Our Great Hearted Men

by Peter Brune

  Before undertaking a summary of Lieutenant-General John Monash and his Australian Corps’s role in this victory, it is prudent to make a number of preliminary points.

  The first is the role played by General Currie and his Canadian Corps. In his The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Monash stated, ‘At no time did any question of the security of my right flank furnish me with any cause for anxiety; the prowess of the Canadian Corps was well known to all Australians, and I knew that, to use his own expressive vernacular, it was General Currie’s invariable habit to “deliver the goods”.’53

  The Canadians did. In the last chapter we identified those attributes that made the Australian Corps an elite formation. Those very same qualities applied in equal measure to the Canadians: they had a battle doctrine and a high standard of staff work acquired from common procedures and training, and a resulting efficiency; they engendered a strong esprit de corps throughout their divisions; they were well officered; and at their head was a corps commander better than most, and as good as any: Currie. By the night of 8 August the Canadians had ‘completed their objectives for the day. The Corps had captured 114 officers, 4919 O.R. and 161 guns . . .’54 In all this, it should be recognised that essentially the Canadians had identical support, resources and objectives to the Australians, and other than the employment of some differing strategies within their doctrine—Currie’s ‘leapfrogging’ technique, for example—they achieved equally impressive results.

  While the Canadians had performed splendidly on the right flank on 8 August, the III Corps’s performance on the left was poor. We have noted the consequences of its failure to capture the Chipilly Spur, and the resulting casualties inflicted upon the Australians by the German artillery and machine gun fire from that elevated feature. Three points deserve mention: the nature of the III Corps’s task; the quality of its units; and its commander.

  There can be no doubt that the degree of difficulty on that left flank was significant. First, the ground north of the Somme was not the rolling open landscape that existed on the Australian and Canadian fronts, and therefore the deployment of tanks was much more difficult. The fact that a mere 36 Mark V Tanks were allotted to this flank simply demonstrates the point. Further, German gun emplacements were far easier to camouflage in that terrain, which made their detection, and consequent vulnerability to counter-battery fire, a tougher task. Second, it will be remembered that the Germans attacked III Corps on the night preceding the battle, and that its orders were to immediately counter-attack and regain those lost trenches. While most were indeed retaken, the drain upon those troops’ physical reserves of energy must have been significant.

  If the nature of the ground, the degree of difficulty in providing adequate support, and the pre-battle physical condition of the III Corps troops were limiting factors, then the standard of its two divisions chosen for the attack was poor indeed. In their comprehensive study of General Rawlinson, Prior and Wilson have noted that:

  Both divisions had been almost destroyed in the March retreat [the 58th and 18th]. The 58 Division had then suffered anew in the fighting around Villers–Bretonneux in April, and had lost 3,000 men. Both divisions had been rebuilt . . . with the rawest of conscripts brought hastily from Britain in the post-March panic . . . there was good reason to question the readiness of these III Corps divisions for battle in particularly testing circumstances . . .55

  And to compound these problems, Prior and Wilson also point out that Rawlinson had had ‘severe reservations’ about Lieutenant-General Butler’s ability to command III Corps. Their argument is strengthened by the fact that Butler was ‘relieved temporarily’ of his command on 11 August—a mere three days after the start of the battle.56

  We have noted that General Rawlinson’s role as an Army Commander prior to Amiens had gradually become more prescriptive, but he was now more amenable to the employment of the professional expertise of his corps commanders and his supporting arms. However, his failure to deploy a tried and tested corps, or furnish III Corps with a few more able divisions—and a competent corps commander—on his left Amiens flank, smacks of carelessness in planning that led to unnecessary casualties in both the III and Australian Corps.

  ***

  Monash and his Australian Corps’s performance on the opening day of the Battle of Amiens was a masterly execution of a ‘bite and hold’ operation. It is significant that the acquisition of the Blue Line lay within the range of his artillery. Its creeping barrage screened and protected his infantry–tank advance to the Green Line; its counter-battery fire either destroyed or neutralised the ability of the German guns to deliver counter-fire that might have significantly inhibited his advance; and his timetable for the movement of guns forward while maintaining continuous fire was skilled.

  Hamel and Amiens saw the fruition of Monash’s ability to coordinate his implements of war and harness the competence of his divisional staff and his supporting arms commanders. While the use of conferences was not peculiar to the Australian Corps, it is hard to imagine that others elsewhere could have been more detailed or, for that matter, more egalitarian. Monash encouraged debate, discussion and input from all, and, finally, he instilled in his colleagues a single-mindedness of purpose in the execution of a plan.

  The other ranks in any army through time are more than able to perceive when their commander takes pains in the planning of their battle and places some sort of value on their lives. They are aware of the quality and coordination of their support in terms of both arms and logistics. And they must be confident that suitable medical evacuation procedures are in place. Bean has recorded that the four divisions of diggers on 8 August 1918 witnessed those very qualities in Monash and his commanders. Corporal Geddes’s diary on 8 August: ‘About 11 p.m. our weary bodies were revived by hot tea & stew which came up. It was a God send, & awakened us up a bit.’57 Monash had left little undone.

  While 8 August 1918 was the classic set-piece opening day of the Battle of Amiens, the successful break-in must now become a break-through. And that would prove a sterner test.

  CHAPTER 7

  . . . the enemy’s inevitable reaction

  Old habits die hard. With the prospect of a return to mobile warfare, Field Marshal Haig was determined to ensure that his horsed cavalry was returned to its traditional place of eminence on the battlefield. His fixation with cavalry was to damn him for the remainder of his life. He remained blinkered to the fact that with the concept of the ‘nation in arms and industrialization of war’, the shock action of charging cavalry and their mobility was no longer effective, because their traditional role of reconnaissance was being replaced by the light tank. The threat of massed machine guns from the ground and the air, together with massed artillery, made the battlefield a very unsafe place for horse and rider alike.

  After having approved General Rawlinson’s Amiens plan on 21 July and minor amendments to it on the 31st, Haig’s abundant but unrealistic optimism—previously evidenced during the First Somme, Arras and Cambrai Battles—surfaced again. On 5 August, a mere three days before the battle and convinced that Rawlinson’s Blue Line objective was too conservative, he extended it by five miles to the line Chaulnes–Roye, and also ordered that the offensive should then continue towards Ham—a further fifteen miles. Thus, a meticulously planned seven-mile-deep ‘bite and hold’ operation was to now constitute a twelve-mile, and possibly as much as a 27-mile, penetration into enemy territory.

  Haig’s preferred method of exploiting the initial break-in was a curious combination of cavalry and Whippet Tanks. The truth is that neither complemented the other, nor was either able to offer mutual support: the cavalry had the decided advantage of greater mobility but lacked protection, while the exact reverse applied to the slow Whippet Tanks. Thus, on the afternoon of 8 August 1918, although the opportunity existed for a decisive breakthrough, the means for Haig’s realisation of it simply did not exist.

  During the afternoon of 8 August, the BEF unleashed its wh
ole brigaded cavalry force into the German rear perimeter as their reserves were only just beginning to react. To the south, on the Canadian Corps front, the cavalry was able to reach parts of the old Amiens line before German reinforcements could arrive. On the Australians’ front, although the cavalry was able to advance up to two miles in places, it inevitably ran into enemy machine gun posts. And the consequences of that uneven contest were disastrous: high casualties and a rapid loss of momentum. We have noted the sterling efforts of the 17th Armoured Car Battalion on the Australian Corps front on that first day. Charles Bean has left us with a succinct summation both of Haig’s misplaced faith in his cavalry, and his ongoing failure to perceive the potential of a mechanised alternative:

  [The cavalry did] . . . useful work but not yet such as to justify the vast effort of its maintenance. At the same time sixteen armoured cars of a practically unknown unit, maintained possibly as a concession to the enthusiasm of a handful of grimy-fingered experts, raced about the enemy’s roads, the crews bowling over his transport with impunity from behind their sketchy armour. The cars too had their limitations; but in the light of events . . . the student may wonder what might not have been achieved if there had gone into their development the thought, labour, and money that kept the cavalry divisions for years waiting for this day’s opportunity.1

  The truth is that the very ingredients for success on that first day would rapidly dissipate during the second and subsequent days. More importantly, the sophistication, potency and efficiency of the Fourth Army’s interlocking arms on 8 August would immediately become most difficult to maintain as the battle progressed.

  Secrecy, and thus surprise, was the first. It is hard to discover a single report written by any of the arms involved in the battle that does not mention the almost absolute surprise gained on 8 August and the benefits thereby gained. But, inevitably, that surprise was lost on the second day, when the enemy reacted to the initial thrust. In the case of Amiens, all of the factors about to be discussed were compounded by the fact that after the first-day advance to the distant Blue Line, the offensive would encounter tactical, logistics, communication and resulting command and control difficulties.

  The problems confronting an artillery advance during the Great War were numerous. On 8 August, despite the fact that numbers of guns were moved forward in a ‘leapfrogging’ process from the start of the battle, the future employment of accurate, predicted fire now became a colossal task.

  The first problem was the physical movement of the guns. The initial consideration was the weight and range of the guns (whether heavy or field pieces); whether or not they required partial disassembly (heavy guns); and whether or not horse or mechanical transport was required. The next factor was the distance to be traversed, the terrain along that route, and whether or not engineer support was required. Then came the issue of the road space required per unit, and traffic control and priority of units all became critical factors. Horses, in terms of their casualties, replacement and required forage and water, were also a significant problem. During the period 8–11 August, the Fourth Army lost 1030 horses.2

  The second problem was ammunition and stores. We have noted that some 427 053 rounds were fired on 8 August. On the following day, 170 625 rounds were used.3 Thus, the volume of rounds fired on the second day amounted to around 38 per cent of those used on the first day. Clearly, supply and movement would encounter the very same problems mentioned above with regard to the guns.

  Once the artillery personnel, their guns and ammunition, and the required stores were on the move, the next problem was one of the allocation of gun areas and observation posts. Then there was the need for digging, cable laying, camouflage and concealment, and further preparation of each new position. The prior planning for these gun areas would always be contingent upon the unknown factors of the depth of ground gained and the time taken.

  With the element of surprise now lost and the difficulties of movement and redeployment now to be faced, the next challenge was having sufficient time to register new targets and begin the task of gathering intelligence as to the location of the new enemy artillery battery sites. In the case of flash spotting, while ‘church towers and other buildings in the villages in the captured territory provided excellent flash spotting C.P.s. [Command Posts]’,4 that process took time, and in the case of the sound-ranging sections, it would be 10 August before bases were established to cover the old Amiens line. Further, after another move on the 12th it would be 15 August before they had their locations established to cover the new front.5 On 9 August, although the Australian Flying Corps No. 3 Squadron managed to take 43 photos6 to begin their process of identifying new German battery positions, interpreting and disseminating such intelligence would take 24–36 hours.7 In short, the painstaking and highly technical process of gathering accurate artillery intelligence before the battle now became much harder but no less urgent as it unfolded. Thus, all of the difficulties described impacted upon the ability of the artillery to provide accurate creeping barrages and smoke cover, as well as the critical role of neutralising German gun batteries—however much they might now have been diminished. In fact, at various stages in the fighting on 9 August, the artillery would find some difficulty in actually locating exactly where their own infantry were.

  After their impressive performance during the day, the evening of 8 August brought four significant challenges to the 5th Tank Brigade. The first was supply. While the older Mark IV tanks had performed admirably as supply tanks, their towed sledges had failed them. During that evening, as a mobile dump of lorries borrowed from the Australian Corps and supplemented by horse-drawn limbers sought to make good those much-needed supplies, the undamaged tanks of the 2nd Tank Battalion rallied to the neighbourhood of Wiencourt, the 8th Battalion to the Morcourt Gully, and the 13th to the village of Bayonvillers, while the 15th remained in the Cerisy Valley.8 The second challenge concerned the availability and condition of the tank crews. The casualties to both tanks and their crews sustained on that day caused the Brigade to form composite companies of ‘improvised crews’. Some were commanded by new officers whom the crews often did not know, or had not worked with. Further, for a significant number of those crews the idiosyncrasies of a new tank were unfamiliar to them.9 To compound these difficulties there was the physical toll of the Mark V’s extreme internal heat, the ever-present petrol fumes, and the constant threat of enemy shell fire and anti-tank bullets. The third challenge concerned the inevitable wear and tear on the tanks and the consequent problems of daily maintenance by the crews, or the need to salvage them from the battleground. And the fourth problem was that as the battle unfolded the number of available tanks must diminish. The 5th Tank Brigade would later note that, ‘Some Tanks, say one per Company per Battalion, should not be put into a fight for the first day, so as to provide a fresh unit for subsequent actions and give crews that fought on the first day time to rest and overhaul Tanks.’10

  Leaving the losses of the 4th Tank Supply Company and the 17th Armoured Car Battalion aside, of the 101 Mark V Tanks of the 2nd, 8th, 13th and 15th Tank Battalions that fought on 8 August on the Australian Corps front, 82 reached their objectives but 40 received direct hits and many others were damaged. After salvage and repairs, the 2nd, 8th and 15th Battalions were only able to commit 34 tanks to action on 9 August (the 13th Battalion was to act as the Fourth Army reserve).11 Clearly, having committed all available tanks to the stunning success of 8 August, the notion that the tank battalions might be able to sustain their numbers of serviceable machines and the fitness of their crews is further hard evidence that Field Marshal Haig’s ‘unlimited’ advance was most definitely not within the capabilities of his tank resources.

  If these difficulties experienced by the artillery and tanks were a significant handicap to a coordinated exploitation of the gains of 8 August, then the challenges faced by the infantry were no less daunting. The first was communication. The stunning success of 8 August in terms of the depth, an
d the rapidity, of the advance now caused communications to become both unreliable and slow. The difficulty escalated from the top of the chain of command downwards: General Rawlinson was able to maintain satisfactory communications with Butler, Monash and Currie, who in turn had ample contact with their divisional commanders; but brigade and thence battalion communications were another matter. Because telephone communication over captured territory now became an obvious challenge, the use of visual signalling and CW (continuous wave) wireless sets were employed. While such wireless sets had a range of around eleven miles, valuable time was lost as all messages had to be decoded. In the case of the artillery, not all stations were operable on a given divisional front due to German jamming.12 After 8 August, communications from battalion to brigade and then to division were often reliant upon such measures as motor cycle despatch riders, ‘gallopers’ and runners. The efficiency of each of these methods would be, as had always been the case in the Great War, subject to navigation, the time taken, and their clear potential for elimination. To compound these difficulties were the obvious factors of the declining numerical strength of the infantry, and the drain upon their reserves of energy on the succeeding days of any battle.

  ***

  General Rawlinson’s order for his three corps commanders to continue the advance occurred ‘at some time before midnight’13 on 8 August, the objective the following day being the line Roye–Chaulnes–Bray–Dernancourt. The main thrust was to be on the Canadian Corps front in unison with General Debeney’s First French Army’s advance further to the south. General Monash could do little on his left flank other than await General Butler’s III Corps’s progress across the Somme. Once Butler had arrived on the outskirts of Bray, the Australian Corps would be in a position to advance its left flank towards Chuignolles. To protect General Currie’s left flank—and follow the Fourth Army plan—the main Australian thrust envisaged an advance on its southern or right flank by Major-General Glasgow’s 1st Division. This had been the Australian Corps’s reserve on 8 August. It was to pass through the 5th Division’s right flank, and move on the ruined village of Lihons and then on to Chaulnes. Such a right-flank thrust by the 1st Division through the 5th Division’s right flank allowed for the fact that the Australian Corps’s front must widen in an east-south-easterly direction as it moved forward. Eventually, depending on the ground gained during that first day, the 2nd Division would relieve the 5th.