The test of scarlet, a romance of reality

20 November – 7 December 1917

Battle of Cambrai (1917)

THE TEST OF SCARLET 73

The new strategy was first practised by our Third Army in its November Drive against Cambrai; that drive failed for want of sufficient reinforcements to back it up. Until that time the Allies had always gone after what were known as "limited objectives", such as high ground, trench-systems, villages, salients. When the objective had been taken, the attack rested. The Vimy Ridge was a Hmited ob- jective. We didn't want to break the Hun line; what we desired was the Ridge, because it com-

THE TEST OF SCARLET 291

hammerhead of the attack. They say that Foch's principle is to use up his storm-troops; he never relieves them when once an offensive has begun. We no longer guess — we know the task that lies before us. Last time it was the saving of Amiens; this time it is the breaking of the Hindenburg Line. Two nights ago we pulled into action across the bald chalky country that straddles the Cambrai-Arras road. To the north of us, rising out of the blackness of the Vimy Plain, we could see the ridge which was so long our home and which, because we were not allowed to die, we guarded with so much impatience. Ah, how impatient we were while the indignity of not dying was upon us! How little we valued the supreme gift of life! How we courted death in raid after raid throughout the summer! Had we known then how few sunny days remained for most of us, how much more gratefully we should have lived them. We have come back for what will probably be our severest test to very nearly the spot whence

THE TEST OF SCARLET 295

The Major has just told me that the attack is to be launched tomorrow at dawn. It's extraordinarily ambitious, for its third objective is fifteen thousand yards from where we are at present, and it's ul- timate goal is the capture of Cambrai. Between ourselves and Cambrai stretches the most strongly fortified country of the entire German Front — a country naturally fortified by marshes and canals and made doubly impregnable by military cunning. The Hindenburg Line will have to be taken first be- fore any general advance can be begun. After that certain sacrifice-tanks will go through and drown themselves in the canals to make a bridge over which the living tanks and cavalry may push forward to conquest.

THE TEST OF SCARLET 301

It is the ''eternal trying" of my last fight that lives most vividly in my memory. We were in that murder-hole, you will remember, to the left of the Cambrai-Arras road. Our job was to smash the Hindenburg Line and to go as much further as our strength would carry us. Our objective was to be the ending of the war or, in the words of the Major, ''Berlin or nothing."