by Barrie Pitt
‘Tout le monde à la bataille!’ was his continual chant, and if Pétain was prepared to hang back, Mangin certainly wasn’t, and neither – once Foch had visited him – was Gouraud. With all armies attacking on a curving front, it should have been obvious that a repetition of the assault on the Marne Salient would occur – an immensely long frontal attack, endeavouring to push the Germans by main force back out of France and Belgium and over their own frontiers. By itself, this was doomed to failure; but in default of a completely successful thrust towards Metz – which would have needed the close co-operation of all three Allies – it is by no means certain that this was not the only plan. Mobility is an essential for encircling movements: and by 1918, the machine-gun had precluded the successful use of cavalry, while armoured vehicles were not yet fast or reliable enough to take their place to the necessary extent.
So during the middle fortnight of September, the plans were laid, the armies assembled. In the south, from Verdun to the Aisne, the Americans were hastily – too hastily for their inexperienced Staff – packed into the line facing Montfaucon and the Argonne, with the unknown strength of the Kriemhilde Position awaiting them eight miles further back. Supporting them on their left flank was the eager Gouraud with the French Fourth Army, and beyond him Berthelot and the French Fifth Army lining the Vesle; then Mangin’s French Tenth Army still holding the Aisne heights above Soissons which they had taken on August 20th; then Debeney’s First French Army along a line from below la Fère to above St. Quentin – the scene of the defeat of Gough’s Army five months before.
Four miles north of St. Quentin lay the boundary between the French and British commands.
Three days after the German retirement to screening positions in front of the Siegfried Line, Rawlinson’s Fourth and Byng’s Third Armies had come up, re-established contact and continued, with dogged persistence, the wearing away of German strength. At Havrincourt (in the base of the old Flesquières Salient) on September 12th, and further south at Epéhy on the 18th, pitched battles had been fought of a dour and grim brutality, which spoke of the weariness of soul of all participants. In both cases the German positions had been pierced and the defences to north and south turned; and as a result Ludendorff’s armies were now completely back in the Siegfried Line and General von der Marwitz had lost his command.
From just above St. Quentin up as far as the area which had been the southern haunch of the Flesquières Salient, lay Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, while beyond them Byng’s Third Army continued up across the Hirondelle and Sensée valleys of grim and bloody memories, until its northern flank curled around the newly won positions above Quéant. Then came the Canadians of the First Army, with the Wotan Position behind them and the line of the Canal du Nord in front.
Above Arras was the Lys basin, held now by the reconstituted Fifth Army under the command of General Birdwood (a previous commander of the Australian Corps), thus allowing Plumer to shorten his Second Army Front, though not as yet to escape from his wardenship of the Ypres Salient. And from north of Ypres to the coast, still lay the Belgian Army, with the six divisions of the French Sixth Army in reserve.
Of all these armies, only Birdwood’s British Fifth in the north, and Barthelot’s French Fifth and Mangin’s French Tenth Armies in the central sectors, were not immediately to attack as a part of Foch’s Grand Assault: they were to await developments.
The opening blows of the Grand Assault were to be delivered at twenty-four hour intervals, beginning at dawn on September 26th with the assault towards Mézières by the Americans and Gouraud’s Fourth Army. Twenty-four hours later, the British First and Third were to break through the Canal du Nord line and down into the Siegfried Position from the north, while on September 28th, Plumer’s army, together with the Belgians and French, were to burst out of the Ypres Salient and drive along the Belgian coast, later diverging in order (it was piously hoped) to free both Bruges and Brussels.
And on September 29th, Rawlinson’s British Fourth and Debeney’s French First Armies would smash their way by frontal assault through the Siegfried Position.
It is incredible that any man could believe – after the experiences of the last four years and especially of the last six months – that success could be achieved by such an assault. Even during the collapse of the Marne Salient, where the Germans were driven from the sketchiest of defences, the only progress made by the Allies until Pétain imposed his will upon the battlefield, had been by Ludendorff’s permission – and Pétain was a subordinate commander these days, his interests and activities rigidly limited to his own front.
That the assault did succeed is even more incredible.
It did so because it was aided by factors external to the battle; and all of History’s irony is epitomized in the fact that to his dying day, Foch remained resolutely unaware of the vital part played in his own success by the more important of them. The British Navy, he had claimed in 1912, would not be worth a single bayonet to the Allied cause – and nothing he said between then and his death indicates that he ever changed his mind: yet the naval effort was fundamental to Allied victory.
It was the Blockade – and the Blockade alone – which so weakened German resistance that Foch’s Grand Assault could win some measure of success. Since two days before the expiration of Britain’s ultimatum to Germany on August 4th, 1914, the Royal Navy had been exerting an inexorable and slowly tightening throttle-hold upon the Central Powers, and once America joined the Allies, the hold became surer, the grip tighter. If conditions in Germany had been bad at the end of 1917, by the summer of 1918 they were so appalling that the prospect of the approaching winter was enough to cause a wave of suicides among the civilians, which grew in size as every day went by; and in Hungary and Austria, conditions were even worse. Mere hunger was almost a forgotten luxury. Stark famine gripped Central Europe.
Nothing could stop conditions at home affecting the troops at the front, especially once the casualty rate necessitated a shortening of the time available for training recruits, and men arrived in the front line who had been civilians only weeks before. These confirmed the details in the soldiers’ mail, without cushioning their impact with familial affection. Even the most honourable soldier will hesitate when he knows that if he dies, his family will starve – and starve to death: and when his own boots are repaired with cardboard, his own rations reduced to the bare minimum necessary to maintain life, his arms old and irreplaceable, his ammunition short, and only paper dressings exist with which to bandage his wounds, then hope sinks low indeed.
Chiefly, however, it was the letters from home – lying heavily on empty stomachs.
But in the discipline and common danger of the front line, German training and efficiency were such that the soldiers fought well. They had, indeed, little choice but to do so, for once the armies were back within the complex of the defensive systems, it became much easier for the Command Staffs to administer stern discipline than had been the case during the fighting in the open. Thus the Allies ran into fierce opposition.
The Americans suffered first – and indeed most – for, owing to the use of their experienced divisions during the St. Mihiel operation, many of those which opened the Meuse–Argonne offensive were going into battle for the first time – a condition which has led to their collective appellation of ‘the thin green line’. Nine full-strength American divisions attacked on the morning of September 26th – assisted by one hundred and eighty-nine light tanks and preceded by a bombardment which had lasted three hours – along a front of twenty-two miles defended by five German divisions, four of which were officially described as ‘low grade’.
The rifle-strength preponderance of the attackers over the defenders was therefore very close to eight to one, but it is quite easy for one man lying in a rifle-pit to shoot eight men when they walk towards him from three hundred yards away, across open ground in broad daylight. It is even easier in forested areas, as the defenders can be more cunningly concealed – and if the atta
cking troops are so inexperienced that they continually call out to each other in order to maintain contact, then the task of the defenders is simple indeed.
By the end of the first day, the Americans – who Pershing had confidently expected to reach and breach the Kriemhilde Position, eight miles distant, within twenty-four hours – had advanced an average of three miles, and this only as a result of their enormous numerical superiority, their youth and the luck which accompanies it, and their limitless courage, firmly based as it was upon a massive ignorance of the dangers they faced. During the following day Montfaucon was taken as the result of flanking movements on each side – both of which bear every indication of being accidentally performed – but after that the organizational chaos which had snarled the St. Mihiel offensive reappeared along the entire front, and the advance faltered. Guns failed to move up in support, units became hopelessly lost, supplies failed – and Pershing had no alternative but to call a halt. While order was being restored, more German divisions moved into the Kriemhilde Position to await the next stage of the American advance, and to prepare – with Teutonic efficiency – as warm a reception for it as their arms and ammunition would allow.
In the meantime, Byng’s army had attacked the line of the Canal du Nord defences north of Quéant in an assault along a six-mile front. Owing to lack of large numbers of tanks – and opportunity to use them until the problem of crossing the canal had been solved – there had been a partial return to the bombardment methods of 1917. Throughout the previous night a crushing barrage had pulverized the eastern bank of the canal, and when the infantry attacked at 5 a.m., a crossing was achieved in one sector which was quickly and imaginatively exploited. While machine-gun fire was maintained along the whole length of the attack front, riflemen were quickly transported to the crossing point, where they pushed the bridgehead eastwards until it burst through the defence lines, after which they fanned out in both directions, bearing down on both sides of the breach until they broke away. Machine-gun teams followed through from reserve and from the west bank as soon as the canal bank opposite them was cleared of the enemy, and by nightfall, the British were through the main defences and completely past the width of the main Siegfried Position at its northern end, thus turning it.
Promptly to time the following morning, Plumer’s army attacked up the slopes of the ridge which encircled the Ypres Salient in a blood-drenched arc from the Houthulst Forest in the north, down to Messines in the south: and if the spirit of victory was in the air, it must have wilted in the driving rain which, once again on the eve of an Allied offensive, turned the ground to mud and congealed the hearts of many soldiers with bitter memories. But even the rain could not help Ludendorff now, for the troops of the German Fourth Army holding what has become known as the Passchendaele Ridge would, in the words of their own commander, ‘no longer stand up to a serious attack’. By evening the ridge was in British hands, and British soldiers stared unbelievingly eastwards across Flanders with something of the feelings experienced by the Israelites when they viewed the Promised Land. Behind them lay the graveyard of nearly half a million of their compatriots, all of whom had died to take or to hold the derisory crest upon which they now stood, and which they had taken that day for little more than the trouble of wading through the mud. But there seems to have been little feeling of triumph abroad that evening: only an air of immense desolation, a deep sense of vast, irretrievable waste.
And away to the south for the past forty-four hours, 1,600 guns on Rawlinson’s front had been methodically smashing the frontal defences of the main Siegfried Position, having first deluged them with a new type of mustard gas, which drove the defenders deep into their subterranean tunnels. The bombardment was to continue for another twelve hours. Then at dawn on September 29th, five divisions attacked on a nine-mile front, the American 30th Division in the centre, with the American 27th Division on their left flank and the British 46th Division on their right. Two more British divisions flanked the attack.
It was thought that the best chance of breakthrough lay with the Americans, owing both to their extra strength and to the ground across which they must advance – for the British 46th Division was blocked by the St. Quentin Canal, which in the American sector ran through a subterranean tunnel. Fortune, however, confounded expectations.
Two nights before the main attack, the American 27th Division, in a praiseworthy attempt to clear its front for what its commander called ‘a clean jump on the day’, attacked three enemy posts lying between the American positions and their main objective. They reported success, with the result that the protecting barrage was dropped beyond the positions in order not to harm the occupants – and when the main American advance began on the morning of the 29th, wide swathes were cut in the attacking infantry by German machine-gunners, who had either never been dislodged or who had counterattacked and retaken the positions. All day long the Americans of the 27th Division remained pinned to the ground in front of their own trenches, and not until evening did attached tanks manage to eliminate the posts and let the infantry through – and in the meantime the stalemate on this sector had reacted upon the left flank of the Americans of the 30th Division in the centre, who were held up by emplaced machine-guns firing on their open flank when they tried to advance.
Further south, the right flank of the 30th American Division had better luck – at first. They had crossed their ‘Start Line’ at 9 a.m. under cover of a smoke screen, and two hours later were over the long canal tunnel and breaking into the main positions of the Siegfried Position with immense gallantry and complete success. Unfortunately their success was too great, and heartened by it, they pressed forward instead of abiding by the timetable and waiting for the Australians to come up and pass through them. This would not have mattered except that once the Americans had passed over the canal tunnel, German machine-gun teams emerged from it and set up their posts, thus barring the way to the Australians and cutting off the Americans who, unknowingly, were pushing forward into ever-increasing danger.
The Americans – and the day – were saved by the British 46th Division. In war it seems best not to expect too much, and with the deep chasm of the St. Quentin Canal in front of them, the British considered that they would do well to reach the far side with as much as half their strength still alive. In view of the difficulty of the task, they had made meticulous preparations: life-belts were borrowed from cross-Channel steamers, the Royal Engineers brought up pontoons and rafts – and as had happened before when it had been made quite clear to her that her help was not essential, Nature came so bountifully to their aid as to render their efforts almost unnecessary. So thick a mist cloaked the canal on the morning of the attack that when the British infantry reached the west bank, there was nothing to stop those who could swim dropping down the bank, crossing the canal and climbing the far side.
Still cloaked by mist, they formed a bridgehead into which their non-swimming compatriots were quickly ferried, and from which they launched an attack on the main Siegfried Position. They had all the advantages which had helped the Storm Troops on the morning of March 21st, plus the experience which had been gained since then – and as, inevitably, their ranks thinned, another division came up, leapfrogged through them, and drove even deeper into the complex of trenches and dug-outs, wire-belts and tunnels which Ludendorff – and indeed all Germany – had confidently expected to withstand any onslaught which might be launched upon it.
This deep penetration aided the Americans on their left who managed to link up, and as more reserves followed into the wedge, the base was widened until at last it could exert leverage on the defensive positions holding up the Australians. As they in turn came through, the last of the machine-gun posts pinning down the American 27th Division in the north was eliminated and so the whole attack front began to draw up – and by evening a deep block had been bitten into the German line.
All day long the German troops had fought from the defences of their famous line with much of t
he skill and ardour which had distinguished them in the past – their defeat was due mainly to fog, to the offensive spirit of the Americans and the Australians, and to the spirit of victory which animated the British: and possibly to German luck, which had changed.
For although no one completely realized it at the time, that afternoon Germany had lost the war.
Under the accumulating strain, Ludendorff’s nerve had cracked.
11. Breaking Point
FOR many years Ludendorff had borne immense responsibilities, but throughout 1915 and 1916 he had been upheld by personal triumphs in the east, and in 1917 by appreciable success – if only in defence – in the west. But 1918 had apparently brought him failure. Few men appreciated more clearly than he had done the hollowness of his Spring victories, and now it seemed that evidence of outright defeat was growing apace in front of his troubled gaze.
July had seen the first weakening of his grip upon immediate events, for there had been many egregious errors in the mounting and launching of the offensives on each side of Rheims. Perhaps Ludendorff had felt this himself, for although he had not in the end been greatly perturbed by the loss of the Marne Salient, he nevertheless admitted that when the first news of Mangin’s counterthrust had reached him at Crown Prince Rupprecht’s headquarters, it had precipitated his return south ‘in a state of the greatest nervous tension’.
Such tension fatigues the strongest man if it continues for an extended period, and as almost everything that had occurred since then had served to increase – and nothing to relieve – the strain upon Ludendorff’s nervous system, it is no wonder that in two months it approached the breaking strain.