1918 The Last Act

by Barrie Pitt

  By which time, Ludendorff had returned post-haste from the north, having postponed yet again his offensive in Flanders against the British.

  As a learned and assimilated technique will enable an artist to continue working during the periods when inspiration is lacking, so a competent general can conduct efficient defensive operations even after he has lost the initiative. He may, if he is fortunate, even conduct them until such time as his opponent, in turn, either tires or mistakes the opportunity: the chance of victory then goes to whoever grasps it firmest.

  The news of the Franco–American counterattack on the western flank of the Marne bulge reached Ludendorff as he sat in conference at the headquarters of the Army Group of Crown Prince Rupprecht. ‘I concluded the conference …,’ he wrote later ‘… (naturally in a state of the greatest nervous tension) and then returned to Avesnes.’

  But the situation which there confronted him was by no means beyond his powers to resist, so long as he acted quickly – and this the admirable (and almost automatic) work of his Staff allowed him to do. By the morning of July 20th, there was little doubt as to Allied intentions, and none at all as their condition, for the tanks which had made the breach on the morning of the 18th were now almost all out of action (temporarily at least), the element of surprise had gone, and the attacking infantry were beyond the protection of their artillery.

  That morning, German reserves were hurried westwards to guard the vital Soissons–Château Thierry road, while immediate measures were taken for the withdrawal along it of as much of the strength and material in the south as could be spared. In front of Rheims, too, the defence was stiffened so that no lateral thrust towards Fismes could threaten to close the mouth of the sack, and with the two jaws thus wedged apart, the gradual and systematic withdrawal of troops in the bottom of the sack could begin. And because they were not deeply committed to action with Pétain’s reserves – as he had intended that they should be at this juncture – their successful extrication from what could have been a disastrous situation was commenced.

  It can be argued that from a strategic point of view, Ludendorff was aided at this point by Foch, who, scorning all subtleties of luring his prey forward and then pouncing to cut off his retreat, and obsessed as ever with pure and unadulterated frontal attack, ordered advances by every Allied force surrounding the salient, thus forcing the Germans by convergent pressure, back towards the base of the salient and their own escape route.

  This would not present a true picture from a tactical point of view however, for retreat under pressure is invariably a costly operation, and before the German line was stabilized again Ludendorff had lost 25,000 men as prisoners alone, and much irreplaceable material. But although Pétain’s plan if followed completely would almost certainly have yielded even greater results for the Allies, it is unlikely that Mangin’s thrust would have reached right across the base of the salient, as the armoured weapon had not yet reached the state of mechanical reliability – or mobility – for such a long, and indeed tenuous, advance.

  On the morning of July 20th, the Allied line from Château Thierry to Rheims was held by the French Ninth Army under General de Mitry (which had taken over this part of the front from the right-hand divisions of Degoutte’s army), and the replenished divisions of Berthelot’s Fifth Army. At dawn, these two armies struck along the whole line together, and in the south the American 3rd Division walked into a similar trap to that in which Gouraud had enticed the German First and Third Armies five days before.

  Allied artillery had bombarded all the positions thought to be occupied by the enemy south of the Marne, but when the infantry advanced they found only empty trenches – and with the optimism and confidence of youth the Doughboys swarmed forward, rushing in frontal attacks the isolated machine-gun posts, uncaring of the fact that every German they killed or captured had cost them ten of their own lives; there were so many of them when they started out – and there was still a large number left when they reached the south bank of the Marne and met the artillery fire and solid infantry positions established by the Germans on the north bank.

  All through the afternoon the Americans sought to throw a bridgehead across the river east of Château Thierry, while the French 30th Division on their left attacked the town itself – but it was as useless as all other frontal attacks undertaken by the other Allied armies during the war – and when, the following day, both divisions crossed the Marne, it was solely because the Germans allowed them to do so. Ludendorff was shortening his line and during the night the main defending force had slipped away.

  Along the whole eastern flank of the Marne bulge, this was happening. The reserve British divisions behind Berthelot’s army were ordered to relieve the Italian divisions ‘on the move’, but the ‘move’ stopped as soon as the forward positions were reached for there was no armour, no cloak of darkness, no surprise of attack to dislocate the impregnable defence. So long as frontal assault was used – and there could be no other method once Foch had scorned Pétain’s plan for enticement and then counterstroke – the only ground which the Allies could win was that which Ludendorff was prepared to yield. And he was yielding only because of the overall strategic position, not because of the gallantry of the attacking troops.

  By July 27th, the German line had systematically withdrawn ten miles in the centre, as far as Fère-en-Tardenois, retiring in seven days over ground they had captured in one on May 30th. The American 1st Division on the left of Mangin’s army had by now suffered seven thousand casualties and Soissons was still a mile ahead, while de Mitry’s Ninth Army had been so severely handled that it had been completely withdrawn. Fortunately, the front had shortened sufficiently for Degoutte’s right flank once more to link with Berthelot’s left.

  And here, it seemed, Ludendorff had decided to remain, for when at noon on July 28th a strong Allied attack was mounted along the fifteen miles between Fère-en-Tardenois and Ville-en-Tardenois, it was flung back with a series of fierce counterattacks, and an American corps which captured the village of Sergy was practically annihilated by a division of Prussian Guards obviously fighting with a spirit of grim purpose. In a forty-mile curve from Soissons to Rheims, the Allied advance lost momentum as – extended too far – the armies grew tired and weak.

  So Pétain, without seeking guidance from Foch, imposed his own will upon the battlefield.

  Forces were concentrated in the centre, and on July 30th, the American 32nd and 42nd Divisions (with MacArthur still scorning a steel helmet) attacked along a five-mile front at dawn, with their own 4th and 28th Divisions in close support. They gained, as was foreseen, but little ground, but their ferocity and determination ensured that every reserve of German strength in the neighbourhood was drawn into the battle. All that day, and the next, the battle raged with almost unprecedented fury in what one American historian (presumably referring only to events affecting his own country’s forces) has called ‘the dirtiest days of infantry slaughter since Grant lost his head at Cold Harbor’ – and by the evening of July 31st, the Americans had gained perhaps a mile at the point of their deepest penetration.

  But when the next morning, the right flank of Mangin’s army struck at a point to the west of Fère-en-Tardenois, aiming at an indirect sweep around Soissons, it advanced nearly five miles against thin (but heroic) resistance, and captured the high ground overlooking the Vesle: and on August 2nd all three Franco–American armies faced a void. Out-manœuvred, Ludendorff had hastily withdrawn yet another eight miles to behind the Vesle along the whole front between Soissons and Rheims, and both Soissons and Fismes were bloodlessly occupied that evening.

  Pétain had thus good cause for satisfaction, for not only had his own subtlety triumphed against the enemy where Foch’s ‘Spirit of the Offensive’ had shown at least signs of failure, but he had done so at remarkably little cost in French casualties.

  American casualties, of course, were their own business.

  At the close of every battle, they lay upon t
he ground in evenly spaced, regular lines, like fallen bean-poles, or corn-stooks blown over by the wind. Or like the British dead on the Somme, in the hot, summer sunlight of July 1st, 1916.

  9. Allied Advance

  ‘IT was an anxious and intricate business to marshal fourteen divisions of infantry, three divisions of cavalry, more than two thousand guns and some four hundred and fifty tanks, on a front of ten miles, without giving to the enemy an inkling of what was afoot.’*

  It was indeed, and the key to its success on this occasion lay in the character of one of the men who conceived the idea, and who commanded the army in whose area this concentration of force occurred. Sir Henry Rawlinson was disliked and distrusted by the Regular Army, who suspected him of harbouring ambitions, and worse still of possessing the brains to achieve them. This last quality had been demonstrated at an early age, for young Rawlinson had gained nearly double the necessary marks at the qualifying examination for Sandhurst – an achievement which failed to endear him to any of his contemporaries, who watched his inexorable rise to Army command with much moustache-chewing and dismissed his talents with the time-honoured idiocy of ‘In the Army we want men of character: men who ride straight at their fences, dammit! Rawlinson’s too clever by half!’

  Being aware of this, Rawlinson in turn showed some disdain for many military codes of behaviour, thus enabling his rivals to point condemnatory fingers at him, to warn all forms of Authority against further promotions for him, and to nickname him ‘Rawlinson, the Cad’.

  Possibly by 1918 and judged by the peculiar military tenets of the time, he deserved – and relished – the epithet. Certainly Haig distrusted him, as many entries in the Commander-in-Chief’s diaries show – but Rawlinson was nevertheless kept in high-level employment, and Haig had been quite agreeable to Wilson’s suggestion that Rawlinson should take over Gough’s command after St. Quentin. But then, Haig, as has been shown, was quite capable of guile himself when he felt that occasion demanded it: the great pity was that nearly four years of warfare had to pass before he realized that the battlefield was as good a place as any other upon which to display this aspect of his talents.

  It is possible that Rawlinson sensed at this time that Haig had reached the point when he would appreciate intelligence and some degree of subtlety in the prosecution of the war, since he could hardly have chosen a better moment than the one he did for the presentation to the Commander-in-Chief of his ideas for an attack.

  On July 12th, as part of Foch’s never-ending campaign for the offensive, the Supreme Commander had written to Haig suggesting that the British should anticipate the threatening German offensive in Flanders by mounting an attack along the southern edge of the Lys battlefield between Festubert and Rebecq, aimed north-eastwards towards Estaires. Whether Haig’s opposition to this scheme was an automatic reaction against the prospect of another nightmare in the Flanders mud, or whether he appreciated clearly the dangers of being caught in mid-attack by a counter-blow from Prince Rupprecht’s Army Group is uncertain, but on July 17th he replied to Foch to the effect that he considered a far more advantageous operation to be one aimed at freeing Amiens from the menace of German artillery, by an attack east of Villers-Bretonneux.

  ‘The best way to carry out this object is to make a combined Franco–British operation, the French attacking south of Moreuil and the British north of the Luce.’ In other words, on either side of the tip of the Amiens Salient.

  On the following day (July 18th, the day of Mangin’s attack), Rawlinson lunched with Haig and suggested to him, with becoming diffidence, that if his Fourth Army could be reinforced with the Canadian Corps (still guarding the Vimy Ridge and the Béthune coalfields), it should be possible to mount a profitable attack driving eastwards towards Péronne – from Villers-Bretonneux: and with so large a measure of agreement between the two men, it needed little discussion to decide the limits of the assault, or the best ways to bring it to a successful conclusion.

  When informed of the new proposals, Foch – who didn’t care where an offensive was launched so long as it was soon – immediately agreed, but urged strongly that the date proposed by Haig for the attack should be advanced by two days to August 8th. This was in itself a most unusual modification, for other attacks on the Western Front had almost all suffered from at least one postponement.

  Whether Rawlinson possessed the capacity for original thought or not is an open question which is unlikely at this date to be resolved: but in addition to his adaptability, which had always been evident, he exhibited now a refreshing ability to learn. From the accounts of every successful attack which had been delivered on any part of the front since the beginning of the year, Rawlinson and his Staff drew useful conclusions; and now set about putting them into practice.

  The first and most vital task (and recognized as such at last behind the British front) was the manufacture of a cloak of secrecy under which to shelter the assault forces until the moment of attack. Its operation began at the highest level – where, it is reasonable to suggest, it would have been dismissed a year before as a lot of ‘totally unnecessary fuss’.

  But not in July 1918 – and every conference called to discuss operational plans was held in a different place, in order that no suspicions should be raised in any locality by too many meetings of too many red-tabbed officers. Moreover, only those whose presence was absolutely essential were called to each meeting, with the result that there was none of that happy chatter about the operation throughout the vast grapevine of the Staff society which had preceded almost every previous Allied offensive on the Western Front. Even the divisional commanders concerned knew nothing of their forthcoming activities until eight days before the attack, and as for the fighting troops themselves, they received no warning until thirty-six hours before zero hour: moreover, with a respect for their intelligence which was entirely new, especial measures were taken to see that they were given no evidence from which to draw correct conclusions.

  One of the first phases of the preparations, in fact, did much to deceive them (and the enemy) into the belief that the section of the front between Albert and Moreuil was about to enjoy a period of comparative peace and quiet, for in late July, the British III Corps below Albert took over an extra mile and a half of front from the Australians – so that the British right flank extended to the banks of the Somme – while on their part the Australians under the suddenly inscrutable General Monash, edged farther southwards and took over another four miles of front down as far as the Amiens–Roye road – thus releasing French troops, apparently to join the battle still in progress between the Marne and the Vesle. In fact, the French merely concentrated more thickly along their own front.

  So far as additional strength was concerned, the movement into the area of the Canadian Corps (who would take over half of the Australian front just before zero hour) was carried out entirely during the hours of darkness, and to divert attention and suspicion, two Canadian battalions, two casualty clearing stations and a wireless section were detached from the Corps and sent to positions north of Mont Kemmel. Here no attempt was made to disguise their presence, from which, in due course, the Germans drew the desired conclusion that this was to be the scene of the next British assault. They were aided in reaching this conclusion by an increase in the local wireless traffic and the observations of their scout planes, who reported the newly begun construction of extra aerodromes between Hazebrouck and Ypres.

  Meanwhile the Canadians and the 1st Australian Division (who had shielded Hazebrouck during the battle of the Lys) were billeted as inconspicuously as possible behind Amiens, where their presence could, if necessary, be explained away as replacement for the divisions which had guarded the Franco–British juncture. In the event, they were not in the area long enough for their presence to be realized by the Germans.

  Over a thousand extra guns were carefully smuggled into position (with their ammunition, this feat necessitated sixty extra trains), all movement taking place again at night,
and the guns being efficiently camouflaged by daybreak. Once in position, each battery was given its opportunity for ‘registering’, but under such strict control that there was no increase in the number of shells fired daily along the whole length of the front, or even in one particular sector. The allotted targets for at least two thirds of the newly-arrived heavy artillery were the known enemy gun-positions, for recent events had shown that shell-fire alone possessed the power of stopping tanks – apart from their own mechanical fallibility – and this hazard must be reduced to a minimum.

  For it was upon the combination of armour and the fighting spirit of the Dominion troops in the centre that Rawlinson was relying for success.

  In all, six hundred and four tanks were assembled behind the fourteen miles of the attack front – almost the whole available strength of the British Tank Corps. Nine tank battalions (three hundred and twenty-four fighting tanks) would lead the attack, while two light battalions of ninety-six Whippet tanks would wait to exploit the breakthrough, with – ominously – the Cavalry Corps; for even Rawlinson, infantryman though he was, could not dispense completely with the horse. One hundred and twenty supply tanks, twenty-two gun-carriers and the mechanical reserve made up the number, and the inevitable clatter and rumble occasioned by the arrival and assembly of this vast concourse of armoured vehicles was covered, as at Vaire Wood and Hamel, by a noise barrage created by Royal Air Force squadrons attached to the Fourth Army. In addition, these planes not only denied the air above the concentration area to enemy scouts, but also kept a very close check upon all matters of camouflage and security from observation of troops or supply movements.

  It is curious how often Fortune favours the Brave, when once they have shown that they are capable of achieving some degree of success without her favours. On this occasion, the German troops in the line opposite heard rumbles of heavy transport many days before the arrival of the tanks, and so plagued the Corps Staffs with warnings of their presence in the area that the Staff attitude hardened into indifference, and all further reports were dismissed as phantoms of the imagination caused by feelings of panic and an unsoldierly nervousness.