General Haig tells us how in March, 1917, when we were trying to keep up with the retreating Germans along this road, the part of it between Villers Carbonnel and the Somme at Brie was almost knee-deep in mud, so that it took the troops sixteen hours to cover the last four and a half miles. The difficulty of this crossing can be well understood by everyone who has seen the breadth and character of the flat marshy ground which, over a great part of the distance from Amiens, represents the bottom of the Somme valley. Some indication of the difficulty of troops crossing the river can be gathered from Plate 65, which is taken from below Cléry, close to the point at which the Australians crossed the river on the 31st of August, 1918, and made the magnificent attack on Mont St. Quentin, which resulted in the capture of Péronne the next day, and earned such warm praise from the Commander-in-Chief.[29]
The Château of Brie (Plate 66) lies on the Somme only half a mile south of the crossing of the main road from Amiens to St. Quentin, and therefore some four miles south of the great bend of the river at Péronne. On the 27th of September, 1918, it was the scene of a wonderful dress rehearsal for the crossing of the Hindenburg Line at the St. Quentin Canal two days later (see p. 58). Rafts, collapsible boats and life-lines, and some of the 3,000 life-belts which had been hurried up from the coast, were all tested, to make sure that there should be neither hesitation nor failure in their use in the attack on the "absolutely impregnable" section. And, as everyone knows, there _was_ neither hesitation nor failure; the St. Quentin Canal was carried by the Terriers on the appointed day, and with this success, and the crossing of the "Kriemhilde" Line by the Americans in the middle of October, the last standing places for the retreating German armies vanished.
On the road east of the Somme from Brie to Péronne one saw a curious phenomenon which I seldom saw elsewhere, and cannot explain. In some way the trees in the felled avenue had been able to reassert their life, and for a considerable distance the road was lined in an unsightly fashion with what looked like gigantic bushes growing out of the stumps of the once tall and beautiful trees.