72nd Seaforth Highlanders of Canada - Electric Scotland

AMIENS.
the usual assisting barrage. However, this important lack
mattered not a whit to the Kilties. Their morale, always
high, was at "concert pitch,"
after the stirring events of
the past two days, and every man felt himself equal to
a dozen Boehes. Through the most intense machine gun
and shell fire, they swept into the German positions, where
the contest swayed for an instant as tartan and field-gray
struggled for the mastery. A pause, and the flashing line
of bayonets lifted over the ruins of Maucourt and drove
for the next village
Chilly.
As the men of the 72nd topped the slight rise upon which
Maucourt stands, they encountered what was then an en
tirely novel means of resistance the point-blank fire of
field guns. Heretofore shell-fire had been more or less an
impersonal matter. Gunners thousands of yards in the rear
had pumped shells methodically into a given map-square
with a comparatively tepid interest, and the troops had
been wont to take it in a similar manner. Now, as the
Battalion swung over the ridge, two German field guns at
Chilly opened fire at a range of only 500 yards. As the
layers and loaders worked their guns one could plainly see
the flash of the sun on the brass cartridge-cases almost
hear the snick of the closing breech-blocks, and then, as
the black muzzles leaped into tongues of flame well, as
one of the men remarked: "the
only good point about
that stuff is that if it is going to hit you, you can t hear
it coming" -a very doubtful consolation at the best.
Despite desperate resistance along the Maucourt-Chilly
road, and the fact that the troops on the left flank were
held up and unable to keep pace with the 72nd, the Bat
talion pushed on into the village of Chilly, and driving the
gunners from their guns, captured the guns themselves.
Routing the enemy from his old dugouts and trenches, the
Battalion cleared Chilly of is defenders and pushed its way
to its allotted positions some 200 yards east of the village.
By 2:30 p.m. consolidation was well under way, and "B"
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