THE GREAT BRITISH OFFENSIVE [Main Title]

Compilation film of the British Army during the Battle of Amiens and the Advance to the Hindenburg Line, Western Front, August 1918.

(Reel 1) Near Bapaume a German "anti-tank gun" lies in an unidentifiable wreck with its crew dead beside it. Shells burst in the distance. Two 6-inch Mk VII guns are drawn by Holt tractors to new positions, probably near Sapignies, passed by a GS wagon of the New Zealand Division. British soldiers clear debris and trees in a thin wood near Bailleul. Near Thiepval (?) a dead German lies over a Maxim machine gun on a sledge. Three British soldiers carrying German Maxims and 08/15 Bergmanns walk past him. "There is only one good boche - and that is a dead boche." At a dressing station a prostrate German officer is given water by an RAMC corpsman. "The quality of mercy is not strained." Just outside Abbéville a large group of Germans captured in the advance waits to move. (Reel 2) Men of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, Canadian 3rd Division, rest against a wall in a village "after taking Jigsaw Wood" which they did on 29th August. British lorries have difficulty negotiating shell craters in the road behind the lines. In a sunken lane Royal Engineers string telephone wires, using German rifles stuck in the ground as posts. In the foreground a field kitchen is covered with a tarpaulin as line-laying wagons of the Royal Engineers pass by loaded with equipment. Men of 4th or 5th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers, 52nd (Lowland) Division, in combat gear "moving forward" (their officer has his arm in a sling). Scenes in Achiet-le-Grand. The remains of Bailleul, Béteran and Saint Léger. Three men of 8th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, 56th (London) Division, pull a cart load of captured German mortars and machine guns through Croisilles as ammunition limbers pass the other way. A group of men from 1/4th Battalion, London Regiment, 56th (London) Division, "waiting to go over the top in a front trench at Bullecourt". The ruins of Bapaume station, followed by a pan over a main street in Bapaume, showing considerable damage. The church at Grévillers, also showing major shell damage.

35mm