h!"

Meanwhile in the centre--just where I have asked the reader of this
paper to stand with me in imagination on the hill-side overlooking the
Canal du Nord--General Byng's Third Army, including the Guards'
Division, forced the Canal crossings in face of heavy fire, and moving
forward towards Cambrai in the half light of dawn, took trenches and
villages from the fighting and retreating enemy. After the forward
troops were over, the engineers rushed on, bridging the Canal, under
the fire of the German guns, rapidly clearing a way for infantry and
supplies. A map issued by the Tank Corps shows that close to this
point on the Cambrai-Bapaume road six tanks were operating--among them
no doubt that agile fellow, whose tracks still show on the
hillside!--while on the whole front of the Third and First Armies
sixty-five tanks were in action. By the end of that long day 10,000
prisoners had been taken, and 200 guns, an earnest of what was to
follow.

It was on the front of the Fourth Army, however, in the section from
St. Quentin to Gouzeaucourt, that the heaviest blow was planned by the
Commander-in-Chief. Here the "exceptional strength of the enemy's
position made a prolonged bombardment necessary." So while the First
and Third Armies were advancing, on the north, with a view to
lightening the task of the Fourth Army, for forty-eight hours General
Rawlinson maintained a terrible bombardment, which drove the defenders
of the famous line underground, and cut them off from food and
supplies. And on the morning of the 29th the Fourth Army attacked.

But I have no intention of repeating in any detail the story of that
memorable day. The exploit of the 46th Division under General Boyd, in
swimming and capturing the southern section of the Canal below
Bellenglise, will long rank as one of the most amazing stories of the
war. Down the steep banks clambered the men, flung themselves into the
water, and with life-belts, and any other aid that came handy, crossed
the Canal under fire, and clambered up the opposite bank. And the
achievement is all the more welcome to British pride in British pluck,
when it is remembered that, according to the German document I have
already quoted, it was an impossible one. "The deep canal cutting from
the southern end of the canal tunnel ... with its high steep banks
constitutes a strong obstacle. _The enemy will hardly attack here._"
So writes the German officer describing the line.

But it was pr