1918 The Last Act

by Barrie Pitt

  By the evening before the attack in the south, all his plans were known to the Allies. Forty-nine German divisions, in three armies, were to attack on either side of Rheims, while in the north thirty-one divisions of Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Group of Armies waited to renew the battle of the Lys.

  Even the time of the first attack was known, for on the Gouraud front, a raid captured a German prisoner who seemed unduly concerned to retain his gas-mask, and when it was taken from him he revealed that the inevitable gas and high explosive bombardment would begin at 1.10 a.m. Immediately instructions were issued and circulated, with the result that at 1 a.m., as the German infantry and Storm Troops made ready to clamber from their trenches and charge forward once more, they were suddenly trapped and their ranks decimated by a crushing barrage from the French artillery.

  Ten minutes later, Bruchmüller’s artillery opened fire, and the survivors of the assault divisions began their advance. They were accompanied east of Rheims by twenty tanks, of which fourteen were German, and six captured British.

  Along a twenty-mile front the infantry raced forward easily at first, their only casualties caused by the widely spaced and isolated French machine-gunners, who nevertheless heroically manned their suicidal positions. But as the Storm Troops penetrated deeper and deeper into the French positions, machine-gun posts were encountered more often, and their withering fire cut wide swathes in the advancing ranks.

  © CASSELL & co. LTD. 1962

  However, there was a great number of German troops – and this was the Peace Offensive which would bring them victory and release them for an honourable and glorious return to their families – so they pressed onwards; onwards through the flaming and thunderous night, onwards past the curiously empty and deserted French lines, onwards through increasing (and to the more experienced, puzzling) hostile shell-fire which soon accounted for nearly half their tank force, until at last they reached the area of smoking and cratered ground which marked the limit of their own artillery barrage.

  And there, just beyond it, they saw the solid line of French defences, unshelled, unbombed, ungassed, the riflemen and machine-gunners waiting in safety and even some degreee of comfort, to shoot them down in the light of the star-shells and Very lights already bursting above, flooding the scene with garish clarity.

  On Gouraud’s front, few of the attackers ever reached his army’s main defences, for they were killed in the open by bullet or shell-fire long before they could attack with the bayonet or even with grenades. Though the Storm Troops mounted attack after attack with enormous gallantry, launching them from shell-holes in which they had been driven for shelter, they had no hope of success in the face of emplaced defenders, undisturbed by high explosive or gas, unshaken by surprise.

  And when daylight came, their position was hopeless: the remaining tanks were soon blown to pieces by French artillery, for there had been far too few to affect the battle. Binding on this day was acting as liaison officer between two of the assault divisions, and his account is as arid and cheerless as the country across which the attack was delivered.

  I have lived through the most disheartening day of the whole War, though it was by no means the most dangerous. This wilderness of chalk is not very big, but it seems endless when one gets held up in it, and we are held up. Under a merciless sun, which set the air quivering in a dance of heat, and sent wave after wave up from the grilling soil, the treeless, waterless chalk downs lay devoid of all colour, like stones at white-heat. No shade, no paths, not even roads; just crumbling white streaks on a flat plate. Across this wind rusty snakes of barbed wire. Into this the French deliberately lured us. They put up no resistance in front; they had neither infantry nor artillery in this forward battle-zone.… Our guns bombarded empty trenches; our gas-shells gassed empty artillery positions; only in little hidden folds of the ground, sparsely distributed, lay machine-gun posts, like lice in the seams and folds of a garment, to give the attacking force a warm reception. …

  After uninterrupted fighting from five o’clock in the morning until the night, smothered all the time with carefully directed fire, we only succeeded in advancing about three kilometres in the direction of the high-lying Roman road, which traverses the whole fighting front like a cross-beam. …

  We did not see a single dead Frenchman, let alone a captured gun or machine-gun, and we had suffered heavy losses. On one of the chalk-hills I saw an artillery ammunition-column which had all its horses killed. What it was doing up there no one knows, for not even the guns had got so far.

  Late in the evening, friend and foe were alike so exhausted that they left one another alone. … My face was burning as though it had been sprinkled with pepper. …

  And later he was to write: ‘Since our experiences on July 16th, I know that we are finished.’

  Slowly, but inexorably, this feeling was to permeate the German Army.

  But not immediately, for to the west of Rheims the German attack had met with considerable success – so much so, that although it could not hope to link up as had been intended with the attack to the east, it nevertheless progressed far enough seriously to undercut the vital position of Rheims itself.

  On the river line, from Château Thierry as far east as Dormans, two French divisions and the American 3rd Division (who had been there ever since their machine-gunners had repulsed the German attempts to cross the river at Château Thierry) suffered considerably as a direct result of Degoutte’s conviction that the physical difficulties in the way of an attacker in that area were too great to be overborne.

  Although the French counter-batteries opened fire – as on the Gouraud front – ten minutes before the German guns, this did not spare the Allied troops in the forward positions their ordeal of gas and high explosive; and much of the ingenuity which had been used in Ludendorff’s previous offensives to provide his forces with camouflage, was now employed to throw them across the river. Pontoons, rafts, rowing-boat and even punts were used to ferry the German assault infantry through the shell- and bullet-churned waters, and by a magnificent feat of military engineering, skeleton bridges were rapidly built, across which the Storm Troops charged to fall upon the gassed and shell-shocked defenders.

  Once the infantry were across the river, the assault tactics which had been used at St. Quentin sixteen weeks before paid excellent dividends – though not so high as previously, for when daylight broke, it brought no fog. Nevertheless, many Allied units were surrounded, many companies obliterated, and one position held by a battalion and a half of the American 38th Infantry was subjected to such continuous and violent attack during the whole of July 15th that by nightfall only four hundred of the fifteen hundred men engaged were still on their feet, and these were limp with exhaustion and minor wounds.

  To the north-east, on Berthelot’s front, the German penetration had been greater as the assault divisions had had no river to cross – and by nightfall they had pressed forward for five miles along the valley of the Ardre, to reach the slopes of the Mont des Rheims. Here, however, they were held, for Pétain had concentrated – and concealed – his reserves in the woods which clothed the hillside, and they were thus available to buttress the sagging line.

  Gradually the impetus of the attack was absorbed and as night fell the advance was halted along the whole front – east of Rheims by what was to become known as the ‘Gouraud Manœuvre’, immediately south-west of Rheims by Pétain’s reserves, and further south by the exhaustion of the Storm Troops, coupled with the containment of their left flank as more of Pétain’s reserves came into action. Here the attack suffered also restraint from Supreme Headquarters, for Ludendorff sensed danger in allowing his troops to press too far south of the river: he had no wish to be again presented with a situation similar to that after March 22nd, with one flank of his offensive vastly out-distancing the centre.

  With the halting of the advance, the defensive crust hardened – and by midday on July 16th, faced with complete failure on one front and stalemate on
the other, Ludendorff decided that the attack must cease. Furthermore, ‘Once the difficult decision to suspend the offensive of these armies had been taken, it was useless to attempt to advance further across the Marne or to leave our troops on the southern bank.’

  After which decision, he immediately left for Tournai in order to supervise the long-awaited attack upon the British. Bruchmüller’s battering-train was already en route – a fact which had not escaped Allied Intelligence.

  The enforced employment of the French reserves to stop the collapse of Berthelot’s front had left Pétain short of troops for the second phase of his plan – the pressure on the sides of the new pockets which was to draw in more and more German strength and open the way for Mangin’s advance across the base of the Marne Salient. This advance was due to begin on July 18th, but during the morning of July 15th – by which time it had become obvious that he would need more strength and more time therefore in which to amass it – Pétain had ordered a postponement. He had also instructed both Mangin and Degoutte to release some of their reserves to move eastwards in order to undertake the application of the essential second-phase pressure.

  This modification of plan might well have been justified in the eyes of all concerned, had it not at this point appeared that danger now loomed most threateningly in the north. From the British point of view, not only did Haig feel in urgent need of the immediate return to him of his own reserves, but also of reinforcement by every division which could be rushed up to the support of the Lys front.

  Foch and Haig were due to meet at Mouchy on the 15th, and on his way to the rendezvous Foch called at Mangin’s headquarters to learn with extreme annoyance of Pétain’s latest instruction. As Foch had specifically promised the British that Mangin would attack and as he himself was unsympathetic to any other form of warfare, he immediately cancelled Pétain’s orders, instructed Mangin to press forward with his arrangements with all possible speed, and telephoned Pétain to the effect that ‘There can be no question of slowing down, still less of stopping Mangin’s preparations. In case of urgent, extreme need you may take troops absolutely indispensable, informing me at once.’

  Foch then proceeded to his meeting with Haig, where he persuaded Sir Douglas that the most efficacious method of relieving danger in Flanders would be to allow the British divisions in the south to remain there, and to reinforce Mangin’s thrust yet further with the two divisions still withheld in the British area.

  As Haig was still prepared to accept Foch as his Supreme Commander despite his doubts of the value of French promises of offensive action, he therefore took the risk of agreeing, and accepted the responsibility with the feeling that he was acting in the main interest of the Allied Cause. So far as his own position was concerned, as he remarked caustically during the evening, ‘If the dispositions proved to be wrong, the blame will rest on me. On the other hand, if they prove right, the credit will lie with Foch. With this, the Government should be well satisfied!’

  At 4.35 a.m. on the morning of July 18th, after a violent cloudburst had drenched the whole area, Mangin’s offensive was launched to the south of Soissons, aimed primarily at cutting the Soissons–Château Thierry road in order to starve the main mass of the German troops in the salient of all supplies: and if Pétain hoped that the advance would be so successful as to close the neck of the salient completely, it would seem that Foch was content merely that, at last, an Allied advance had begun.

  The secrecy which Ludendorff had failed to maintain on the east of the salient three days before was achieved by his enemies on the west – and by methods markedly different from those previously employed by the Germans. Not for the French or the Americans the tedious details of camouflage and wrapped accoutrements: instead, the attacking divisions arrived at their start line from many miles away, and hardly paused before plunging into battle.

  True, the Compiègne Forest and the Retz Forest near Villers-Cotterets extended many miles back from the front line, and in the shelter provided by great oaks in full leaf, the American 1st and 2nd Divisions and the Moroccan Division, who were to be the spearhead of the attack, spent the forty-eight hours immediately preceding zero hour. But not close to the front, and the marines of the American 2nd Division did not begin their approach march until after dusk. They covered over five miles – through drenching woods, along winding forest paths, and in complete darkness – before they arrived at the foot of a steep rise which seemed to tower above them, stretching up limitlessly into the sodden, inky night.

  Sweating, stumbling, their backs and legs aching with the effort, they hauled themselves and their weapons up through thinning trees until at last they broke clear of them, then further up and on to the wide crest of a long, grass-covered ridge. Here the men lay – so thickly that the last arrivals could hardly find a place to rest – gasping for breath and with that complete muscular relaxation which only the young and the fit ever achieve, for only they are capable of the effort which makes it necessary.

  As the leading files recovered and began to lift their heads and turn to look about them, a red Very light curved up from the dark plain below, and as though it were a signal, French 75s behind and immediately in front opened fire from positions into which they had been manhandled only a matter of hours beforehand.

  As the marines dragged themselves to their feet and moved forward – together, though they could not see them, with infantry of seventeen other divisions spread out in a line twelve miles wide – three hundred and forty-six Renault tanks also debouched from the woods and ground their way across the ridge and on towards the enemy lines.

  For the first hour, as daylight grew, it seemed that nothing would ever stop the advance: the German wire was thin, their trenches incomprehensibly shallow and unsystematic, their machine-gun posts – although gallantly manned – unavailing against the armour of the tanks. There was plenty of cover, too, for the men on foot, and the ground was humpy so that they could dive into hollows for protection when machine-gun bullets scythed too dangerously close, or stalk the machine-gun crews through the close-growing wheat.

  Within an hour they had advanced over a mile along the whole length of the attack front, and with their covering barrage then stationary for twenty minutes, the men re-formed behind it, eager to press onwards, excited and confident. Behind them some hundred tanks were out of action, a few with bullets through engines or with tracks blown off, but many solely as a result of engine failure. And shortly after the advance began again, many more tanks broke down, while the remainder were running short of fuel.

  On the northern flank of the advance, the American 1st Division endeavoured to reach the village of Breuil as their second objective, but were almost immediately blocked by the Missy ravine – a deep cleft on the earth nearly a kilometre long, with marshes and a deep stream at the bottom. Here they were held up all day and well into the following night, and during these heroic hours four companies of American infantry were obliterated either by artillery as they dropped down the western face of the valley, or by machine-gun fire as they tried, in broad daylight, to force their way through the marsh. Only five tanks went into the valley to support them, and the two not blown to pieces by shell-fire were engulfed by the swamp.

  To the south, the Moroccans and the American 2nd Division were by evening farther ahead – but very tired and with sadly depleted ranks. There were no tanks now, too many of those Americans who had learned wisdom in Belleau Wood were nursing their wounds in hospital, and the new drafts were still inculcated with the doctrine of advance in line. By evening many of the companies were commanded by sergeants, a breed quicker to jettison Staff theories than are those holding commissioned rank. The Americans on the division’s left flank were also troubled in mind by the barbaric savagery with which their Moroccan and Senegalese neighbours fought.

  Then in the late evening, they were treated to a spectacle which did nothing to raise their morale, but reduced many of them to an impotent and soul-shaking anger.


  From the Retz Forest behind them debouched suddenly columns of French cavalry, lined out as on parade. They were picturesque indeed, with crested helmets, lances and flashing sabres, and to an eye unsophisticated by that day’s battle they would have been an inspiring sight. As it was, a hush of horror descended upon the scene: and from accounts written afterwards, it seems that even the German machine-gunners did not relish their task, simple though they knew it would be. The Light Brigade at Balaclava faced no more certain ruin.

  The charge began slowly and with all the panoply of bugle-call and dipping pennants, and the ground rumbled evenly and sonorously under the hooves. Onwards they came, gathering speed, an occasional shell-burst among the ranks adding colour, but as yet little reality, to the scene. The drumming built up, the ground began to shake, the infantry cowered into the ground, and then with an enormous, thunderous clangour, the charge passed over them. But the glory of shouting men and creaking leather, of hoof-beat and clashing sabre was already laced with the dry rattle of machine-guns, and riderless horses were already neighing and plunging; screams of agony came back to the soldiers lying in the rifle-pits, and shells were bursting now with dreadful effect in the packed and smoking scene ahead. Abruptly it seemed, the charge halted, while every second saddle emptied and every third horse crashed to the ground – and all the time above the screams and neighing of terrified animals, came the steady, murderous crackle of rifle and machine-gun fire.

  Three minutes after the infantry had lain beneath the charge, they were cowering again under the far more dangerous rout of red-eyed, riderless and bolting horses, quitting the scene of one of the more criminal stupidities of the war, leaving, as usual, the infantry of both sides to clear up the mess. This they did during the last of the daylight, ignoring each other to a great extent, more concerned with putting the animals (and some of the men) out of their misery, than with the prosecution of the battle. That could wait until the morrow.