The story of the raid is almost as dramatic as its consequences, the plans were actually captured at Framerville, ten miles east of Amiens, in the battle of August 8, 1918.
During the raid by a section of the 17th (Armoured Car) Tank Battalion upon the German headquarters at Framerville, 10 miles from Amiens, and about nine miles behind the then German line, Lieut. Rollings secured possession of a large number of valuable documents, which gave a complete account and plans of the Hindenburg Lime The success of the raid was one of the principal events which brought about the ending of the Great War. Lieut. Rollings is now serving in Neath Borough Police Force, being chief clerk in the chief constables office.
On the 28th. September 1918, the eve of the attack on the Hindenburg Line, Major D.P. Stevenson, the Commander of 35th Squadron, R.A.F. called his men together in a hangar to tell them of a change of plan for the following day. A mechanic who was present took down in his diary a shorthand note of what the Major said, including the fact that the change of plan had come about because "a subaltern took some papers from a German Staff Officer and they contained a complete plan of the defences of the Hindenburg Line". Next day the attack moved forward, and just over 6 weeks later, the Armistice was signed.
After the war, the mechanic put away his diary and thought nothing more of the event until November 1931 when he found it among some papers he was sorting through and began to wonder about the unknown subaltern whose find had changed the plans of an Army. He took the story to the newspapers, and Lt. Col. Valentine Vivian, the Chief Intelligence Officer confirmed that in September 1918, the plan of attack had been changed because maps had come into Rawlinson’s possession. They had shown every Germen machine gun post, trench mortar battery and fortified position, and had been captured in August 1918 by an unknown British subaltern. Col. Vivian said that every officer taking part in the attack of August 8th 1918 had been issued with a map of all the known German H.Q. and told to kill or capture and men found there and search for any documents. He said that he had no idea of the identity of the officer who found the vital maps, and that the individual concerned probably had no idea of the value of what he had sent back. He did, however, know that it was a party of cavalry, supported by armoured cars, who had raided the German Corps H.Q. at Wancourt, south east of Arras.
The "Sunday Express" of 8th November 1931 ran a story entitled "The Man who Ended the War… "Where is he?", Lady Houston offered a reward of £5,000 to the mystery officer whom the "Sunday Express" described as "the man who ended the war", and a detailed search began. Much to his surprise, in the same month, a Neath police sergeant received a telephone call enquiring whether he was the Lt. Ernest Rollings who had taken part in the August raid on a farmhouse at Framerville, near Amiens. Despite protesting that he could not have played such a vital role, he was induced to tell the story of his war service, and it was soon clear that he really was the man who had captured the vital papers. Although a number of former officers had written to the "Sunday Express" claiming to be the man who led the raid, Ernest Rollings had not made a claim on his own behalf. It was Lt. J.T. Yeoman, who had been wounded in the action, who had revealed the name of the young officer to the newspaper, and the name was confirmed by the Battalion Commander, Col. E.J. Carter
A web site gives the story told by Lt Ernest James Rollings
Rollings' own version:
'The 17th (Armoured Car) Tank Battalion, in which I was a lieutenant, was a movable unit, and on August 7, 1918, we received sudden orders to attach ourselves at once to the Australian Corps at Villers-Bretonnneux, a hundred miles away. We arrived there the same night, and our orders were short and to the point.' 'We were to wait behind the line until the Australians had made a break in it, then race through, search for all German headquarters, raid them for documents, and shoot every German on sight. 'I received personal orders to concentrate on a German headquarters at Framerville, which was nine miles in adduce of our front line. 'Before dawn the next morning we were all at our posts waiting.
I was in charge of two armoured cars. DAWN AND ATTACK ' Dawn — and hell broke loose. The Australians went over like men possessed, and 15 minutes later we received the signal — they were through! ''Off we went, leaving the Australians straining at the leash in the German front line, eager for more successes. 'The tanks towed us for two and a half miles, and here we found the roads free from shell holes, and left them behind. 'Framerville was now about seven and a half miles away: In the distance we could see the German rear guard still retreating, but fighting desperately to make a stand 'I knew that if the break in the line was filled that would be the end of us but I decided to make a bid for it, and we raced at top speed along the Amiens-St. Quentin road. 'After a while, however, we found we had to fight our way through the retreating Germans, but they were completely disorganised, and we killed them in scores.
'By noon we had fought our way through to Framerville, with the German rearguard behind us being dealt with by the Australians. 'We found the German Corps Headquarters in an old farmhouse. I remember there were three steps leading to the door, because I mounted them slowly, revolver in hand. 'But the German staff had fled a few minutes before, apparently, and so compete was their panic that they had not stopped to burn their papers. 'Some of the documents were torn up. but I packed every scrap into sand bags. I could not read German, and in any case I had no time to read any of the documents, so every little torn up scrap went into the sandbags. 'When I came out I found my gunners in the car holding up four' German staff officers. We took all their papers and revolvers, but they were killed by a sudden burst of machine gun fire. 'For three more hours we mopped up villages within a radius of twelve to 15 miles, and when we got back I handed over the sandbags to the company commander Major W. E. Boucher M.C.
'They were sent on to General Headquarters for examination. and after that I heard nothing, except that I got a bar to my M.C. 'A few days later, on the 28th. I was shot in the head and my active service came to an end. 'I never knew the part those papers played in ending the war until now. In 1920 I went back to the Glamorgan police.
Lieut. Colonel Valentine Vivian who was chief intelligence officer was called on to report to General Lord Rawlinson on the captured plans, to take up the story.
'I gave each officer taking part in the battle near Arras that started on August 8, 1918— Ludendorn's Black Day as he himself called it— a small map of every German divisional and brigade headquarters known to us. 'The officers were instructed to detail men to visit these headquarters and kill or capture any German staff found there, and to search for any documents. 'A party of cavalry, supported by armoured cars, raided a German corps headquarters at Wancourt, south-east of Arras. 'The place— an old farmhouse — had been hurriedly evacuated, and in one of the rooms they found the floor was littered with torn-up papers 'The subaltern in charge stuffed all the papers in empty sandbags. He had no time to examine any on the spot, but decided to take no chances, and collected every scrap of paper in the room. 'The scraps of paper went to G.H.Q. and the lieutenant lost interest in them as thoroughly as G.H.Q. lost interest in him. But, pieced together, those papers revealed in minutest detail the whole organisation of the Hindenburg Line: every machine-gun emplacement, every headquarter, every artillery position with their arcs of fire, aerodromes, ambulances, and field-dressing stations So complete and detailed were the plans, after they had been painstakingly pasted together, that headquarters flatly refused to treat them seriously at first. It was inconceivable that such intimate details of the German defences should have been left behind, unburned. However. G.H.Q. had learned the wisdom of examining even the unlikeliest of clues, and British air squadrons were detailed to verify the most important of the positions marked on the captured plans. Concealed machine-gun emplacements and ammunition dumps could not be photographed from the air, but for days British air squadrons hovered over the German line, taking all possible photographs.
G.H.Q. was duly impressed when it was found that every detail on the air photographs was shown in the plans. It was proof enough that the plans were also accurate in the details that the cameras could not capture, and, Foch was supplied with the precise picture of the entire German defence.
No time then for him to inquire how the plans had been captured. He knew nothing of Lieut. Rollings — but he knew that his great chance had come. The moment had come to strike, and he struck. The war was over in six weeks and two days, a signally accurate fulfilment of the prediction which Major Stevenson had made to his men at St. Quentin. Rollings, the man in charge of the raid that had made the swift ending of the war possible, was not in at the death. But fate ordained that the man who ended the war should have a more fitting reward than a policeman's pension. The mechanic who had taken the verbatim note of Major Stevenson's speech, 'thought it might be interesting,' and took it along to the 'Sunday Express,' which gave full publicity to the story, and told the public that the man in charge of the armoured car raid must have been the man who ended the war. It was a journalist, a returned man, who identified Rollings as the hero of the raid, and Rollings' own chief. Colonel Carter, who confirmed the story with the words, 'There is no doubt about it. Rollings is your man' Then Lady Houston came forward. She was too ill to be present at the Neath cinema, but she was renowned for her gifts to worthy causes, and she could not let Rollings' feat go unrecognised. When he received the cheque from the Mayer of Neath, Rollings said: 'When I put those papers into the sandbags I had no knowledge of their value and I never knew until a fortnight ago. 'As a police officer I would like to impress upon you all that this was the only house I have ever burgled and I never till now knew the value of the swag. 'I could never have performed that raid but for the strong assistance and co-operation of some very gallant men. To those men I owe a great deal. I am endeavouring to trace them.'
The names of the others who took part in the raid were:-
James Telford Yeoman - Temporary Captain, Tank Corps
Arthur Charles Wood - Lieutenant, Tank Corps
Charles Albert Blencowe - Second Lieutenant, Tank Corps
Norman Clark Wood - Lieutenant, Tank Corps
A C Kenyon
D W Hord
W James