1918 The Last Act

by Barrie Pitt

  There the offensive was finally halted by the reserves which Pétain had held in the area, aided on their left by violent counterattacks launched on Foch’s orders and under the direction of the fieriest of the French generals, a short, dark, flamboyant Gascon named Mangin, who shared with the British General Deverell the dubious distinction of being nicknamed ‘Butcher’ by his troops. These counterattacks did not regain much ground, but they served to distract the attention of the German command from more vulnerable parts of the French defensive line, and affected an already despondent Ludendorff so much that on June 11th he called off the offensive, together with a secondary one which had been launched in its support by the German Seventh Army, westwards from a point just below Soissons.

  ‘The action of the Eighteenth Army’, he wrote, ‘had not altered the strategical situation … nor had it provided any fresh technical data.’

  Possibly not: but the action in itself did provide one fact of arresting strategical importance. For the first time since the opening of the German 1918 Spring Offensive eleven weeks before, a German advance had been halted by factors other than its own exhaustion, and in one place the advance had been beaten back.

  Of recent years there has been a great increase in the practice of entrusting the management of large business organizations to accountants, irrespective of their knowledge of the technicalities of the business itself. There is much evidence to support a contention that after 1915, the war on the Western Front resembled nothing so much as the activities of two vast and competing firms of civil engineers, whose staffs were generals, whose capital assets were guns and ammunition, and whose liquid assets were the unfortunate troops. In order to assess the true strategical situation at the close of the battle of Noyon, it is instructive to endeavour to see it through the cold eyes of a member of the book-keeping profession – perhaps, for the sake of argument, those of one who had recently been offered seats on the boards of both firms and who was trying to make up his mind which would prove the most advantageous to accept.

  If the possession of real estate in France and Belgium be taken as the criterion of success, then undoubtedly Germany had made great progress during the past few weeks, to the direct loss of her competitor. The cost, however, can be seen to have been excessive.

  At the start of the St. Quentin offensive, Ludendorff had deployed 192 divisions along the Western Front and by the middle of May he had apparently increased the number to 207, while the Allies showed on paper that they had increased the number of their divisions from 178 to 188 over the same period. In view of the events which had taken place during that time, these figures are at first sight surprising, but the extra German divisions were all late arrivals from the eastern Front, while the increase in the number of Allied divisions had been brought about by the transfer to France of British divisions which had been serving in Italy, Salonika and Palestine, together with the arrival of more Americans.

  The vital question, of course, related to the maintenance of divisional strengths, and in this regard it was significant that by the end of the battle of Noyon the average strength of German field battalions had been reduced from 807 men to 692, and this despite the arrival at the front of 23,000 recruits of the 1899 class as well as 60,000 men withdrawn from such services as the Field Railways, the Motor Transport and even the Air Force. The bottom of the barrel would seem to have been in sight, if not actually being scraped.

  It had also become disturbingly visible to the British and the French – but there were important differences of degree. There had been 88,000 men on leave from the British Army – incredible though this may sound – on the evening of March 21st, and another 30,000 attending courses or at depots in France, and these factors had been partly responsible for the low rifle strength of many of the Fifth Army’s battalions. When the battalions were decimated, these men were immediately available as replacements. There had also been 100,000 men retained in England for a variety of reasons – the official one being as a guard against possible invasion – and the Government’s decision to lower the age limit of troops made available for sending overseas from nineteen years to eighteen and a half, made up a total of 170,000 men ready to take the place of those who were lost in the battles.

  Thus, while after the attack on Mont Kemmel in March Haig had been forced to reduce ten of his divisions to cadres, by July they had all been reconstituted.

  But above all, so far as the Allied ‘liquid assets’ were concerned, the immense reserve of American man-power was being made available just as fast as Britain could ship it across the Atlantic – and by the end of May, three-quarters of a million men in the prime of life had arrived in France, and there were many more to come.

  If numbers of men formed the criteria, therefore, the advantages would not appear to lie with the Central Powers: and by the end of May, there was no longer any reason for them to believe that their inferiority in quantity could be offset by any marked superiority in quality.

  The formation of élite military units in any large quantities seems to offer to an army commander about to launch an attack a solution to many of his problems – and if the attack is successful and victory is gained then the practice is justified. But if victory proves elusive, the tasks of pursuing it are invariably entrusted to these élite units, who have already borne the brunt of the attack, and they are thus slowly but surely crumbled into disintegration.

  This fate had overcome many of Ludendorff’s Storm Troop divisions and as a result he was soon to be left with an army from which he had himself drained the finest elements. In this residual army were many weak and indeed undesirable factions, who as early as April had been responsible for some ugly incidents. Desertion had increased, troops had failed to return from leave, and many of those who did return as far as the railheads behind the lines then joined up with others as sullen and mutinous as themselves to roam the back areas, defying the Feldpolizei, raiding stores dumps, and generally spreading confusion and dismay.

  And there was nothing to restore their morale.

  The British and French Commands were faced with troubles of a similar nature – especially immediately after the main retreats – but once American troops arrived in the neighbourhood in more than token strength, then there began a steady, if sheepish, return to their units by the absentees. With an obvious accession of strength to the Allied cause came a return of hope to those previously sceptical of Allied fortune, and with it a return to duty. Thus Allied morale, despite a succession of apparently disastrous defeats, was higher than that of the supposedly victorious Germans.

  The physical health of the Allied troops was better, too. During April, the Western Front received its first visitation of what later came to be known as ‘Spanish influenza’, and although it put nearly fifteen per cent. of the British Army into hospital, the men were soon on their feet again and the only fatalities were among those who had caught the fever in addition to other weaknesses, caused either by illness or wounds.

  But among Prince Rupprecht’s Army – in which the sickness was known as the ‘Flanders fever’ – the percentage of those affected was higher, and owing to inadequate medical facilities and to general weakness caused by months of undernourishment, many of the sick did not recover. This was yet another factor resulting from the naval blockade of Germany, another consideration for the mythical accountant to bear in mind; and as the epidemic was to roll in waves across Europe, each wave larger than the preceding one until the peak was reached in the following November, it was to become a factor of increasing significance.

  So far as the capital assets of the two enterprises – the material of war – were concerned, a very similar position existed. Guns and ammunition captured by the Germans during their advances had never exceeded the quantity used up or wrecked as a result of the fighting, and although the factories in the Fatherland were still in existence, there was a woeful shortage of raw materials from which to manufacture more.

  But with command of the seas and A
merican sources at her disposal, Britain suffered no such disadvantages, and as in the Napoleonic Wars, she was the granary of Europe: none but her friends would eat, and her foes would starve. Few appreciated this so well as Mr. Churchill, whose buoyant optimism was such that despite the disasters of the Chemin-des-Dames and the annihilation of the gallant French whom he had visited on the evening before the battle of Noyon, he could still relax and enjoy himself in Paris.

  ‘Paris was calm and even pleasant in these days of uncertainty,’ he wrote. ‘The long-range German cannon, which threw its shells about every half hour, had effectually cleared away nearly all those who were not too busy nor too poor. The city was empty and agreeable by day, while by night there was nearly always the diversion of an air raid.’

  Whether he enjoyed himself more then than in 1940 must be difficult for him to decide.

  Thus, so far as accountancy was concerned, there could be little doubt as to which side – despite the lines on the maps – was in the most favourable position, and it is significant in many aspects of the situation that after the battle of Noyon, Pétain so far abjured his habitual pessimism as to announce that ‘If we can hold on until the end of June our situation will be excellent. In July we can resume the offensive; after that victory will be ours.’

  For he, of all the army commanders of the Great War, had best appreciated its basic economics.

  It is a great pity that Pétain’s lucidity of mind was not combined with a wider outlook upon life, and that the whole tone of his personality inclined him to regard all possibilities in the bleakest light. He rarely kept his opinions to himself, with the result that practically everyone who came into contact with him left his presence somewhat depressed, or at the least irritated. In 1914 he had been a favoured officer of General Lanrezac, whose Anglophobia had been so great that at his first meeting with Sir John French – the original Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force – he had treated that officer with such unpardonable rudeness that inter-Allied co-operation could not really be said to have existed for the first few weeks of the war. Though Pétain had been retained when Lanrezac had been discharged (for failure of nerve during the 1914 retreat to the Marne), there is no doubt that Pétain shared Lanrezac’s feelings towards their country’s ally, and retained them for the rest of his life. In the First World War, they barred him from the Supreme Command, and in the Second, they ruined him.

  Within twenty-four hours of the breakthrough across the Chemin-des-Dames, Pétain had moved sixteen divisions into position to bar the road to Paris – and of these sixteen, four had been taken from behind Amiens, where they had been placed especially to guard the joint between the French and the British armies. This he had done without requesting the permission of his official superior, General Foch, and on the following day he had stripped away all reserves behind Montdidier, asked Foch for the French Tenth Army waiting in reserve behind the British front at Arras, and also for the whole of the French force still holding the front west and south of Mont Kemmel.

  Two days later, he ‘urgently requested’ that the five American divisions training in the British section of the line should be placed at his disposal.

  All these requests were granted by Foch, who then asked Sir Douglas Haig – who had not been consulted at any stage, and was thus somewhat nettled by the abrupt removal of so much of the force under his command – for three British divisions to move south in order to guard the now naked joint. Commendably, Sir Douglas Haig agreed – restraining himself to a pointed comment upon the rapidity with which reserves could now be rushed south, compared with the pace at which it had been possible previously to ship them north – and the British divisions moved into the area on June 8th.

  The next day, Pétain asked for them to be placed under Humbert, in order to hold the west flank of von Hutier’s attack, and was aggrieved when Foch refused him. He was even more aggrieved a few days later when he received instructions to the effect that as the battle of Noyon was now concluded, and it appeared to Foch that Ludendorff’s next move would be the long-awaited onslaught on the British at Arras, he was to send artillery units north immediately and prepare to release infantry divisions to support the British, with the same promptitude which they had displayed in supporting him.

  This was so far from the position as Pétain saw it that he invoked the clause in the Beauvais Agreement which allowed him right of appeal to his own Government, and sent a strongly-worded protest against the orders to Clemenceau. It was, however, to no avail, for Clemenceau had become increasingly wearied by Pétain’s pessimism, and now favoured Foch to such an extent that he not only confirmed Foch’s instructions, but also rescinded Pétain’s right of appeal, placing him specifically under Foch’s direction.

  This was unfortunate, for Ludendorff after Noyon still considered ‘that the enemy in Flanders was so strong that the Second Army could not attack yet’, and as his entire front in the Marne bulge had to be supplied through the single railway junction of Soissons on the extreme west, he was under pressure from his Staff to mount yet another attack in the area in order to capture Rheims and give himself another supply line on the east. The German position in the Marne bulge was in fact rapidly approaching a supply crisis, and Ludendorff knew that he must either get on, or get out.

  This was Pétain’s reading of the situation, and he was, as usual, right.

  Before the development of the German threat to Rheims, there were a number of smaller actions of some importance taking place along the front, and one of these was indicative of the contribution which American arms were capable of making, when their soldiers were not fettered by out-of-date concepts of warfare, but were allowed to exploit their individual skills within the framework of their national propensity for large-scale and detailed organization.

  On the right of the section held by the Marine Brigade was one held by two brigades of American regular infantry, also of the 2nd Division. There was an indentation in their line around the southern outskirts of the small town of Vaux, and while their companions of the Marine Brigade had been undergoing their searing ordeal in Belleau Wood and Bouresches, these infantrymen had been quietly but very effectively preparing an attack upon the place. It was such a model of careful planning and preparation that it is difficult to understand why the marines of the same division could have been allowed to pour out their youth and gallantry in such wasteful profusion.

  Vaux, like Bouresches, was built of stone – in which every house could be turned into a small fort. From picture postcards, from aerial photographs, and – most useful of all – from the memories of the town stone-mason who had worked in practically every house in the town and who now lived just behind the American lines, an accurate picture of every street and alleyway in Vaux was built up, and to every house was allotted a group of men whose task would be to find it, and then to clear it of enemy occupants.

  The barrage began at 6 a.m. on the morning of July 1st, and it was carried out by the gun-crews who had recently gained experience on Bouresches and Belleau Wood. For twelve hours the shells crashed down upon the little town, then at 6 p.m. the range abruptly shortened into a creeping barrage in front of the infantry, as they climbed out of their trenches and walked forward. It was all well-conceived and well-executed – and if there was little attempt at surprise, it would seem, nevertheless, that the bombardment had been sufficiently accurate to dislocate the morale of the enemy in Vaux.

  It took twenty-five minutes for the infantry to reach the nearer outskirts, at which point the barrage lifted to the farther side of the town to deter any German reinforcements who might be thinking of an immediate counterattack.

  As it lifted, the infantrymen raced forward, each upon his own set and separate mission …‘and their bobbing tin hats’, as the New York Times reported it, ‘were gone into the roaring evening.’

  The surprise which had been missing before now entered into the American attack, in the form of a slick efficiency which had not been seen on
the Western Front during the previous four years – it is, indeed, fair to say that it had quite possibly never even been imagined. The careful siting of the German machine-guns, each to cover the approaches to at least two more, was rendered useless by the death or capture of practically all the crews at virtually the same moment. The first Americans to enter the town had the furthest to go, but Vaux is a small town and they were breaking into the houses which formed their own particular targets within minutes of the lifting of the barrage and while many of the Germans were still sheltering in cellars, deciding whether or not the time had arrived to man their posts.

  As there were considerably fewer of these posts than the Americans had allowed for, those few Germans who managed to bring their guns into action soon found themselves being shot down from neighbouring buildings which they had believed empty, and so within twenty minutes of entering Vaux, the Americans were in control, and at a loss of only forty-six fatal casualties. And when eventually the American bombardment of the far approaches to the town ceased, it was only after the infantrymen had been given sufficient time to site their own machine-guns in nests with interlocking fields of fire – on the northern side of the town.

  Very careful planning, imagination, and an admirably businesslike efficiency marked the entire enterprise – and if Vaux was not so heavily fortified or garrisoned as had been expected, this does not detract from the dash and valour of the troops, who were not to know this. When the German counterattacks came, they were beaten off with the cool resolution only achieved by troops who have gained just enough experience to give them confidence, but not so much as to warp their nervous systems out of true.

  Four days after the American attack on Vaux, a second action was fought, many miles away to the north-west, which was just as full of significance as a pointer to the battles of the future.