Page:Breaking the Hindenburg Line.djvu/98

78 Both of these tunnels were capable of housing several thousands of men, and were absolutely safe assembly-places where the enemy could laugh at the worst efforts of our artillery. For offensive operations they would have been invaluable reservoirs, but for the defence of the Canal they were too close to the front line to be ideal. The fog and the indomitable perseverance with which our men kept up with the barrage and so prevented the egress of these reserves, caused the Bellenglise Tunnel to become simply a means of swelling the tale of prisoners captured by our leading Brigade. Thus was the work of two years neutralized and more than neutralized in three or four hours. By the next day the victors themselves were snugly housed in the tunnel, lighted brilliantly by a Boche electric plant tended by Boche electricians, safe from the raids of German aeroplanes, and doubly safe from the shells from the German heavy guns which were at that time again making Bellenglise and La Baraque their principal targets.

Four thousand two hundred prisoners and seventy guns, at a cost of rather under 800 casualties—such was the record the 46th Division had to its credit on the night of the 29th September. The effect on the moral of the enemy was to be displayed in the days that were to come. Never again would his Infantry fight confident in the idea that, if the worst happened, they had behind them an impregnable line on which to fall back and reorganize. They knew—and we knew—that, whatever the German papers might say, there could be no line to come like the Hindenburg Line, which had taken two years to make and on which all the resources of German military engineering and an immense amount of money and labour had been expended.

The breaking of the Hindenburg Line marked a definite