Hot.
Shifted from LOUEZ at 7.00 A.M. – Mix-up about lorries nearly [?] us. – Kept me chasing around on the bike all morning. – Made the trip 3 times between billets.
Called in at V Sqdn on the way over in the morning. – Fritz touched them up a bit last night. He was pretty busy round our way too.
Finally got everything settled here by 6 P.M. – 3rd Battery also pulled in.
Rain.
– Fox & I are messing in our billet from the cook-house. – We are not too badly off – Nice clean room with a bed + the old lady is very obliging – Also the kids are clean.
– 3rd Btty pull out to-night under sealed orders. – Merrit came in to see us after dinner.
More rain.
Orders in last night. – Entrain tomorrow. –
Hope the weather clears up but it looks doubtful. Binns came around this aft + Dawson paid the troops.
Rain
Pulled out of SARS at 1.30
– Entrained at Frévent at 6.00 P.M.
– All on board in an hour.
– Train pulled out at 9.45 for unknown destination
– Had dinner at the Amiens before leaving.
Other passengers in
Chipman, Binns, Wade & Buchanan
Rain.
Halte Repas – Noyelles-sur-Mer at 6.00 A.M.
Pretty country round Eu & LeTreport. – Detrained at VIEUX ROUEN at noon – waited for orders. – The arrived about 4.00 P.M. & we set out in the rain for HORNOY – No lines or billets. – Just to park in the street overnight.
Fanquembug found a good billet for Fox & I & believe me we were glad to crawl between the sheets that the old lady insisted on the bed.
Entrained the evening before at Frévent for an "unknown destination," Robertson's unit is routed well off its usual Arras-area ground (southwest along the Somme estuary through Noyelles-sur-Mer, then the "pretty country round" Eu and Le Tréport on the Normandy coast, before turning back inland to Vieux-Rouen and Hornoy), a wide loop rather than a direct line south, reflecting how much rail traffic the coming push on Amiens required moving into position at once. The move had begun a week earlier, dressed up as a shift to a "Training area": the secret orders for it survive, with his own unit's copies ticked, the billeting order, then the entraining order that put him on this train, then the approach march to the wood outside Amiens.
"The Move to Amiens", the first order →"The Move South", the trains and the march to Boves Wood →
Rain
HORNOY – VERS
Messing about all morning awaiting orders. – They want us to do a 44 km trek to BOVES WOOD tonight. – Too much. – Saw the CRE & got his OK to stage at VERS.
Went ahead on the bike this aft. via AMIENS to BOVES WOOD + found Mitchell + his gang located with 2nd Bn. – Some roads to travel over – Deep with mud + all sorts of traffic. – Had dinner with Rolston + hit VERS at dark. – Met Smith of the 5th M.T. Co’y + got another meal. – Saw the town major + located a place to park.
Fine
VERS – BOVES WOOD
– Dozed in the T.M.’s office till 2 A.M. + then went out on the road to meet the troops – Hot them in, horses watered + found a barn for the men, but daylight. – Finished the night on the floor of the town major’s office. – Brekker + lunch with Wade.
– Struck out for BOVES WOOD about 4.30 P.M.
Located lines etc for the troops + sat down to wait for them. –
Corps going over in the morning so we may move forward.
Fine.
Sat around all night waiting for Fox + the outfit. – They arrived about daylight, just as we were watching the flood of the barrage (zero 4.30)
– O’Leary arrived at same time with orders to ditch surplus stuff + move forward to GENTELLES WOOD – Moved up at 11.30 A.M. – All sorts of traffic on the road. – All moving forward. – The only traffic that seems to be coming back is a stream of prisoners.
Bell got badly hit early in the show.
The Hundred Days Offensive, the campaign that ends the war three months later, opens this morning east of Amiens. Close to 2,000 Allied guns fire as one at zero hour (recorded historically as 4:20 a.m., close to Robertson's own "zero 4.30"), followed by over 500 tanks advancing under cover of fog along a roughly 15-mile stretch of front. General Erich Ludendorff would later call it "the black day of the German Army" ("der Schwarze Tag"), the moment, in his own postwar account, that Germany's chance of winning the war ended for good. Robertson is close enough to watch "the flood of the barrage" break at zero hour, then spends the next two days moving forward behind it: a salvaged German officer's pack and a captured horse picked up near Caix, and, as he puts it, "the only traffic that seems to be coming back is a stream of prisoners", among the more than 15,000 Germans taken that first day alone.
Amiens →The engineer plan for the attack, his unit's copy →
Hot & dusty.
Two wagons out to haul up shovels for 2nd Bde. – Sent Mitchell back to the dump to draw them & went ahead on the bus to scout out the land. – Not much to see. – Roads in fine condition when you get back a bit. – Not many stiffs in evidence. – Everything seems to be going fine. – Dumped shovels at CAIX & picked up some stuff from a hun shoeingsmith’s shop that may come in handy. – Also picked up a good bosch officer’s pack. – Just the thing for the motor-bike carrier. – He had evidently been lightening his load. – Salvaged a horse.
Mitchell gave the S.M. a calling tonight. – He’s getting to think he is too important.
Endless stream of transport moving forward.
Hot.
Pulled out for AUBERCOURT at daylight. – Parked there for the day. – Foraged round the old hun gun positions but found nothing useful. – Some of the Jock’s dirty work still in evidence.
Saw some of the crowd in the 5th D.A.C.
E.A. pretty active with bombs during the night. – Put the breeze up me.
Hot & dry.
Pulled out of AUBERCOURT at daylight & located lines just outside B
Hot.
2nd Bn down training on trestles.
Hot.
Pretty dusty & dry up here. – Water hard to get so everyone is pretty crumby.
– The show seems held up now.
Fritz gets pretty free with his bombs these nights.
Hot.
“Camel” crashed near lines. – Went down to the river below Maroeiul for a swim & fraternised with the French.
– Had dinner over at 2nd Bn Transport with Joe & Botting.
– 3rd Bn training on Pontoons
Hot
3rd Bn training on Pontoons.
Hot
3rd Bn training on trestles.
– Busy on War Diary since organization.
– Not feeling very good. – Cold + a touch of dysentry.
Hot
Ormy Stitt buried to-day. – Another of God’s own gentlemen gone west.
– Had tea with Coles & Botting.
– Worked on War Diary.
"Ormy Stitt buried to-day. – Another of God's own gentlemen gone west." This is the loss the June 25, 1917 entry on this site pointed toward, a warm, easy picnic tea "in fond mem'ry of 'stand to,'" with a note that Stitt would be killed in action fourteen months later. The New Year's Honours announcing his Military Cross had reached Robertson's diary on January 5, 1918; this is the other half of that story.
Ormie Stitt →The picnic tea, June 25, 1917 →
Cloudy.
Binns + the “terps” came up to tea
Dull
Warning order for move.
– Leave warrant arrived.
– Visited 66th Bty + 2nd Bn
The "warning order" Robertson records here survives among his papers: a Very Secret sheet issued by the 1st Brigade Canadian Engineers on the 18th, telling its units that the Canadian Corps "has been warned to be prepared to be withdrawn from the Line at short notice, probably commencing … on the night August 19/20th." The Corps had been at Amiens eleven days; now it was being pulled out and sent back to the Arras front for the next blow, the attack astride the Scarpe on August 26, and beyond it the assault on the Drocourt–Quéant Line. The order asked units to keep it quiet, to salvage all captured material first, and to observe the same secrecy as "the move from the First to the Fourth Army" a fortnight earlier, that move now run in reverse. His own leave warrant arrived the same day.
The warning order, and the situation reports he kept →
Cool.
Out looking for V Sqdn. –
Got car from Binns to catch Paris train.
– Missed it –
Spent night at CEMT
Hot. AMIENS
Breakfast at 6.30 at C.E.M.T. Co’y – Went down to station & decided to miss the leave train & wait for Paris train. – Met Morse, S.S.O. + he took me up to his mess for brekker again. – Stayed there all day till time to go to station about 3.30. – Train late – Very hot trip to Paris with Henshaw & Macafee. – Dined off tinned apricots. – Arrived about 10 P.M. & put up at the SCRIBE
HOT. PARIS
Hit for HAMMAN’S first of all & boiled the dirt out of me. – Met De Martigny & had a bang up lunch of mussels. – Loafed round all aft & had an early dinner at Gare du Nord as train left at 8.15 – Stifling hot trip around back line to Eu & Le Treport.
LONDON
Arr’d Boulogne 5 A.M. & went to club. – Had a wash-up & waited for breakfast. – Went to dock about 8.00 A.M. – Boat sailed 9.45 – Met Hatch & stayed with him – Arr’d in town 2.30 – Straight to bank for funds. – Next to SAVOY for a room & to a haberdasher’s for clothes. – Cleaned up & called at Ch. X. Met the AM. sapper & the naval Jo
Four days of travel. He misses one train (August 20), catches another the next day into a scorching Paris (dinner off "tinned apricots," a room at the Scribe) scrubs the dirt off at a Turkish bath the following morning, has lunch (mussels) with a friend, and is on a train again for London by evening. In London: bank, then the Savoy for a room, then a haberdasher's for clothes. No theatres, no museums, none of the sightseeing that filled his earlier leaves.