Home > Morton Descendants > Great WarHelp | Email | Names ]
Hill 70 
17 April 1918 
 
 
 
 
The 4th received orders to take a section of front before Hill 70, north of the city of Lens. Executing a large raid, 60 daringly broke through German lines to secure identifications of enemy numbers. While storming forward positions, they destroyed several machine gun nests and discovered arms caches. As one squad pursued a German down a trench, they managed to hit him clambering down a ladder. At it's base, the Lieutenant in charge came upon a dugout full of enemy. After much shouting, gas bombs were thrown in, yet still there was no surrender. The Lieutenant threw in Mills bombs enough to destroy the dugout and all 40 enemy perished. The Lieutenant was subsequently awarded the military cross. 
"Over the top"

By April 25th, the German advance in the north ended with their taking of Mont Kemmell. Four days earlier, the great German flying ace Manfred Von Richthofen, the Red Baron, was shot down near Amiens. 
 

Magincourt 
May 1918 
 
By May 2nd the battalion was resting in Magincourt, and were in wonderful spirits. There were marching bands and parades in the flowering full bloom of springtime in northern France. The month was spent in training. They slept in bivouacs behind a farm, and swam in the stream or played baseball when not working on the defenses of La Bassée canal.  One month ago they were charging through barbed-wire trenches under enemy fire, and now they relaxed in the sun. All the while the Allies were being overwhelmed again to the south. The advancing armies were destroying Amiens, taking Soissons and threatening Rheims. 

The Germans, however, had failed by mid-June in their objective to inflict mortal damage to the Allies by severing the defensive rail supply network, and too many high quality troops had been spent. Three offensives had created three large salients which invited counterattack, and while 800,000 German troops had been lost, 300,000 fresh Allied soldiers were arriving every month.

Enquin-les-Mines  
June 1918 
 
The 4th spent the whole of June in maneuvers with the rest of the brigade at Enquin-les-Mines. On the 18th, the battalion won the brigade baseball championship, but further games were cancelled after an outbreak of the Spanish flu.
Mercatel front  
July 1918 
 
After a voyage by train from Aire to Savy, and a march to Manin, near Avesnes-le Comte, behind Arras, the 4th re-entered the front lines. 

July was spent at the Mercatel front south-east of Arras, while the Germans launched an unsuccessful attack farther to the south on Champagne. The unit war diary records the air was chilled, but instead of requisitioning heavy coats, rum was rationed as an effective antidote to the cold evenings. 

By July 18th, the Allies had turned the tables on the enemy attack and won a major counter-offensive on the Champagne front late in the month. To maintain their momentum, a planned second engagement was rapidly put into action. The poorer performance of the German troops, now quite spent since April, revealed the possibility of a much earlier victory.

'Tasks' at Bray 
27 July 1918 
 
 On the 27th of July it rained through-out the day, and most of George's battalion were ordered to construct defensive trenches at Bray, a small town south of Albert. They spent the day on 'tasks', where 500 men of the 4th were given a certain amount of trench to dig, calculated in feet and based on soil conditions and required depth. Tasks were supervised by a surly sapper Sergeant and combined with the elements, were an unpopular chore. After being soaked to the skin, they spent the next day sunbathing, all the while expecting a repeat of more trench digging the next day. Late in the evening of the 28th, orders arrived to pack up and prepare for a move to an unknown destination. With such a mysterious order, rumors abounded. Maybe they were heading south to the larger German salient near Amiens, or maybe north to attack on the River Lys. They even imagined going to Russia and fight in the civil war between the White and Red Armies. Whatever their destination, they received notice with their paybooks to keep their mouths shut. (27)
Keep you mouth shut!

The next day the 4th C.M.R. boarded their train and departed Bray and the Arras region