wood below Equancourt with machine-gun fire, and a smaller body of cavalry to the right occupied the attention of the enemy in Sorel in the same way. Then the two attacking parties were launched, and rode hard at a pace of twenty-three miles an hour.

The enemy did not stand. After a few bursts of machine-gun fire, which only hit a few of our mounted men, they fled behind the shelter of a railway embankment beyond the village, and most of them escaped.

All this is an interlude between greater and grimmer things. We have not yet come to the period of real open warfare, but have only passed over a wide belt of No Man's Land: and the fantasy of cavalry skirmishes and wandering Germans and civilians greeting us with outstretched hands from ruined villages will soon be closed by the wire and walls of the Hindenburg line, where once again the old fortress and siege warfare will begin, unless we have the luck to turn it or break through before the Siegfried divisions have finished their fortifications.