Of all the key positions the strongest was that of Mont St. Quentin, which commanded the old town of Péronne on the north. Péronne, as readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember, was the scene of some of the adventures of Quentin Durward. It had fallen into British hands in March 1917, when the Germans first retired to the Hindenburg Line. It had been lost in the great enemy onslaught of the following March. It was a very strong place, defended on the south and west by the links of the marshy Somme, and on the north by the low ridge called Mont St. Quentin, which provided superb gun positions. The place was held by one of the best of the German Divisions brought up from the reserve, the 2nd Prussian Guards. Their orders were to maintain it at all costs, for unless Mont St. Quentin was held, Péronne would fall, and if Péronne fell it would be a very battered remnant that would struggle back to the main Hindenburg Line. Sir Henry Rawlinson, the commander of the British Fourth Army, believed that the fight for Péronne would be long and difficult, and he entrusted it to the Australian Corps, who were unsurpassed for their fighting quality by any army in the world. This corps now performed the impossible, and in a single day’s fighting, and with few losses, swept the enemy from Mont St. Quentin, took Péronne, and shook the German II. Army to its foundations. Sir Henry Rawlinson has described their exploit as the finest single action in the war. No man who once saw the Australians in action could ever forget them. In the famous landing at Gallipoli, in a dozen desperate fights in that peninsula, in the fight for Pozières during the First Battle of the Somme, at the Third Battle of Ypres, and in the action at Villers-Bretonneux just before the final advance, they had shown themselves incomparable in their fury of assault and in reckless personal valour. They had more than gallantry; they had a perfect discipline and a perfect coolness. As types of physical perfection they have probably not been matched since the time of the ancient Greeks—these long, lean men, with their slow, quiet voices, and often the shadows of great fatigue around the deep-set, far-sighted eyes. Their first task was to cross the Somme—no easy task, since Mont St. Quentin commanded every reach of it. Sir John Monash, the Australian commander, decided not to attempt to force the river south of the town; but in the darkness of night a brigade of the 2nd Australian Division managed to cross and seize the German trenches at Cléry. This placed two of the three Australian Divisions of attack on the east of the river, directly under the ridge of St. Quentin. General Rawlinson visited the Australian headquarters that evening, and whetted their keenness by frankly expressing his disbelief in their success on the morrow. "You think you are going to take Mont St. Quentin with three battalions! What presumption! However, I don’t think I ought to stop you. Go ahead and try."