by Barrie Pitt
1918 THE LAST ACT
1918
The Last Act
BY
BARRIE PITT
PEN & SWORD MILITARY CLASSICS
First published in 1962 by Cassel Co Limited
Published in 2003
and re-printed in this format in 2013 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
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The right of Barrie Pitt to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Copyright © Barrie Pitt, 2003, 2013
ISBN:- 978-1-4738-3476-7
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TO
JOHN MICHAEL CHARLES
‘JOHNNYMIKE’
THE LAST OF THE LINE
WITH LOVE
Author’s Note
I WOULD like to record my gratitude to the many people who have helped me during the writing of this book. The officials of many Public Libraries – especially those of Reading and Basingstoke – have co-operated to a degree, as have the owners of several private collections of books and papers.
For his help in the time-consuming task of research through a wealth of material I am greatly indebted to Mr. V. A. Mosey; and to Wing Commander P. W. G. Burgess, O.B.E., Mr. F. Wallwork, Mr. F. P. Ridsdale, and especially Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, I owe thanks for reading my typescript and correcting my errors of syntax and fact. For the preparation of that typescript from my own virtually indecipherable notes, I must express my gratitude to Miss Shirley White.
And for her faith, hope and charity throughout that period of domestic chaos which seems inevitably to engulf us as soon as book-writing commences, I must once again thank S.D.P. Without her, the book could not have been written.
BARRIE PITT
Contents
PROLOGUE
1. THE DEADLOCK
2. AT HOME
3. PROSPECT OF BATTLE
4. PEAL OF ORDNANCE: ST. QUENTIN
5. CLASH OF ARMS: THE LYS
6. CRISIS: THE BATTLE OF CHEMIN-DES-DAMES
7. POINT OF BALANCE
8. THE TILTING SCALE: SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE
9. ALLIED ADVANCE
10. THE GRAND ASSAULT
11. BREAKING POINT
12. EPILOGUE AND AFTERMATH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SOURCES
INDEX
Illustrations
Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs are
the property of the Imperial War Museum.
R T.H.P.L. - Radio Times Hulton Picture Library
The Ideal
Reality: Passchendaele, November 1917
Near Essigny, February 1918
Le Barque, spring 1917
Haig, Joffre and Lloyd George
Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II and General Erich Ludendorff
Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig
General Sir Hubert Gough
General Sir Henry Wilson (R T.H.P.L.)
General Foch and General John J. Pershing
The Americans
Night scene in the German trenches
Minenwerfer crew in action (R T.H.P.L.)
Bombing forward (R T.H.P.L.)
Breakthrough (R.T.H.P.L.)
The second wave waiting to go in
Picquet waiting at a road block. The Lys, April 1918
Moving up
German tanks in action, June 1918
The tide turning: German Storm Troops under attack during the fighting in the Marne Bulge
General Pétain
General Foch
British attack through wooded country near Tardenois: July 22nd, 1918
Mark V tanks of the 4th Battalion, Tank Corps, at Meaulte, August 22nd, 1918
British armoured cars at Biefvillers, August 25th, 1918
Wire belts in the Siegfried Line, stormed by the Australians
German machine-gunners
British Mark IV Female tank attacked by flamethrowers
From the German angle
Near Dury, after the battle of the Drocourt-Quéant Switch, September 2nd, 1918
The cost of the assault
Scene on the battlefield
Canadians in the Wotan Line, September 2nd, 1918
German machine-gun post
Americans in the Argonne (US. National Archives)
German trench, summer 1918
Concrete defences in the Siegfied Line, under attack
British artillery crossing the Canal du Nord
Canadian patrol in Cambrai, October 9th, 1918
Prince Max of Baden (R.T.H.P.L.)
General von Seeckt (Tita Binz)
Grand Hotel Britannique, Spa
The Kaiser and his suite on Eysden railway station, November 10th, 1918 (R.T.H.P.L.)
The King and his generals
Maps
German Spring Offensive, Western Front 1918
The Allied Offensive, Autumn 1918
The Flesquières Salient, 1917–18
German Plan of Attack, March 1918
Order of Battle, 21 March 1918
Battle Area, March – April 1918
Second Day
Third Day
German Advance by Days, March 1918
The Battle of the Lys, April 1918
The Battle of Chemin-des-Dames, Amy 1918
The Last German Offensive and the Counterattack, July 1918
The Battle of Amiens, August 1918
German Defensive System, September 1918
St. Mihiel Salient, September 1918
* * *
Trench diagrams
Prologue
WHEN Europe went to war in 1914, it did so in a mood of joyous certainty. Both sides were confident that their causes were just, that their armies were invincible, and that their consequent victories would be glorious, overwhelming and practically immediate. So inexhaustible are the springs of human optimism that it was some time before the nations as a whole realized that the war was not progressing in accordance with their first ingenuous suppositions, and that they would be called upon to pay for their days of splendid ardour throughout years of pain and anguish. National reserves of fortitude and endurance were to be drawn upon to the full, and Germany’s dominance among the Central Powers increased as time passed.
Among the Allies, however, the relative seniorities of the partners subtly altered. Russia and F
rance had possessed the enormous forces which first flung themselves upon the enemy in August 1914, when Britain’s contribution was her Navy (in Continental eyes of no account) and an original expeditionary force so small as to enable her own propagandists to coin the historic appellation ‘contemptible little army’, and then to attribute its origin to her foes. Time was to alter this, and by 1916 Britain had an army in the field which Germany recognized as the major block to Kaiserlich ambitions. Britain had thus replaced France as the senior partner on the Western Front; but although the power had changed hands, the philosophy remained the same.
For years before the war, the official policy of the French Army had been based upon the ‘Spirit of the Offensive’ with which their soldiers had been thoroughly imbued – and time and occasion combined to infect their British ally with the same principles. When, eventually, the French were to pause and reflect upon the wisdom of their creed, their erstwhile junior partners regarded them with a disdain not unmixed with malice, and assumed the tradition of the offensive themselves. Victory, however, still eluded them, but in a moment of doubtful inspiration was produced the ‘Doctrine of Attrition’ which, if lacking in imagination, possessed the supreme appeal of simplicity. All it required for its operation and success was an unlimited supply of men for the trenches – and Britain’s Empire was vast.
But by the end of 1917, it was becoming evident that even Britain could not afford such wild extravagance as that in which her army commanders had been indulging. True, the enemy had suffered considerably as a result of the vast conflicts which had been forced upon her, but despite these losses there was as yet little sign of disintegration among the Central Powers. Russia’s losses had been even greater than Germany’s, France’s losses had come near to crippling her. Europe was thus on the verge of bankruptcy – and a bankruptcy far more vitiating than one to be declared in some centre of commercial law, for it was of blood and spirit, of manhood and human hopes. Grim despondency was the mood which now dominated the peoples of the warring nations – not yet plunged into defeatism, but unable to perceive the means of victory.
Yet two events had occurred in 1917 which would offer the golden prize, first to the Central Powers, then to the Allies.
In March had begun the Russian Revolution. It did not immediately release German and Austrian divisions from the Eastern Front – indeed the Russian General Brusilov was to launch yet another offensive against them – but it was obvious to the German rulers that by early 1918 they should be able to concentrate their strength in the West. In order to expedite the Russian collapse, the German Government even allowed the passage of Lenin across the country (‘in a sealed carriage, like some dangerous bacillus’), for they knew that if they were to grasp their chance of victory, they must do it quickly. Germany’s chance was now, for in April had occurred the second event which might well serve to snatch victory from her: America had entered the war, and her vast potential of men and materials would undoubtedly tip the scales against the Central Powers if given the time to do so. So it became a race, against time for Germany, for time for Britain and France.
As 1918 dawned, half in fear and half in hope, Europe looked towards America. She alone seemed to possess the key to the situation. Whether she would arrive in time to turn it was another matter.
* * *
1. The Deadlock
IT was bitterly cold in the trenches during the last fortnight of the year 1917 and there were many successive days of frost. Snow mantled the ground, softening the edges of the trenches, the gun-pits and the shell-craters, covering for a while the ugly detritus of bitter fighting. For most of the men in the line it was to be remembered as a good time, for they had learned by now the best ways of keeping warm, and hard ice was infinitely preferable to the treacherous, stinking and engulfing mud in which they had fought and bled during the last interminable months. It was quiet, too, the armies on both sides more concerned with their own comfort than with enemy disturbance.
The soldiers had lived in trenches for a long time. To many indeed, it seemed that their whole adult lives had been spent thus, mole-like below the surface of the earth, in circumstances of varying danger but invariable discomfort. There were few among them now to recall the early days of the war, the counter-marches, the cavalry screens, the street-fighting; and those who did were listened to – when they were listened to at all – with scepticism and open disbelief; for they seemed to speak of another war, another life. In any case, it was all past history, dead and gone.
But it was the essential preface to present adversity.
* * *
At the war’s outbreak, the Schlieffen Plan had flung the German armies across Belgium and the north-eastern provinces of France in a gigantic wheel which pivoted on the Vosges Mountains and was intended to sweep westwards of Paris, then eastwards to entrap the French armies and crush them against their own fortifications and the Swiss border. The plan had failed because of the impossibility of feeding, supplying and reinforcing the armies on the outer edge of the wheel across the enormous expanse of the battleground they had covered, combined with weaknesses of mind and nerve in the German High Command. As a result, the radius of the wheel was shortened, the outer armies swung in east of Paris and exposed themselves to flank attack from the French garrison in the capital, while the remainder of the French armies, instead of being trapped, had been merely pressed back along their own lines of communication.
Thus when the exhausted German troops reached the Marne, sweltering in the August heat, they were held as though in the bottom of a sack by the re-formed and recuperating Allied line. Every attempt they made to thrust across the top of the sack and renew their sweep westwards was countered by extensions of the Allied line to the north until it stretched up through Amiens, across the Belgian frontier and the Flanders plain, and ended on the sea between Nieuport and Ostend. In the meantime, pressure on the bottom of the sack had forced the central German armies to recoil along their own tracks – and now the situation developed as before, but in reverse: as the German lines of communication shortened, the French were stretched. Eventually, positions of balance were reached where the forces facing each other could not move forward without additional strength – and feverishly, each unit dug defensive positions to hold until reinforcements should come up in sufficient numbers to enable them to break through the enemy line opposite.
But they never arrived.
No matter how strong the force assembled, how heavy or numerous their artillery, how devoted and valiant their soldiers – always the defence was too strong. Power in defence proved easier and quicker to build than power in offence to assemble. Time after time this was proved – in the Ypres Salient and at Loos in 1915, at Verdun and on the Somme in 1916, and in April 1917 the Nivelle offensive drove the point home so hard to the French poilus in the line that they mutinied and refused to have anything more to do with the offensive. ‘We will hold the line,’ they said, ‘… but we will not attack.’
And faute de mieux, while the French weakened what little strength remained to them by internal dissension and strife, the British infantry were sacrificed in hundreds of thousands to hold the attention of the German High Command away from the dangerous sectors of the line. The British did not swarm over the Passchendaele Ridge or burst out of the Ypres Salient – the weather and power of defence saw to that – but for month after squalid month the slaughter went on while for every man that fell to enemy fire, one was drowned in mud. Eventually weather and utter exhaustion closed down the fighting, leaving, as usual, more difficult tactical problems for the attackers to solve than those with which they had originally been faced.
Late in November 1917 there was a sudden and brilliant burst of hope for the Allies. Despite an engrained belief among the Staffs that horses provided the only permissible means of transport for troops in action, sanction had been obtained for an attempt by massed British tanks to penetrate the enemy line opposite Cambrai.
It was brilliantly s
uccessful – too successful in fact – for the tanks and their supporting infantry penetrated four miles during the first few hours. This was so extraordinary a feat for those days that the Staff, being unused to feeding such a rapid advance and in any case short of men as a result of their recent extravagance, were unable to reinforce the thrust with sufficient reserves to maintain momentum, and there existed for several hours a two-mile wide gap in the German defences through which the two cavalry divisions in reserve should have poured. But nobody gave them orders to do so and they remained where they were until it was too late; meanwhile the tank crews were exhausted and their comparatively primitive engines were in dire need of attention or replacement.
The positions were held – and improved – by supporting infantry for nine days, at the end of which the Germans launched a counterattack against the haunches of the two flanks of the advance. They did not win back all their lost ground, but they did cause a considerable withdrawal – to the line of what was to become known as the Flesquières Salient – and the hopes which had rocketed both in England and in the Allied trenches, fell accordingly. However, not everyone’s morale suffered, and members of the Cavalry Club were able to congratulate themselves upon the attitude of sceptical disgust with which they had always regarded the new-fangled petrol engine.
And in order to deflect opprobrium which might fall upon his own head, the Army Commander in whose area the attack had been carried out (and who on November 25th could confidently have expected honours and the Nation’s gratitude), in early December wrote unfairly and uncharacteristically: ‘I attribute the reason for the local success on the part of enemy to one cause and one alone, namely – lack of training on the part of junior officers and NCOs and men.’ Sir Douglas Haig, however, the Commander-in-Chief, would not support this attitude, sacked several of his subordinate commanders and assumed full responsibility for the set-back himself.