The next diagram shows how the twelve Brigades were disposed while Phase A of the battle was in progress, and before the second Phase had begun:

But the following diagram represents, in a similar manner, the order of disposition of the same Brigades, in the territory under our own occupation, immediately prior to the battle:

A little consideration will show that this apparently paradoxical procedure brought about the desired result of more nearly equalizing the stress upon the whole of the Infantry engaged, in point, at least, of the maximum distance to be traversed in the day's operations. But it produced something else, also, of much greater concern, which was that the scheme involved a leapfrogging of Divisions during the approach march into the battle, in addition to a second leapfrogging, to which I was already committed, to occur at a later stage during the battle itself.

Thus I was confronted with the dilemma that the only scheme of disposition which promised success for the subsequent battle was also that scheme which made the greatest possible demands upon the intelligence of the troops and the sympathetic, loyal and efficient co-operation of my own Corps Staff, and those of the Commanders acting under me. Influenced once again by the confidence which I felt in my whole command, I did not hesitate to increase the complexity of the plans for the Infantry action by calling upon the four Divisions to execute a manœuvre which is unique in the history of war, namely, a "double leapfrog," simultaneously carried out by two separate pairs of Divisions, operating side by side. The first leap was to take place during the approach to the battle, the second during the progress of the battle itself.

This expedient, which I finally decided to adopt, in spite of the dangers involved in its complexity and in the absence of any precedent, was, however, as logical analysis and the event itself proved, the very keynote of the success of the entire project. The whole plan, thanks to an intelligent interpretation by all Commanders and Staffs concerned, worked like a well-oiled machine, with smoothness, precision and punctuality, and achieved to the fullest extent the advantages aimed at.

On the one hand, the stress upon the troops was reduced to a minimum. By the reduction of physical fatigue, it conserved the energies of whole Divisions in a manner which permitted of their speedy re-employment in subsequent decisive operations. And on the other hand, by the great depth of penetration which it rendered possible, it ensured a victory which amounted to so crushing a blow to the enemy that its momentum hurled him into a retrograde movement, not only along the whole front under attack, but also for many miles on either flank. This recoil he was never able to arrest, as we followed up our victory by blow after blow delivered while he was still reeling from the effects of the first onslaught of August 8th.

But, so far, I have written of the Infantry plan only; and much remains to be told of the simultaneous action designed to be taken by all the other arms, which rendered possible and emphasized the success of the Infantry. No one can rival me in my admiration for the transcendant military virtues of the Australian Infantryman, for his bravery, his battle discipline, his absolute reliability, his individual resource, his initiative and endurance. But I had formed the theory that the true rôle of the Infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, nor to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, nor to impale itself on hostile bayonets, nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements—(I am thinking of Pozières and Stormy Trench and Bullecourt, and other bloody fields)—but, on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward; to march, resolutely, regardless of the din and tumult of battle, to the appointed goal; and there to hold and defend the territory gained; and to gather in the form of prisoners, guns and stores, the fruits of victory.

It is my purpose, therefore, to emphasize particularly the extent to which this theory was realized in the battle under review, by the achievement of a great and decisive victory at a trifling cost. That result was due primarily to the very ample resources in mechanical aids which the foresight and confidence of the Fourth Army Commander, General Rawlinson, entrusted to me; but it was due partly, also, to the manner in which those resources were employed. And that is why I shall attempt to describe the remainder of the Corps plan.

CHAPTER VI
The battle plan (continued)

Surprise has been, from time immemorial, one of the most potent weapons in the armoury of the tactician. It can be achieved not merely by doing that which the enemy least anticipates, but also by acting at a time when he least expects any action. It was a weapon which had been employed only rarely in the previous greater battles of this war. The offensive before Cambrai, planned by General Sir Julian Byng, and the battle of Hamel, were rare exceptions to our general procedure of heralding the approach of an offensive by feverish and obvious activity on our part, and by a long sustained preliminary bombardment of the enemy's defences, designed to destroy his works and impair his moral.

The situation on the Fourth Army front, early in August, 1918, offered a rare opportunity for the employment of surprise tactics on the boldest scale. The incessant "nibbling" activities of the Australian troops during the preceding three months had been of such a consistent nature as to suggest that our resources were not equal to any greater effort upon such an extended front as we were then holding, from the Ancre down to and beyond Villers-Bretonneux. On the other hand, the passivity of the first French Army, to the south of the latter town, conveyed no suggestion of any offensive enterprise on the part of our Ally in this region.

The problem, therefore, was to convert an extensive front from a state of passive defence to a state of complete preparedness for an attack on the largest scale, and to keep the enemy—who, as always, was alert and observant both from the ground and from the air—in complete ignorance of every portion of these extensive preparations, until the very moment when the battle was to burst upon him. It was, of course, a question not merely of deceiving the enemy troops in their trenches immediately opposed to us, but also of arousing in the minds of the German High Command no suspicions which might have prompted them to hold in a state of readiness, or to put into motion towards the threatened zone, any of the reserve Divisions forming part of their still considerable resources.

The following memorandum, which was issued to the whole of the senior commanders in the Australian Corps on August 1st, gives in outline some of the measures adopted to this end:

"Secrecy.

"1. The first essential to success is the maintenance of secrecy. The means to be adopted are as follows:

(i) No person is to be told or informed in any part or way until such time as the development of the plan demands action from him. This is the main principle and will be pursued throughout, down to the lowest formation.

(ii) Divisional Commanders will work out their reliefs in such a way as will ensure that the troops in the line know nothing of the proposed operation until the last possible moment. This will apply in particular to any troops who may be employed in the area south of the Amiens—Villers-Bretonneux railway.

"2. In order to conceal the intention to carry out a large operation on this front the following plan has been adopted:

"The Australian Corps has been relieved of one divisional sector by the Third Corps, and takes over a divisional sector from the French Corps. The object of this is to lead the enemy, and our own people, too, to believe that the action of the French in the Soissons salient has been so costly as to demand that further French troops had to be made available, and that this is the apparent cause of the extension of the Australian Corps front to the south.

"3. (a) The idea is being circulated that the Canadian Corps is being brought to the south to take over the rôle of Reserve Corps at the junction of the British and French Armies in replacement of the 22nd Corps, which occupied that rôle until it was ordered to the Champagne front. In order that the enemy may be deceived as to the destination of the Canadian Corps in the event of his discovering that it has been withdrawn from the Arras front, Canadian wireless personnel has been sent to the Second Army area,[11] where they have taken over certain wireless zones.

"(b) To prevent the enemy from discovering the arrival of the Canadian Corps in this region, they will not take over from the 4th Australian Division until 'Y' night. This will necessitate a proportion of the troops of the Fourth Australian Division remaining in the line in this sector until 'Y' night. As the Fourth Australian Division will be required to participate in the attack it is proposed to distribute one brigade to hold the whole of the line from 'W' night onwards. This will enable the remaining two Brigades to be withdrawn, given a day or two's rest, and allow of their part in the operation being fully explained to them. The place of these two Brigades in rear of the line Brigade will be taken over by Canadian Divisions.

"(c) In order to deceive our own troops as to the cause of the coming down here of the Canadians, a rumour is going abroad that the Canadian Corps is being brought down with the object of relieving the Australian Corps in the line. To most of the Australian Corps this would appear to be an obvious reason for their coming, as the idea has been mooted on former occasions. While it is not intended that this rumour should be promulgated, it is not desired that anyone should disclose the actual facts. This idea, together with the idea put forth in paragraph 3 (a), should do much to prevent the real facts from becoming known."[12]

The references to "W," "X," "Y" and "Z" days and nights in the above memo, are to the successive days preceding Zero day—known briefly as "Z" day, on which the battle was to open. The actual date of "Z" day was kept a close secret by the Army Commander and the three Corps Commanders concerned, until a few days before the actual date; while the actual moment of assault, or "Zero" hour, was not determined or made known until noon on the day preceding the battle, after a close study of the conditions of visibility before and after break of day, on the three preceding mornings.

But these arrangements were directed only towards the prevention of a premature disclosure of our intention to attack to the enemy, to our own troops, and through them to the civilian public, and to enemy agents, whose presence among us had always to be reckoned with. It still remained to carry out our battle preparations in a manner which would preclude the possibility of detection by enemy aircraft, either through direct observation, or by the help of photography.

Accordingly I issued orders that all movements of troops and of transport of all descriptions, should take place only during the hours of darkness, whether in the forward or in the rear areas; and in order to keep an effective control over the faithful execution of these difficult orders, I arranged for relays of "police" aeroplanes, furnished by our No. 3 Squadron, to fly continuously, by day, over the whole of the Corps area, in order to detect and report upon any observed unusual movement.

At the same time, the normal work on the construction of new lines of defence, covering Amiens, in my rear areas, which had been continuously in progress for many weeks and was still far from complete, was to continue, with a full display of activity; so that the enemy should be unable to infer, from a stoppage of such works, any change in our attitude.

Orders were also given to discourage the usual stream of officers who ordinarily visited our front trenches prior to an operation, and who often, thoughtlessly, made a great display of unusual activity, under the very noses of the enemy front line observers, by the flourishing of maps and field-glasses, and by bobbing up above our parapets to catch fleeting glimpses of the country to be fought over. Such reconnaissance, however desirable, was to be confined to a few senior Commanders and Staff Officers. All subordinates were to rely upon the very large number of admirable photographs, taken regularly from the air, both vertically and obliquely, by the indefatigable Corps Air Squadron. These served excellently as a substitute for visual observation from the ground.

The prohibition against the movement of any transport in the daylight naturally very seriously hampered the freedom of action of the troops of all arms and services, but was felt in quite a special degree by the whole of the Artillery. Over 600 guns of all natures had to be dragged to and emplaced in their battle positions, and there camouflaged, each gun involving the concurrent movement of a number of associated vehicles. A full supply of ammunition had to be collected from railhead, distributed by mechanical transport to great main dumps, and thence taken by horsed vehicles for distribution to the numerous actual gun-pits.

As the amount of ammunition to be held in readiness for the opening of the battle averaged 500 rounds per gun, it became necessary to handle a total of about 300,000 rounds of shells and a similar number of cartridges of all calibres, from 3½ to 12 inches, not to mention fuses and primers, or the immense bulk and weight of infantry and machine-gun ammunition, bombs, flares, rockets, and the like, for the supply of all of which the artillery was equally responsible.[13] The great amount of movement involved in the handling and dumping of all these munitions, and the deterrent difficulties of carrying out all such work only during the short hours of darkness, must be left to the imagination.

The artillery was, however, confronted, for the first time, with a difficulty of quite a different nature. In the previous years of the war every gun, after being placed in its fighting pit or position, had to be carefully "registered," by firing a series of rounds at previously identified reference points, and noting the errors in line or range due to the instrumental error of the gun, which error varied with the gradual wearing-out of the gun barrel. By these means, battery commanders were enabled to compute the necessary corrections to be applied to any given gun, at any one time or place, so as to ensure that the gun would fire true to the task set.

Such registration naturally involved, for a large number of guns, a very considerable volume of Artillery fire, the extent of which would speedily disclose to the enemy the presence of a largely increased mass of Artillery, and would inevitably lead him to the conclusion that some mischief was afoot. Fortunately, however, the rapid evolution during the war of scientific methods had by this juncture placed at my disposal a means of ascertaining the instrumental error of the guns on a testing ground located many miles behind the battle zone. This method was known as "calibration," and consisted of the firing of the gun through a series of wired screens, placed successively at known distances from the muzzle of the gun. The whole elements of the flight of the projectile could then be accurately determined by recording the intervals of time between its passage through the respective screens. From these data could be deduced the muzzle velocity, the jump, the droop and the lateral error of each gun.

Simple and obvious as was the principle of such an experiment, the merit of the new process of calibration lay in the remarkable rapidity and accuracy with which the electric and photographic mechanism employed made the necessary delicate time observations, correct to small fractions of a second, and automatically deduced the mathematical results required. The calibration hut, in which this mechanism was housed, became one of the show spots to which visitors to the Corps area were taken to be overawed by the scientific methods of our gunners.

In the early days of August the calibration range of the Australian Corps was a scene of feverish activity. All day long, battery after battery of guns could be seen route-marching to the testing ground, going through the performance of firing six rounds per gun, and then route-marching back again the same night to its allotted battle position. So rapid was the procedure that long before he had reached his destination the Battery Commander had received the full error sheet of every one of his guns, and by means of it was enabled to go into action whenever required without any previous registration whatever. This great advance in the art of gunnery contributed in the most direct manner to the result that when these 600 guns opened their tornado of fire upon the enemy at daybreak on August 8th, the very presence in this area of most of them remained totally unsuspected.

The manner of the employment of the ponderous mass of Heavy Artillery at my disposal will be referred to later. The action of that portion of the Field Artillery which was to become mobile in the concluding phases of the battle has already been dealt with. It remains only to describe, in outline, the arrangements made for the normal barrage fire of the Field Artillery during the first phase.

It has been my invariable practice to reduce the barrage plan to the simplest possible elements, avoiding in every direction the over-elaboration so frequently encountered. By following these principles not only is the actual preparatory work of the Artillery greatly reduced in bulk and simplified in quality, but also the liability to mistake and to erratic shooting of individual batteries or guns, and consequent risks of damage to our own Infantry, are greatly diminished. These advantages are bought at the small price of calling upon the Infantry to undertake, before the battle, such rectifications and adjustments of our front line as would accommodate themselves to a straight and simple barrage line. This is in sharp contrast to the much more usual procedure which prevailed (and persisted in other Corps to the end of the war) of complicating the barrage enormously in an attempt to make it conform to the tortuous configuration of our Infantry front line.

For the present battle it was accordingly arranged that the barrage should open on a line which was dead straight for the whole 7,000 yards of our front, and the Infantry tape lines,[14] which were to mark the alignment of the Infantry at the moment of launching the assault, were to be laid exactly 200 yards in rear of this Artillery "start line." The barrage was to advance, in exactly parallel lines, 100 yards at a time, at equal rates along the whole frontage. These rates were 100 yards every 3 minutes, for the first 24 minutes, and thereafter 100 yards every 4 minutes, until the conclusion of the time-table at 143 minutes after Zero. By such a simple plan every one of the 432 field guns engaged was given a task of uniform character.

Great as was the care necessary to conceal all Artillery preparations, it required still greater thought and consideration to keep entirely secret the presence behind the battle front of some 160 Tanks, and particularly to conceal their approach march into the battle. To both combatants, the arrival of a Tank, or anything that could be mistaken on an air photograph for a Tank, had for long been regarded as a sure indication of coming trouble. And, therefore, imputing to the enemy the same keenness to detect, in good time, the presence of Tanks, and the same nervousness which we had been accustomed to feel when prisoners' tales of the coming into the war of enormous hordes of German monsters had been crystallized by the reports of some excited observer into a definite suspicion that the fateful hour had arrived, I considered it wise to repeat on a much elaborated scale all the precautions of secrecy first employed for this purpose at Hamel.

It is quite easy to detect from an air photograph the broad, corrugated track made by a Tank, if the ground be soft and muddy enough to record such an impression. Consequently, Tanks were forbidden to move across ploughed fields or marshy land, and were confined to hard surface. They moved only in small bodies, and only at night, and were carefully stabled, during the daylight, in the midst of village ruins, or under the deep shade of woods and thickets. Thus, by daily stages, and by cautious bounds, each Tank or group of Tanks ultimately reached its appointed assembly ground, from which it was to make its last leap into the thick of the battle, where it would arrive precisely at Zero hour.

But that last leap was just the whole difficulty. For the Tank is a noisy brute, and it was just as imperative to make him inaudible as to make him invisible. By a fortunate chance, the noise and buzz made by the powerful petrol engines of a Tank are so similar to those of the engines of a large-sized bombing plane, as for example of the Handley-Page type, especially if the latter be flying at a comparatively low altitude, that from a little distance off it is quite impossible to distinguish the one sound from the other.

It was therefore possible to adopt the conjurer's trick of directing the special attention of the observer to those things which do not particularly matter, in order to distract his attention from other things which really do matter very much. In other words, a flight of high-power bombing planes was kept flying backwards and forwards over the battle front during the whole of that very hour, just before dawn, during which our 160 Tanks were loudly and fussily buzzing their way forward, along carefully reconnoitred routes, marked by special black and white tapes, across that last mile of country which brought them up level with the infantry at the precise moment when the great battle was ushered in by the belching forth of a volcano of Artillery fire.

The subterfuge succeeded to perfection, as was obvious to observers and confirmed by the subsequent narratives of prisoners. The German trench garrisons and trench observers were fully occupied in listening to the hum of the bombing planes, in watching their threatened visitation for their customary "egg" dropping performances, in engaging them with rifle fire, and in holding themselves in readiness to duck for cover should they come too near. They never suspected for a moment that this was merely a new stratagem of "noise camouflage," and that the real danger was stalking steadily and relentlessly towards them over the whole front, upon the surface of the ground, instead of in the air.

But the trick would not have succeeded so well, or would perhaps have failed altogether, if the employment of those planes had been confined to the morning of the battle. Such an unusual demonstration might have aroused vague suspicions sufficient to justify a "stand to arms" and a preparedness for some further activity on our part. And what we had most to fear was the danger of "giving the show away" in the last ten minutes. For it would have taken much less than that time for nervous German trench sentries, by the firing of signal rockets, to bring down upon our front line trenches, crowded as they were with expectant fighters, a murderous fire from the German Artillery.

Consequently the puzzled enemy was treated to the spectacle of an early morning promenade by these same bombing planes on every morning, for an hour before dawn, during several mornings preceding the actual battle day. Doubtless the first morning's exhibition of such apparently aimless air activity in the darkness really startled him. After two or three repetitions, it merely earned his contempt. By the time the actual date arrived he treated it as negligible. All prisoners interrogated subsequently agreed that neither the presence nor the noisy approach of so mighty a phalanx of Tanks had been in the least suspected up to the very moment when they plunged into view out of the darkness, just as day was breaking.

The force of Tanks placed at my disposal for the purposes of this battle comprised the 2nd, 8th and 13th Tank Battalions, commanded respectively by Lieut.-Colonels Bryce, Bingham and Lyon, all under the 5th Tank Brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Courage. All these Tanks were of the Mark V. type, as used at Hamel; but there were also attached to the same Brigade a Battalion of Mark V. (Star) Tanks, of still later design, under Lieut.-Colonel Ramsay-Fairfax, and also a full Company of 24 Carrying Tanks, under Major Partington. These Carrying Tanks were not employed in fighting, but were of wonderful utility in the rapid transport of stores of all descriptions across the battle zone; and in carrying the wounded out of the battle on their return journey. I am confident that each of these Tanks was capable of doing the work of at least 200 men, with an almost complete immunity from casualty.

There were thus available to me 168 Tanks in all, and their dispositions have been already indicated in sufficient detail in Chapter V. It was a definite feature of the whole plan of battle that the combined Tank and Infantry tactics which had proved so successful in the Hamel operation, and which have been described in Chapter II., were to be employed and exploited to their utmost. Each Tank became thereby definitely associated with a specified body of Infantry, and acted during the actual battle under the immediate orders of the Commander of that body: the working rule was "one Tank, one Company."

To this was added the second working principle of "one Tank, one task," which rules meant, in their practical application, that no individual Tank was to be relied upon to serve more than one body of Infantry, nor to carry out more than one phase of the battle. Elementary as this may sound, it involved this striking advantage that, in the event of any one Tank becoming disabled, its loss would impair no portion of the battle plan other than that fraction of it to which that Tank had been allotted.

Thus, the whole of the Infantry operating in Phases B and C of the battle had each their own adequate equipment of Tanks, which would be certain to be available to them, even if the whole of the Tanks employed during Phase A had been knocked out. At the same time clear orders were issued, and due arrangements were made, that all Tanks which survived Phase A, and whose crews were not by then too exhausted, were to rally (during the 100 minutes' pause on the green line) in order to co-operate in the succeeding phases of the fight.

There was still another Unit, coming under the jurisdiction of the Tank Corps, which proved of wonderful utility to me, and which deserved quite special mention. This was the 17th Armoured Car Battalion, organized into two companies of eight cars each. Each car carried one forward and one rear Hotchkiss gun. It was heavily armoured, and the crew operating the guns, as also the car driver, were protected from all except direct hits by Artillery. The cars had a speed of 20 miles per hour, either forwards or backwards. The Battalion was under the command of Lieut.-Colonel E. J. Carter, an officer of the British Cavalry. I allotted 12 cars to the use of the 5th Australian Division, under Major-General Hobbs, who would be likely to find specially useful employment for them, in scouring the network of roads beyond his final objective; and retained four cars in Corps reserve for a special reconnaissance enterprise.

Full of promise of usefulness as were the speed and armament of these cars, they suffered from one serious disability. Their top hamper was so heavy compared to their light chassis that they could not be relied upon to travel without premature breakdown across country, or indeed on anything but moderately good roads. Now, such roads were certainly available, as was evident from aeroplane photographs, in the enemy's back country, after a zone for a mile or two immediately behind his front line was passed; but all the subsidiary roads in that zone had been practically obliterated by shell-craters, and even the great main road from Villers-Bretonneux to Saint Quentin, which is a Roman Road and substantially constructed throughout, was known to have been cut up and traversed by numerous trenches both on our side and on the enemy's side of "No Man's Land." There was also every expectation that the few remaining trees which flanked this great road would be felled by our bombardment, and some of them would surely fall across and obstruct the roadway.

That road was, however, the only possible outlet into enemy country for the armoured cars, and I resolved upon a special programme, and the allotment of a special body of troops for its execution. The object was to ensure that the cars could be taken across the impracticable and obstructed stretch of roadway already described, and launched at the enemy at its eastern extremity, at the earliest possible moment of time. Then, before the numerous enemy Corps and Divisional Headquarters and all their rear organization had time to get clear intelligence of what was happening at the front, or to recover from the first shock of surprise, these Armoured Cars would fall upon them, and, travelling hither and thither at great speed, would spread death, destruction and confusion in all directions.

A whole Battalion of Pioneers, and detachments of other technical troops, with an adequate amount of road-repairing material, were got ready, under the direct orders of my Chief Engineer, to carry out this special task. All trenches in that portion of the road lying within our own zone of occupation were bridged or filled in and all obstructions cleared away before the day of the battle. But as to the more distant stretch of the road, still in the hands of the enemy, elaborate preparations were made, by a careful and detailed distribution of tasks to small gangs of men, and by a fully worked-out time-table. The plan was that from the moment of the opening of the battle, this road repair work was to commence, and its advance was to synchronize with the advance of the Artillery barrage and Infantry skirmishing line.

A pilot armoured car was to follow the working gangs in order to test the sufficiency of the repair work, and arrangements were made for sending back signals to the remainder of the cars, lying waiting in readiness in the shelter of Villers-Bretonneux. It was planned that the first two miles of road would, by these means, be cleared and repaired to a sufficient width, within four hours after the opening of the battle.

I am tempted to anticipate the narrative of the battle by saying that the whole plan worked out with complete success to the last detail. The cars got through punctually to time, and the story of their subsequent adventures, as told later, reads like a romance. As indicating the importance which I attached to this little enterprise, which in magnitude was quite a small "side-show," but which in its results had the most far-reaching consequence, I reproduce below the full text (omitting merely formal portions) of one of the several orders issued by me on this subject:

Australian Corps,
7th August, 1918.

1. The detachment of the 17th Armoured Car Battalion held in Corps Reserve (2 sections each of 2 cars), will be employed on the special duty of long distance reconnaissance on "Z" day.

2. These sections will be sent forward under the orders of the C.O., 17th Armoured Car Battalion, passing the green line as soon as practicable after Zero plus four hours, and proceeding eastward, following the lifts of our Heavy Artillery bombardment, so as to pass the blue line at or after Zero plus five hours.

3. The area to be reconnoitred lies in the bend of the Somme, north of the Villers-Bretonneux—Chaulnes Railway; but the old Somme battlefield lying N.E. of Chaulnes need not be entered.

4. Information is required as to presence, distribution and movement of enemy supporting and reserve troops, and his defensive organizations within this area.

5. While the primary function of this detachment is to reconnoitre and not to fight, except defensively, advantage should be taken of every opportunity to damage the enemy's telephonic and telegraphic communications.

6. The following information as to enemy organizations is thought to be reliable:

Vauvillers	Billets and Detraining point.
Proyart	Divisional H.Q. and billets.
Chuignolles	Divisional H.Q. and billets.
Framerville	Corps H.Q.
Rainecourt	Billets.
Cappy	Aerodrome and dumps.
Foucaucourt	Corps H.Q., dump, billets.
Chaulnes	Important railway junction.
Ommiécourt	Dumps.
Fontaine	Aerodrome, Div. H.Q. and dump.

The Heavy Artillery of the Corps was divided, for this battle as normally, into two distinct groups, of which the one, or Bombardment Group, was to devote its energies to destructive attack, throughout the course of the battle, upon known enemy centres of resistance, suspected Headquarters, and telephone or telegraph exchanges, villages believed to be housing support and reserve troops, railway junctions and the like. The selection of all such targets depended upon a judicious choice of many tempting objectives disclosed by the very comprehensive records of the highly efficient Intelligence Officers belonging to my Heavy Artillery Headquarters. After that selection was made, all that remained was to draw up a time-table for the action of all bombardment guns which would ensure that they would lift off any given target just before our own Infantry would be likely to reach it, and then to apply their fire to a more distant locality.

The second group of Heavy Guns was known as the Counter-battery Group, and was at all times under the direction of a special staff, especially skilled in all the scientific means at our disposal for determining the position and distribution of the enemy's Artillery, and in the methods and artifices for silencing or totally destroying it. Just as it was the special rôle of the Tanks to deal with the enemy machine guns, so it was the special rôle of our Counter-battery Artillery to deal with the enemy's field and heavy guns and howitzers. These—the guns and the machine guns—were the only things that troubled us; because, for the German soldier individually, our Australian infantryman is and always has been more than a match.

Very special care was, therefore, devoted to the whole of the arrangements, first for carefully ascertaining beforehand the actual or probable position of every enemy gun that could be brought to bear on our Infantry, and then for allocating as many heavy guns as could be spared, each with a task appropriate to its range and hitting-power, to the destruction or suppression of the selected target. For it served the immediate purpose of eliminating the causes of molestation to our advancing Infantry equally well, whether the enemy gun was merely silenced by a sustained fire of shrapnel or high explosives which drove off the gun detachment, or by a flood of gas which compelled them to put on their gas masks, or whether it was actually destroyed by a direct hit and rendered permanently useless.

The days before the battle were of supreme interest in this particular aspect. Each day I visited the Counter-battery Staff Officer, in his modest shanty, hidden away in the interior of a leafy wood, where in constant touch, by telephone, with all balloons, observers and sound-ranging stations, and surrounded by an imposing array of maps, studded with pins of many shapes and colours, he made his daily report to me of the enemy gun positions definitely identified or located, or found to have been vacated. And here again there was an opportunity for the display of a modest little stratagem. Having suspected or verified the fact that the enemy had altered the location of any given battery, leaving the empty gun pits as a tempting bait to us, fruitlessly to expend our energies and ammunition upon them—it would have been the worst of folly to prove to him that he had failed to fool us, by engaging his battery in its new position.

On the contrary, we deliberately allowed ourselves to be fooled; and for several days before the great battle we intentionally committed the stupid error of methodically engaging all his empty gun positions. No doubt the German gunners laughed consumedly as they watched, from a safe distance, our wasted efforts; but they did not, doubtless, laugh quite so heartily when at dawn on the great day, the whole weight of our attack from over a hundred of my heaviest Counter-battery guns fells upon them in the new positions, which they believed that we had failed to detect.

The Intelligence Service of the Corps was an extensive and highly organized department, whose jurisdiction extended throughout all the Divisions, Brigades and Battalions. Its routine work comprised the collection and collation of the daily flow of information from a large staff of observers in the forward zone, from the interrogation of prisoners, from the examination of documents and maps, and from neighbouring Corps and Armies. Before and during battle, however, a greatly added burden fell upon the shoulders of the Intelligence Staff.

Closely associated with this branch of the Staff work were two activities of quite special interest. The Australian Corps organized a Topographical Section, manned by expert draftsmen and lithographers, who compiled and printed all the maps required throughout the whole Corps, and it was their business to keep all battle maps, barrage maps and topographical data recorded and corrected up to date. This alone proved a heavy task when pace had to be kept with a rapid advance. At such times the maps prepared on one day became obsolete two or three days later.

The issue of such maps was not confined to Commanders and Staffs. For all important operations, large numbers of handy sectional maps were struck off, so that they could be placed in the hands even of the subordinate officers and non-commissioned officers. These maps not only enabled the most junior leaders to study their objectives and tasks in detail before every battle, but also became a convenient vehicle for sending back reports as to the positions reached or occupied by front-line troops or detached parties. On occasions as many as five thousand of such maps would be struck off for the use of the troops, in a single operation.

There was also a branch of the Intelligence Staff attached to the No. 3 Australian Air Squadron. Its special business was to print and distribute large numbers of photographs, both vertical and oblique, taken from the air over the territory to be captured—showing trenches, wire, roads, hedges and many other features of paramount interest to the troops. Thousands of such photographs were distributed before every battle.

The important considerations, in regard both to maps and photographs, were that on the one hand, they were of priceless value to all who understood how to read and use them, and on the other hand, the event proved that their issue was in no sense labour in vain, for the keen interest taken, even by the private soldiers, in these facilities contributed powerfully to the success and precision with which all battle orders were carried out, and this more than repaid us for the additional trouble involved. It was inspiriting to me to see, on the eve of every great battle, as I made my round of the troops, numerous small groups of men gathered around their sergeant or corporal, eagerly discussing these maps and the photographs and the things they disclosed, the lie of the land, the wire, the trenches, the probable machine-gun posts, the dug-outs and the suspected enemy strong points.

My account of the details prepared for the battle of August 8th is not nearly complete; but the demands of space forbid any more informative reference to numerous other essential ingredients of the plan than a mere recital of some of them. Thus, for example, it was necessary to decide the action of all Machine Guns, both those used collectively under Corps control, and those left to be handled by the Divisions; the employment of Smoke Tactics, by the use of smoke screens created both by mortars from the ground and by phosphorus bombs dropped from the air; the use to be made of all the technical troops (Engineers and Pioneers) in bridging, road and railway repairs and field fortifications; the arrangements for the medical evacuation of the wounded, and for the collection and safe-keeping of the anticipated haul of prisoners, the synchronization of watches throughout the whole command, so that action should occur punctually at a common clock time; and last, but not least, the establishment of the machinery of liaison internally between all the numerous formations of the Australian Corps, and also externally with my flank Corps, the Canadians, under Currie, on my right, and the British Third Corps, under Butler, on my left.

Such, in outline, were my battle plans and my preparations for what I hoped would prove an operation of decisive influence upon the future of the campaign. The immediate results, which could be estimated on the spot and at the time, and the admissions of Ludendorff, which came to light only many months afterwards, combine to show that I was not mistaken.