by Barrie Pitt
Three days later, he wrote:
We have now spent two nights in the crater-field of the old Somme Battle. No desert of salt is more desolate. Last night we slept in a hole in the crumbly, chalky soil, and froze properly. … Yesterday I was looking for Bouchavesnes, which used to be quite a large place. There was nothing but a board nailed to a low post with the inscription in English ‘This was Bouchavesnes’.
All the resources of today’s mechanization would have been barely sufficient to solve the logistics problem which faced the German Command as their troops fought their way into Albert – and they had to depend for transport of supplies solely upon man-power, carts drawn by dogs and horses, of which the horses at least were in poor condition. British prisoners taken on the first day recorded that even the German cavalry looked ‘like a collection of old cab-horses’ – and of the dead animals which littered the battlefield, as many had collapsed from exhaustion as had been killed by bullets or shell-fire.
The men were evidently in better state than their horses, for the hope of victory and the excitement of battle kept them going, but even the flame of exaltation needs fuel for burning, and with its curtailment the flame burns low: by the seventh morning of the attack the German troops were very tired and very hungry. During that day (March 27th) there were several occasions when the British retired at a slow walk – for exhaustion was affecting them, too – and the Germans followed at a distance of a few hundred yards at the same pace, halting when they halted, making no attempt to force them on. Gaps in the British line gave the attackers peace to sleep, not opportunities to exploit.
But the factor which affected the advance more vitally than any other was the untimely appearance of an uncertainty – amounting almost to vacillation – in the mind of the German High Command. Ludendorff’s original intention had been to smash through onto the Bapaume–Albert line with the Michael 1 and 2 attacks, then to swing north and roll up the British line. This was the scheme decided upon after the tour of the front on January 21st, but even before the attacks began he allowed the outlines of an alternative scheme to disseminate amongst the Staff, whereby the Michael attacks pressed forward directly, serving primarily to draw British strength down from the north, while the St. George attacks on each side of Ypres performed the breakthrough. These would then swing south and roll up the British line.
It is doubtless an excellent rule in life to have alternative schemes for the attainment of any object, but in such a situation it is a fundamental necessity to be completely clear in mind which plan is being pursued at each particular moment. It does not seem that this essential condition existed throughout the German Staff. Very soon after the promulgation of Ludendorff’s original plan, the German Crown Prince – who commanded the army group containing the forces for the Michael 3 attack (but not those for Michael 1 or 2) – put forward, upon von Hutier’s suggestion, the proposal that the Eighteenth Army, instead of merely holding the eastern banks of the Crozat Canal and the Somme, should cross the waterways and advance beyond – but to an unspecified distance.
As a result of this, the Kaiser’s Operation Order for the Offensive contained the following sentences: ‘… The Eighteenth Army will seize the passages over the Somme and the canal by rapid forward movement. The Eighteenth Army will also be prepared to extend its right wing as far as Péronne’ – and upon this directive Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria (commanding the forces delivering the other Michael attacks) based the relevant part of his own orders, and the Second Army’s battle plan.
The Eighteenth Army commander, von Hutier, however, issued his own operation order, containing no reference whatsoever to a movement towards Péronne on the part of his own command, but only of westward and south-westward advances, in order either to attack French reserves moving up against the flank of the Michael 2 attack, or to press the British farther back.
And Ludendorff apparently made no attempt to clarify the situation during the week which remained before the offensive began; according to the Crown Prince, von Hutier’s intentions were specifically passed to Main Headquarters ‘but the latter declined to express any definite opinion on the matter for the time being.’
It would seem, therefore, that there was a certain amount of indecision in Ludendorff’s mind, which can hardly have been dismissed by the events of the opening days of the offensive, for until March 24th the main weight of his attack was either held fast in the Arras–Flesquières loop, or blocked on the line immediately south of the Salient, whilst his southern section, which had been intended for a virtually subsidiary duty, forged ahead with ever-growing impetus. During all of March 22nd and 23rd, Ludendorff’s armies made no appreciable progress against Sir Julian Byng’s Third Army, for the iron spike of the V Corps remained immovable. Ludendorff was thus faced with a situation whereby if he arrested the victorious course of the Eighteenth Army in order to conserve the planned shape of his offensive, he would not only kill the sole impetus his armies possessed, but also present to the watching world the picture of the much-vaunted German Spring Offensive apparently brought to a premature halt.
As a routine preliminary to the attack, Ludendorff had discussed with his chief assistants, von Kuhl and von der Schulenberg, the tactics to be followed in the event of a rapid and decisive victory even greater than that for which they planned, resulting in a complete rupture of the British line and emergence into open country beyond. The decision taken was that in such a case, the Seventeenth Army (Michael 1) would swing north-west on St. Pol and drive the British into the sea, the Second Army (Michael 2) would drive on westward to Amiens and thus separate the British from the French, while the Eighteenth Army would swing south-westwards and defeat the French.
In sum – having converged in order to effect a breakthrough, it was intended then to diverge in order to exploit it: a concept with which few would disagree, so long as the breakthrough was successful and complete.
To von Kuhl’s dismay, however, orders directing a very similar series of divergent thrusts to those outlined above, were issued by Ludendorff to his armies at 9.30 a.m. on March 23rd, and at a conference in the afternoon they were confirmed. Only the virtual impossibility of obedience to these orders prevented a dispersal of force before an unbroken line – for the Seventeenth Army remained penned in the loop until the following day, the Second Army could do no more than press hard against the right flank of the British Third Army and the doughty South Africans (the middle of the door), while rightly or wrongly, the Crown Prince and von Hutier ignored their instructions to turn on the French and instead drove due westward against the British – against the outer stile of the door.
It could well be argued therefore, that the spectacular success which seemed to be attending German arms (and by March 26th, the day of the Doullens Conference, they had won more territorial gains on the Western Front in four days than the Allies had in three years) had been achieved in spite of the High Command, and not as a result of Ludendorff’s genius.
Nevertheless, his train of thought can be seen to have travelled along not illogical lines. From the beginning his strength had been massed in the north, and when the door swung open – and continued to open – the temptation to use it to break the hinge opposite and thus to tear loose the entire structure, must have been very great. Moreover, there was little else he could do with this concentration of power, for the logistic problems attendant upon the withdrawal of some of its divisions and their dispatch as reinforcements to von Hutier thirty-five miles away, were insoluble. It took, for instance, thirty trains to transport one German division – where trains ran.
As day succeeded day with no change in the strategic pattern, therefore, the temptation grew ever greater – so great indeed that Ludendorff decided that one final and immense effort must be made to break the impasse. On the morning of March 28th – in direct contradiction to his own doctrine of reinforcing success and not failure – he shifted the centre of gravity of his offensive even further north, and launched the Mars at
tack against Arras.
It failed – for three principal reasons.
Seven of Ludendorff’s reserve divisions had already been drawn as though by a vacuum to the support of the Eighteenth Army – the greatly enlarged front which von Hutier’s success opened necessitated this – and the intended hammer-blow against Arras could therefore not be sufficiently strengthened. Thus only thirteen German divisions made the initial attack on six British divisions – British divisions moreover, of high morale, defending well-dug and well-wired positions with determination and skill, and who unbeknown to the Germans had retired from their forward positions to the security of their Battle Zone. Thus the opening artillery bombardment, so far as it was directed against the infantry positions, crashed down upon empty trenches.
And there was no fog.
All day long the German infantry attacked with vigour and dash, but they were fought to a standstill – inevitably – by entrenched defenders firing emplaced machine-guns in perfect visibility. Line after line of Storm Troops and picked infantry were mown down, and those only wounded by the bullets rarely survived the shell-fire of the defensive barrages laid down by the British artillery when they had recovered from the effects of the gas-shells with which, as before, the German bombardment had opened. Nowhere was the British line pierced – and the Mars attack was called off that evening: as the light died, so did the hopes of the German Staff.
It was, however, necessary to have something more to show for the immense effort of the March offensive than what have been so aptly called by Sir Winston Churchill ‘the Dead Sea fruits of the mightiest military conception and the most terrific onslaught which the annals of war record.’ Despite the area of the ground wrested from the Allies, no centre of strategic or even tactical value had yet been won; only the vast, ghoulish graveyard of previous battles.
That evening the commanders of the Second and Eighteenth Armies received the following directive: ‘Amiens is now the objective; to secure that place all the efforts of this and the following days will be directed; the attacks near Montdidier and eastward of that town are only diversions designed to delay enemy forces.’
This was really Utile more than an acknowledgement that von Hutier and von der Marwitz could continue with their non-observance of Ludendorff’s directive of the 23rd – but even so its intention was too late. In addition to the exhaustion of the German troops and the enormous difficulties of supplying them across the wasted areas, yet another subtle but insidious factor was coming into play against the Germans: the British blockade was, in fact, having an unlooked for effect upon the field of battle. In his diary for March 28th, Rudolf Binding wrote:
Today the advance of our infantry suddenly stopped near Albert. Nobody could understand why. Our airmen had reported no enemy between Albert and Amiens.… Our way seemed entirely clear. I jumped into a car with orders to find out what was causing the stoppage in front.
As soon as I got near the town I began to see curious sights. Strange figures, which looked very little like soldiers, and certainly showed no sign of advancing, were making their way back out of the town. There were men driving cows before them on a line; others who carried a hen under one arm and a box of notepaper under the other. Men carrying a bottle of wine under their arm and another one open in their hand. Men who had torn a silk drawing-room curtain from off its rod and were dragging it to the rear as a useful bit of loot. More men with writing paper and coloured notebooks. Evidently they had found it desirable to sack a stationer’s shop. Men dressed up in comic disguise. Men with top hats on their heads. Men staggering. Men who could hardly walk.
Three and a half years of grim austerity had led to this. As the front of the German advance crept out of the battle area into the line of villages which had until a few days before been inhabited by civilians – grown rich most of them, on commerce of one sort or another with English troops – it seemed to the Germans that they had stumbled into an Aladdin’s Cave. All were affected – officers and men, rich and poor alike, for the wealth of Prussia had been unable to buy during the last years the booty which now lay around for plunder. Binding himself writes, almost with hysteria, of ‘smearing our boots with lovely English boot-polish’; of a captured officer ‘excellently – one can almost say wonderfully – dressed and equipped … with his short khaki overcoat on his arm, in breeches of the best cut and magnificent high lace-boots. … The sight of all this English cloth and leather made me more conscious than ever of the shortcomings of my own outfit, and I felt an inward temptation to call out to him, “Kindly undress at once,” for a desire for English equipment, with tunic, breeches, and boots, had arisen in me, shameless and patent.’
And together with this understandable but uncontrollable lust for the trivial comforts and luxuries which had been so long denied them, drunkenness now combined to check the German armies. This too, is understandable, for fear and battle dries the moisture from a soldier’s body quicker than the desert sun – and after a week living on scummy water from the bottoms of shell-holes foul with cordite and decomposition, the troops found themselves in deserted villages whose houses still held wine-stocked cellars. That tiny percentage of officers and men present who had also accompanied the first triumphant sweep to the Marne in 1914 must have felt many ominous stirrings of memory: then, too, supplies had failed, and only plundered alcohol had kept the armies moving during those last few days, before the disillusioning and mortifying repulse.
During March 29th, only a tiny advance was made by the Crown Prince’s army group – the flattening of a derisory salient south of Villers-Bretonneux – but on the 30th, as a result of much activity on the part of the Feldpolizei and the supply columns, a heavier attack was launched on a twenty-five mile front curving from the Somme at Sailly Laurette to Montdidier. It crept forward for an average advance of two miles, then died in exhaustion and inanition. Faute de mieux a rest was ordered, and inevitably trenches were dug, defensive positions were formed – and from them on April 4th, when the last despairing effort was made to reach Amiens, tired, ill-equipped and now unenthusiastic troops climbed out into the open and advanced with customary but useless gallantry against defenders who had also been given time to rest, time to dig, time to reinforce.
Moreuil fell, the German waves lapped the outskirts of Villers-Bretonneux, but Amiens was never seriously threatened, for with retreat the defenders’ lines of communication and supply had shortened, their task been made easier – and the four days’ respite had given the defensive crust time to harden.
In all, the German March offensive launched by the three armies of the Michael attacks had won from the Allies in fifteen days some twelve hundred square miles of territory, vast quantities of stores, over ninety thousand prisoners and over a thousand guns: it had also presented the victors with nearly fifty extra miles of front to hold, none of which would ever be as strongly fortified, as defensible, or even as comfortable as the Hindenburg Line from which it had started. The remorseless logic of the battles of the Western Front had inevitably applied.
There is little doubt that with the failure of the Mars attack, Ludendorff realized that his dream of a breakthrough in the southern half of the British front was fast vanishing – but there were still the other schemes produced for him by the Staffs, notably the St. George attacks, which might serve to sap the Allies’ strength and thus prolong his period of opportunity. His original objections to the St. George offensive no longer applied, as March had been exceptionally dry and it was considered probable that the ground had dried out, so even while some members of his entourage were composing that last exhortation to the exhausted divisions to capture Amiens, others were putting into effect the administration to withdraw from them the battering train of heavy artillery and trench-mortars, and transfer it to the north.
However, by April 1st, investigations had revealed the unwelcome fact that only eleven fresh divisions would be available to reinforce those holding the line in Flanders, and these would obviously be i
nadequate to crush in both sides of the Ypres Salient. St. George 2, therefore, on the northern flank, was perforce abandoned, and even St. George 1 severely curtailed – so much so that as the front of the attack could now only stretch from La Bassée to Armentières (twelve miles) instead of from Lens to Ypres (thirty miles), even its code-name was changed. With wry humour, Lieutenant-Colonel Wetzell, whose original insistence it had been that the only potentially decisive thrust against the British must be towards Hazebrouck via Armentières and Bailleul, agreed that a more fitting title for the attack as now envisaged would be ‘Georgette.’
It remained to be seen whether the female of the species would be more deadly than the male.
5. Clash of Arms: The Lys
WHILE the German General Staff busied itself with the organization of this second act of their offensive, the Allies – severely shaken but thankfully aware of the passing of the most immediate peril – held a series of rapid and salutary post-mortems and then quickly passed the necessary military and civic measures to put their findings into effect. Sir Hubert Gough, for instance, was summarily dismissed from command of the Fifth Army, with only a vague promise of a Court of Inquiry at which he might be allowed to challenge the justice of this action – a promise which in the event was never kept. The British Government also found it necessary to rescind its promise to the public not to send boys less than eighteen years old overseas, and were then forced seriously to consider the advisability of introducing compulsory military service into Ireland, about which on March 29th Haig entered the ineffable comment in his diary: ‘The King said he was opposed to forcing conscription upon Ireland. I strongly pressed the contrary view not only in order to get men but for the good of Ireland.’