1918 The Last Act

by Barrie Pitt

  But of course, there is a price to be paid even for retirement, and reinforcements were needed not only to replace casualties but also to hold the greater length of the curving line: and the only divisions available were those still coming up for a rest after their ordeals on the Somme. On April 11th the 31st Division arrived from the south and went straight into action behind the left flank of the Highlanders – now falling wearily back from the River Lawe – and the following day, Deneys Reitz’s division, the 9th, and the 61st from St Quentin came up in time to support the Highlanders’ right flank and the 55th’s reserve brigade with its attached cyclists and cavalrymen, now tightly stretched out between Festubert and Hinges.

  Now, at last, Béthune’s coalfields were in real danger – but indirectly and from the north, not directly from the west where the Canadians still waited, numerous, well-fortified and with ample artillery; but unattacked.

  Nevertheless, it was felt that Sir Henry Horne’s responsibilities were too great in the centre of his front for him to be able to handle satisfactorily the fracas on his left flank, so command of the battle area down to its southern border was taken over by Plumer, whose army as a result stretched in a gigantic reversed S from the Belgian right flank on the Coverbeek Stream north of Ypres, right around the Ypres Salient through Poelcappelle to the Passchendaele Ridge of fearful memory, back across Wytschaete Ridge, and around in the first twelve miles of the bottom curve of the reversed S as far as Merville.

  This transfer of command occurred at noon on April 12th – the third day of the battle – when on new instructions from Ludendorff, who had at last realized that success could only be won in Flanders by a maximum effort, the most powerful German drive to date was launched on the approaches to Bailleul. When Plumer surveyed the new extension to his command, even that great-hearted man must have wondered whether the demands of duty might not be sometimes too high, for the supply of human putty with which to stop innumerable breaches was running short.

  More cyclist battalions, pioneers, and every available man from local instruction centres and reinforcement camps had now been drawn into the battle, but still the German attack persisted, still the German battle units pressed forward. On the 13th, the battle raged all along the line from Wytschaete to Merville with unparalleled fury, the only relief to the hard-pressed British being the arrival – four hours late because of congestion on the railways – of the Australian 1st Division, who immediately joined the 4th Guards Brigade to form an impenetrable protective shield between a collapsing sector of the front and Hazebrouck.

  Thus the original objective of the Georgette offensive was screened, but by this time either Ludendorff’s vacillation was becoming chronic, or perhaps he was exhibiting an unusual elasticity of mind: the Mont Kemmel-Mont des Cats ridge was now the prime target, and as General Sixt von Arnim’s Fourth Army was making slow progress at an almost prohibitive cost, the general suggested to the High Command that a dislodgement of the British on this southern face of the Ypres Salient – which is what his army’s front had become – might be accelerated by an attack on the northern face. In other words, that a modified form of St. George 2 should be launched.

  With a celerity which from the German point of view was surely ominous, Ludendorff agreed, and the Staff instructions were quickly issued, reserve divisions moved up into the Houthulst Forest and the necessary artillery and trench-mortars transferred yet further north. This indeed could have been the decisive stroke, for Plumer’s line was by now stretched to its limit and his attention and all his available reserves were concentrated in the battle area to the south.

  But in the event, the British were saved by a combination of their own peril and the sound common sense of their Commander and his Chief-of-Staff, ‘Tim’ Harington. In order to provide the essential reinforcement for the sagging line in the Lys valley, they decided to shorten their line around Ypres; so during the night of April 15th/16th, with what must have been infinite and heartbreaking reluctance, Plumer superintended the voluntary relinquishment of all the ground won at a cost of some quarter of a million casualties less than a year before.

  Back from Houthulst and Poelcappelle, from Passchendaele itself, from Broodseinde and Polygon Wood, the troops wound their silent way through the communication trenches threading the graveyard of unnumbered friends. By morning they held a line closer in places to Ypres than that from which the armies had started out on that ill-fated morning, eight and a half months before, to fight and die for a few yards of worthless ground, a few feet of elevation from which it had been found impossible to dominate the enemy because of the price paid for it.

  Whatever the bitterness of the withdrawal, however, it released strength to buttress for a while the defence of the line from Wytschaete to Meteren. More important, it completely upset the balance of the St. George 2 attack which must now, in order to reach the retrenched British line, advance down the open face of the deserted ridge, dragging its artillery across two miles of churned mud. Baulked, it turned the following day as though in pique against the long-static and well-fortified Belgian line at Merckem, where it was thoroughly repulsed: it is doubtful whether it would have served any valuable strategical end had it succeeded.

  And now the battle of the Lys began to show the same signs of stagnation as those which had heralded the halting of the Michael offensive. Although the attacking troops still made progress – and Bailleul fell into their hands as a smoking ruin on April 15th – they were tired, their supplies were arriving late and inadequate, while all the time the defence grew stronger as its supply lines shortened. In the entry for April 17th, the official German history of the battle records:

  The attacking waves were cut down by furious machine-gun fire. The enemy had a continuous main line with an outpost line consisting of short lengths of trench in front of it, and the whole of the intervening ground was covered by unerring machine-gun flanking fire, which made progress impossible. The foremost waves were compelled to return to their jumping-off places suffering severe losses. There they lay the whole day under the heaviest fire.

  Once more the defensive crust had been given time and opportunity to harden, and the chance of a breakthrough appeared to have been lost. The following day violent but totally unsuccessful German attacks were launched southwards against the sector still held by the left flank of Sir Henry Horne’s army, but on April 19th a lull descended on the entire front.

  French divisions now came up to take over the line between Meteren and Wytschaete (two of them had been in the area since the 14th), the 28th Infanterie assuming responsibility for Mont Kemmel although it would not appear that they devoted much time or labour to improving the rather sketchy defence lines, hastily thrown up by the British under fire.

  During all this time a less sanguinary but equally bitter battle was being fought out, miles to the rear and at long range, between the occupants of various chilly but impressive châteaux. Foch had hardly waited for the dispersal of the participants of the Beauvais Conference before issuing his first directive, which opened:

  The enemy is now held up from Arras to the Oise. On this front he can resume the offensive (a) with ease north of the Somme, and particularly in the region of Arras, thanks to the numerous railways at his disposal; (b) with greater difficulty on the south, where the railways he has captured are less numerous, are in bad order, and lie partly within the range of our guns.

  This must have been gratifying to Sir Douglas Haig, whose fears for Arras thus received support, but it is unlikely that the rest of the missive was read with much enthusiasm, for it continued:

  As soon as possible a double French offensive in the Montdidier region with the object of clearing the St. Just–Amiens railway [should be mounted] and a British offensive eastward astride the Somme, between the Luce and the Ancre, with the object of disengaging Amiens. … It would be of the greatest advantage if these two offensives, whose directions fortunately harmonize, could be carried out simultaneously. The Commanders-in-Chie
f are therefore requested to be good enough to notify the date on which they judge it possible to undertake these operations; it is important that they start with the least possible delay.

  Haig promptly countered with the announcement that he had firm grounds for believing that the drive across the Vimy Ridge to Béthune which Foch feared, was imminent, coupling it with a request that he should have ‘without delay’ four French divisions either as direct reinforcement, or to relieve more British divisions in the south with which to counter this threat. Pétain remained passive, but dispatched one of his subordinates to Clemenceau with the suggestion that as a new form of warfare seemed to have developed since March 21st, it would be as well to wait until the poilus were trained in it, and better still to wait for the Americans. A degree of stalemate thus resulted.

  Then on April 9th, Georgette effectively dispelled all thoughts of an Allied offensive but gave Haig an excellent opportunity to press Foch – who was visiting him at GHQ at Montreuil – for the French divisions for which, after all, Haig had bartered strategic command of his armies. To his intense disgust, Foch clung perversely to his belief that Haig had been right in his earlier announcement of the imminent threat to Arras, and refused point-blank to reinforce the front behind Armentières and the Lys.

  ‘I found Foch most selfish and obstinate,’ Haig entered in his diary that evening. ‘I wonder if he is afraid to trust French divisions in the battlefront. … Henry Wilson did not help us at all in our negotiations with Foch. His sympathies almost seem to be with the French.’

  It must have been very provoking.

  The following day Foch received from Haig a note couched in official phrasing to the effect that he feared he would be unable to mount the British offensive astride the Somme mentioned in the Directive of April 3rd – to which Foch replied with courteous understanding, nevertheless impressing upon Sir Douglas that ‘it is as essential to maintain completely the existing front in Flanders as that in the region of Arras.’

  By the time Haig received this message, thirty miles of his front from Givenchy to Wytschaete had been stove in, and the enemy were on the Lawe, six miles back; but despite this, it became quite obvious that the British would have to rely, at least for the time being, solely upon their own resources – and these were very slim. As reports of bitter fighting reached headquarters and as the thin line fell back before the onslaught, Haig – who if inarticulate in speech was remarkably lucid on paper – composed what has come to be accepted as one of the historic calls to action of our time, and issued it as an Order of the Day which ended:

  There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind alike depend upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.

  When these inspiring words reached the British public through the medium of the press, popular enthusiasm knew no bounds, and the message kindled a firm determination among the Staffs and the rear echelons to resist the enemy to the last infantryman. Vera Brittain, serving as a nurse in a Base Hospital, has recorded the wonderful spiritual effect of this stirring appeal among the medical staff, and so, unfortunately for legend, has the medical officer of a battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, actually engaged in the fighting.

  ‘What bloody wall?’ inquired a weary and indignant Fusilier – and the answer was obscene, bitter – and extremely libellous.

  Haig should really have known better: as a soldier himself he shared the military dislike of other people’s prose.

  Foch in the meantime had not been idle. He issued orders for the dispatch of a cavalry corps to St. Omer, and also instructions as to how the battle of the Lys should be fought, which seem, however, never to have reached Plumer, for the pattern of the conflict remained unchanged.

  But however he occupied his time, Foch remained adamant that French reserves must be husbanded for his offensive schemes. No pleas, no threats, no reports of danger or disaster would move him, and at a conference held at Abbeville on April 14th he refused point-blank to allow any reliefs of the divisions fighting the Lys battle: ‘the operation would immobilize the relieving troops and those being relieved during the time required for the operation, and this at the very moment when the size of the Allied reserve is barely sufficient.’

  His invariable comment upon every aspect of the military situation, however dire, was ‘Bon!’, until at last Haig’s patience wore thin and he slapped the table and retorted, ‘Ce n’est pas bon du tout!’

  There was yet another reason for annoyance on Haig’s part that day, for Foch, even after Beauvais, had required further recognition of his authority. That morning, Clemenceau had received from Lloyd George, and later from the American General Bliss, agreement that Foch should be entitled to style himself ‘Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in France’ – and if this title ever became more than nominal, Haig stood in real danger of being hoist with his own petard.

  Two days after the Abbeville conference, Foch decided that the situation in Flanders was perhaps after all more critical than he had recognized, and after issuing orders to Pétain to ‘prepare to move a French division direct to Flanders’, he travelled up to Plumer’s headquarters at Blondecques to appraise events for himself.

  There followed two days of furious argument during which Foch vehemently denied the necessity, value or even possibility of supporting the British – now fighting desperately to hold the vital east-west ridge – or of the protection which might be obtained by the operation of an alternative scheme to open floodgates and allow the sea to inundate the northern stretch of the front, thus releasing the Belgian Army (whose King, incidentally, had flatly refused to recognize Foch’s authority) for action further south.

  Then on April 19th the lull descended on the battlefront and with a Gallic gesture of sweet reasonableness Foch produced three French divisions – brought up by rail and motor lorry from the south – and put them into the line in place of five British divisions which had been severely mauled in both the recent crises. These British divisions – the 50th, the 8th, the 21st, the 25th and later the 19th – were transferred south to a quiet section of the French front along the Chemin-des-Dames, where it was confidently believed that they would enjoy ample facilities for rest and recovery.

  If Foch, with little apparent grounds for it, had been throughout the crisis incurably and infuriatingly optimistic as to its final outcome, Ludendorff on the other side of the line had been growing increasingly depressed. Despite the gains in territory, booty and prisoners – vast in comparison with those of any previous Allied offensive on the Western Front – he had nevertheless failed to attain the type of sweeping victory which had attended his efforts on the Eastern Front. St. Quentin had produced no flash of triumph, no undeniable strategic benefit such as had Tannenberg: instead, his depleted armies were extended in a longer front, bent around in a dangerous salient.

  Now the same appeared to be happening in the north.

  And for the apparent stagnation into which his two offensives had fallen, Ludendorff could not at first sight blame his luck. Extraordinary good fortune had attended him at the outset of both his main enterprises – Nature having gratuitously provided his spearheads with cloaks of invisibility under which to advance. On the Somme it could, of course, be claimed that fortune gave him his greatest gain where he had least desired it – in the south instead of in the north – but this did not apply to the Georgette offensive, for here his main drive had fallen directly upon the Portuguese with results which should in theory have been conclusive.

  Yet once again his armies were held in a dangerous loop, nearly twice as long as the line from which they had started, exposed in hastily erected fortifications to increasingly heavy artillery fire, and without having yet gained any worthwhile objectives.

  Amiens in the south, and both Haze
brouck and the Mont Kemmel–Mont des Cats ridge in the north, remained tantalisingly just beyond his grasp; in the circumstances – for he still had divisions under his command which had not been so far engaged in this, his supreme effort to win victory for his Kaiser and his Fatherland – he can have had little choice in his own mind but to make one further attempt in each sector, to win some form of solid benefit with which to crown his hitherto barren victories.

  He appears to have drawn, however, certain conclusions from the results of the last month’s fighting, in the light of which the type of orders issued to his subordinates suffered some modification. His original directives and his scheme of training – especially for the Storm Troops – had laid down the precept that the most important contact for them to maintain was with the enemy in front. This had led von Hutier’s troops to Montdidier in seven days, and those of General von Quast commanding the southern half of Georgette, to the River Lawe in one. However gratifying these advances may have at first sight appeared to be, they had surprised the German General Staff: and Ludendorff, who already thoroughly appreciated the supreme value of an unpleasant surprise when it is sprung upon the enemy, was driven to the conclusion that in some circumstances a pleasant surprise could be just as fatal when sprung upon oneself.

  There must therefore be no surprises for the German General Staff, pleasant or unpleasant, in these two last and, he hoped, culminating strokes; and in order to avoid them, he placed strict limits upon the advances of his troops.

  In the south, Amiens only was to be the objective, whilst from the Lys basin the attacks should be limited to the villages of Givenchy and Festubert on the southern flank (Béthune could wait), and the capture of Mont Kemmel on the northern.

  Thus during the last three nights of the week-long lull which had fallen on the Lys valley at dusk on April 19th, an increase in the muffled tramp of marching men and the creak and rumble of gun-limbers and transport was heard again as the reserves moved up. At 3.30 a.m. on April 25th, the French division holding Mont Kemmel, together with the fronts of the British 9th Division to their left and the flank brigade of the 21st Division at Wytschaete, were all subjected to the type of intense high-explosive and gas bombardment to which the British were becoming accustomed (so far as flesh and blood can become accustomed to manifestations of violent death and destruction), but which to the French was something of a novelty. Shortly after 6 a.m., the first Storm Troop attack was launched, and as early as 7 a.m. the French were streaming to the rear, leaving some of their compatriots beleaguered on the top of the hill together with the crews of a few British trench-mortar batteries which had, unfortunately for themselves, been loaned to the French.