r months or so of fighting, achieved the
greatest effort of human courage and endurance ever done by masses of
men in obedience to command.

VII

At the end of those battles happened that surprising, audacious
adventure in the Cambrai salient organized by the Third Army under
General Byng, when on November 20, 1917, squadrons of tanks broke
through the Hindenburg line, and infantry streamed through the breach,
captured hundreds of guns, ten thousand prisoners, many villages and
ridges, and gave a monstrous shock to the German High Command.

The audacity of the adventure lay in the poverty of manpower with which
it was attempted and supported. The divisions engaged had all been
through the grinding mill of Flanders and were tired men. The artillery
was made up largely of those batteries which had been axle--deep in
Flanders mud. It was clearly understood by General Byng and Gen. Louis
Vaughan, his chief of staff, that Sir Douglas Haig could not afford
to give them strong reserves to exploit any success they might gain
by surprise or to defend the captured ground against certain
counter-attacks. It was to be a surprise assault by tanks and infantry,
with the hope that the cavalry corps might find its gap at last and
sweep round Cambrai before the enemy could recover and reorganize. With
other correspondents I saw Gen. Louis Vaughan, who expounded the scheme
before it was launched. That charming man, with his professional manner,
sweetness of speech, gentleness of voice and gesture, like an Oxford
don analyzing the war correspondence of Xenophon, made no secret of the
economy with which the operation would have to be made.

"We must cut our coat according to our cloth," he said.

The whole idea was to seize only as much ground as the initial success
could gain, and not to press if resistance became strong. It was a
gamble, with a chance of luck. The cavalry might do nothing, or score
a big triumph. All depended on the surprise of the tanks. If they were
discovered before the assault the whole adventure would fail at the
start.

They had been brought up secretly by night, four hundred of them, with
supply-tanks for ammunition and petrol lying hidden in woods by day. So
the artillery and infantry and cavalry had been concentrated also. The
enemy believed himself secure in his Hindenburg line, which had been
constructed behind broad hedges of barbed wire with such wide ditches
that no tank could cross.

How,