[7] The following paragraphs are based on the deeply interesting account of the First Army operations of last year, written by Captain W. Inge, Intelligence and Publicity Officer on Sir Henry Home’s Staff.

Meanwhile divisions were being relieved, billets arranged for, transport organised along the few practicable roads.  Ambulances were coming and going.  Petrol must be accessible everywhere; breakdown gangs and repair lorries must be ready always to clear roads, and mend bridges.  And the men doing these jobs must be handled, fed, and directed, as well as the fighting line.

Letters came and went.  The men were paid.  Records of every kind were kept.  New maps were made, printed, and sent round—­and quickly, since food and supplies depended on them.  “One breakdown on a narrow road, one failure of an important message over a telephone wire—­and how much may depend on it!”

“Yet thanks to intelligent and devoted work, to experience and resource, how little in these later stages of the war has gone wrong!”

The fighting men, the Staff work, the auxiliary services of the British Army—­the long welding of war had indeed brought them by last autumn to a wonderful efficiency.  And that efficiency was never so sharply tested as by the exchange of a stationary war for a war of movement.  The Army swept on “over new but largely devastated country,” into unknown land, where all the problems, as compared with the long years of trench war, were new.  Yet nothing failed—­“except the astounded enemy’s power of resistance.”

So much from a first-hand record of the First Army’s advance.  It carries me back as I summarise it to my too brief stay at Valenciennes, and the conversations of the evening with the Army Commander and several members of his Staff.  The talk turned largely on this point of training, Staff work, and general efficiency.  There was no boasting whatever; but one read the pride of gallant and devoted men in the forces they had commanded.  “Then we have not muddled through?” I said, laughing, to the Army Commander.  Sir Henry smiled.  “No, indeed, we have not muddled through!”

And the results of this efficiency were soon seen.  Take first the attack of the First and Third Armies on this section.  North of Moeuvres the Canadians, under General Home, crossing the Canal in the early morning of September 27th, on a narrow front, and spreading out behind the German troops holding the Canal, by a fan-shaped manoeuvre, brilliantly executed, which won reluctant praise from captured German officers, pushed on for Bourlon and Cambrai.  The 11th Division, following close behind, turned northward, with our barrage from the heavy guns, far to the west, protecting their left flank, towards the enemy line along the Sensee, taking ground and villages as they went.  Meanwhile the front German line, pinned between our barrage behind them and the Canal, taken in front and rear, and attacked by the 56th Division, had nothing to do but surrender.