72nd Seaforth Highlanders of Canada - Electric Scotland

CHAPTER XIV.
CAMBRAI.
Review of the situation Germans with their backs to the wall
Battalion bombed in Arras Station Another zero hour Bat
talion storms high ground northeast of Bourlon The attack
resumed next day Battalion captures Sancourt and Blecourt
Lieut. Knight s remarkable achievement Sergt.-Maj. G. H.
Soles wins second bar to D. C. M.
IN ORDER to estimate the full significance of the actions
fought from September 27th to about the 9th of October,
under the general heading of Cambrai, some idea of the
conditions existing on the western front prior
to the at
tack is necessary.
Beginning on August 8th, the hammer-blows of the Al
lied Armies had pushed back the German line along prac
tically the whole battle-front, a distance varying from
ten to forty miles. All the gains of the enemy s costly
spring offensive had been wiped out, and more. His line
was now further back /than it had been since the position
warfare of the opening phases in 1914 had given place
to the stalemate of trench life. The enemy s front had been
greatly shortened, and as a result his powers of resistance
had been considerably increased. It was not now essential
that he should garrison the huge salient south and west
towards Paris and the coast. So far as the British Armies
were concerned, they now faced an enemy who had fallen
back upon immensely strong natural and artificial defences
along the approximate line of Douai-Cambrai and St. Quentin.
Particularizing still further, the Canadian Corps faced
the barrier of the Canal du Nord from a point just south
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