The grand decision referred to above, and concerted early in September between Marshal Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, found the Division in the Gomiecourt area, where they had been withdrawn on September 3rd, in order to rest and train. On the 8th, Lieut.-General Sir J. A. L. Haldane, Commanding the VIth Corps in the Third Army (General Sir Julian Byng), called on Major-General Whigham to explain the part to be taken by the 62nd in the impending operations. It was to attack and capture the village of Havrincourt, and ‘Z’ day was subsequently appointed for September 12th. We may recall from page 150 above, the first capture of Havrincourt by this Division on November, 1917. We may recall, too, how on September 9th, 1919, almost on the anniversary of its second capture, it was announced at a Divisional Dinner that a Memorial to the Division was to be erected in Havrincourt Park. We are now to see how it was won on the second occasion. There was this difference between the second and the first. In the battle of 1917, the break-through on the Cambrai front did not close with a permanent advance. Owing partly, as we now know, to the diversion of some Divisions to Italy, the brilliant design, so courageously supported, could not be completely carried out. This time, there was no going back. It was the Hindenburg Line which was to be captured, on the road from the River Marne to the River Meuse. [Illustration] The Hindenburg Line, so called by our Troops, was neither Hindenburg nor a Line. As described and pictured by great generals,[132] it consisted of a series of defences, including many defended villages, and forming a belt, or fortified area, varying in depth from seven to ten thousand yards. It stretched from Lille to Metz, and among its extensions, or switches, was the famous ‘Drocourt-Quéant Switch,’ which had held up our advance more than once. Within this system of barriers, running through a stratum of deep cuttings, the enemy had prepared elaborate dug-outs, shelters, and gun-emplacements, all heavily fortified and wired. The luxurious appointments of some of them, which so much astonished beholders, need not detain us here. The importance of these extraordinary entrenchments to their assailants in the autumn of 1918 lay, first, in their genuine strength, to which German engineers had devoted all the ingenuity of their craft, and, next, in the almost legendary awe with which time and sentiment had invested them. This effect was carried out in their native names. Working from north-west to south-east, they were known in the German Army and behind it as Wotan, Siegfried (supported by Herrmann), Hundung (Hagen), Brunehilde (Freya), Kriemhilde and Michel; and we may well believe that, at the back of the front, until such time as the front broke, German opinion was obstinately convinced that their tutelary heroes must protect the Fatherland from invasion.