It was now about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and "Musical Box" was still moving east, shooting at anything she could see, from motor transport to marching infantry, and getting heavily peppered in return. At last Lieutenant Arnold was compelled to withdraw the forward gun. The fumes and the heat were stifling, but the crew managed to endure it till suddenly the gallant "Musical Box" was struck by two heavy shells following close one upon the other, and the cab burst into flames. Carney and Ribbans reached the door and collapsed. Lieutenant Arnold was almost overcome, but managed to get the door open and fall out upon the ground. He was then able to drag out the other two men. Burning petrol was running on to the ground where they were lying, and the clothing of all three was on fire. They struggled to get away from the petrol, and while doing so Carney received his death wound. The enemy were now approaching from all quarters, and, having been thoroughly scared, they not unnaturally treated the two survivors somewhat roughly.
Lieutenant Arnold and Gunner Ribbans, badly burned, incredibly dirty, half-suffocated, and fainting with fatigue, were led off into captivity, after having completed such an Odyssey of devastation as perhaps befell no other two men in the war.
Close to the spot where the South Africans made their great stand in the retreat of March 1918, it fell to the lot of troops from another of our Dominions to perform an almost miraculous exploit in the advance eastward to victory. By 30th August, as we have seen, the tide had fully turned. All the British armies were pressing back the enemy over the old Somme battlefield, and that enemy was struggling desperately to hold on to key positions long enough to enable him to retire in good order to the Hindenburg Line, where he hoped to stand on the defence over the winter. But these key positions were now being rushed too fast to permit of an orderly retreat, and so the Hindenburg defences proved of no avail, and before the end of October the Germans were a defeated army.
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.