then, would tanks cross? Ah, that was a little trick which would
surprise the Germans mightily. Each tank would advance through the early
morning mists with a bridge on its nose. The bridge was really a big
"fascine," or bundle of fagots about a yard and a half in diameter, and
controlled by a lever and chain from the interior of the tank. Having
plowed through the barbed wire and reached the edge of the Hindenburg
trench, the tank would drop the fascine into the center of the ditch,
stretch out its long body, reach the bundle of fagots, find support on
it, and use it as a stepping-stone to the other side. Very simple in
idea and effect!

So it happened, and the mists favored us, as I saw on the morning of the
attack at a little place called Beaumont, near Villers Pluich. The enemy
was completely surprised, caught at breakfast in his dugouts, rounded up
in batches. The tanks went away through the breach they had made, with
the infantry swarming round them, and captured Havrincourt, Hermies,
Ribecourt, Gouzeaucourt, Masnieres, and Marcoing, and a wide stretch of
country forming a cup or amphitheater below a series of low ridges south
of Bourlon Wood, where the ground rose again.

It was a spectacular battle, such as we had never seen before, and
during the following days, when our troops worked up to Bourlon Wood and
through the intervening villages of Anneux, Graincourt, Containg, and
Fontaine Notre Dame, I saw tanks going into action and cruising about
like landships, with cavalry patrols riding over open ground, airplanes
flying low over German territory, and masses of infantry beyond all
trench-lines, and streams of liberated civilians trudging through the
lines from Marcoing. The enemy was demoralized the first day and made
only slight resistance. The chief losses of the tanks were due to a
German major of artillery who served his own guns and knocked out a
baker's dozen of these monsters as they crawled over the Flesquieres
Ridge. I saw them lying there with the blood and bones of their pilots
and crews within their steel walls. It was a Highland soldier who
checked the German major.

"You're a brave man," he said, "but you've got to dee," and ran
him through the stomach with his bayonet. It was this check at the
Flesquieres Ridge, followed by the breaking of a bridge at Masnieres
under the weight of a tank and the holding of a trench-line called the
Rumilly switch by a battalion of Germans who raced to it from C