Page:Breaking the Hindenburg Line.djvu/51

Rh This intensive artillery preparation was carried on without pause until the morning selected for the attack. In the meantime, careful barrage time-tables had been worked out for the attack itself, and every gun of the Field Artillery had been assigned its task, either in the barrage which should cover the advance of the infantry, in the shelling of specially selected areas where enemy concentrations might be expected, or in assisting the Heavy Artillery in its task of neutralizing or annihilating suspected enemy strong-points and machine-gun emplacements.

In an attack on a position which is fronted by a water obstacle of the size and depth of the St. Quentin Canal it is naturally to be expected that towards the overcoming of that obstacle a large and even dominating part of the preparation for the attack should be directed. The crossing of the Canal was the task of the Infantry, but the work of enabling the Infantry to cross was essentially the rôle of the Engineers, and the preparations made by the C.R.E., Lieutenant-Colonel H. T. Morshead, D.S.O., R.E., were extremely thorough.

Unfortunately the C.R.E. himself, while reconnoitring forward routes for pontoon wagons in the vicinity of Le Verguier on the 25th, was wounded in the leg by a a piece of a shell which exploded near him, and his wound, though not serious, was sufficient to incapacitate him for some weeks.

In his absence, and until his successor, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Garforth, D.S.O., M.C., R.E., joined the Division, the R.E. preparation was carried out under the direction of the Adjutant and Assistant Adjutant. These preparations consisted mainly in the collection of material for, and the construction of, various means of crossing the Canal. Amongst the most successful of the means