138th Infantry Brigade being in Divisional Reserve round about Magny-la-Fosse and the St. Quentin Canal. Attached to the latter Brigade were the 1/1st Monmouths, who were ordered to concentrate in and about Springbok Valley.
Dawn broke with a heavy fog as on the day of the Bellenglise Battle, but on this occasion the mist thinned rapidly, and when the barrage opened and the men sprang forward at 6.5 a.m., the fog was clearing with every prospect of a fine day to follow. Flushed with their previous success, officers and men leaped to their feet and thrust forward to conform to the barrage, which stood before them, a thundering wall of smoke and pulverized earth, interposing between them and the enemy a friendly, if highly dangerous, veil of invisibility. Before them, for six long minutes, the line of bursting shells stood still, then, with the Infantry behind it, commenced to move steadily forward, and the conquest of the last German main line of resistance was begun.
Behind the Infantry rumbled the tanks, of which one company was again attached to each fighting Brigade, and whose duties were the destruction of the barbed-wire entanglements which formed the chief physical obstacle in the path of our advance.
The tasks of the two Brigades in the front line were essentially different. The Left Brigade (139th Infantry Brigade) had a straightforward if difficult task allotted to it—the task of advancing against the Fonsomme line at its strongest point and then overrunning and mopping up in succession the villages of Ramicourt and Montbrehain. From the first, the attack met with strong resistance, the German troops in the Fonsomme line putting up a very stout fight indeed. There had been no preliminary bombardment, and paths through the wire had to be
