not be the French whom they were relieving. If they held on south, it would be the old Somme ground. And they held on south to Beaufort, marching by daylight, till the 18th of October found them in a camp of huts outside Blaireville and well in the zone of aeroplane observation. They moved under cover of darkness that night to a camp of tents at Gomiecourt between wrecked Bapaume and battered Arras.
The bare devastated downs of the Somme had taken them back again, and they were in the Fifth Corps, Third (Julian Byng's) Army. It was revealed at Divisional Headquarters conference on the night of the 19th that that army was on the eve of attack. There would be no preliminary bombardments, but an outrush of tanks, with a dozen infantry divisions on a six-mile front from Gonnelieu to the Canal du Nord near Hermies.
The affair might be a surprise for an enemy whom our pressure on the Salient had forced to withdraw a large number of troops from the Somme front. If the tanks worked well, it ought to result in the breaking through of the triple-trench system of the Hindenburg Line, which had been immensely strengthened by the Germans since their leisurely retirement thither in April. We might expect to push on across their reserve system three or four miles behind the Hindenburg Line. We might even capture Cambrai twelve thousand yards from our jumping-off place, though that would be a side-issue; but, with luck, our attack would win us more high ground towards the north and the north-east, whence we could later strike in whichever direction seemed most profitable. Secrecy and hard-hitting would be of the essence of the contract, since the enemy could bring up reinforcements in a couple of days. Meantime the Guards Division would stand by at two hours' notice, ready to be used as required. If Cambrai were taken, they would be called upon to hold it and make good. If it were not, then the battle would rank as a raid on a big scale, and the Division might be used for anything that developed.
