by Lloyd, Nick
As well as containing large numbers of well-rested, highly motivated and well-equipped troops, the Dominion corps were led by two of the most promising commanders in the British Empire: Sir Arthur Currie and Sir John Monash. In many ways they were typical of their homelands, being men who could only have found success and fame in the freer air of the Dominions. There was no way Arthur Currie, a teacher and failed financier, would have risen to Lieutenant-General had he joined the regular British Army. Likewise, the Australian, Sir John Monash, came from a family of Polish Jews and he had originally been a civil engineer when he joined the North Melbourne Militia before the war. Both men possessed fierce, inquisitive minds, eagerly devouring military knowledge because they knew the lives of their men depended on it. They understood and valued firepower and logistics and also recognized the importance of patience and preparation. Currie’s motto was a characteristic ‘neglect nothing’, while Monash described his theory of war as how ‘to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes’.9 The theory of war that emerged from the Dominion corps may not have been subtle; it may not have been as innovative as the tactical changes ushered in by the German Army, but it worked. And it worked at a tolerable cost in lives.
The attack at Amiens would be dependent on speed, surprise and the vigour with which the opening assault would be pressed. Planning went ahead in the last weeks of July and the first week of August, following well-worn routines and familiar procedures. On 31 July, Haig was driven to Fourth Army’s tank grounds at Vaux-en-Amiénois, where he met Rawlinson and Hugh Elles, the commander of the Tank Corps. Haig was then shown a demonstration of the latest machines that were arriving in France and how they were used on the battlefield. Haig was impressed. ‘Remarkable progress has been made since Cambrai, not only in the pattern of Tank, but also in the methods of using them,’ he recalled. ‘Tanks now go in first, covered by a shrapnel barrage, and break down all opposition. Enemy in strongpoints and machine gun nests are then flattened out by the Tanks. The latter then signal the infantry to “come on”, and these then advance in open order and mop up the remaining defenders, and collect the prisoners.’10 He was particularly impressed by the Mark V that was now coming into service – the culmination of British tank design in the Great War and a much-improved version of the original Mark I that had debuted on the Somme two years earlier. Like previous incarnations, the Mark V came in two types, the male and female. The male was armed with two six-pounder guns, one on each side of the vehicle, while in the female version they were replaced by six Hotchkiss machine-guns.11 There was also the Mark V Star tank, which was six feet longer than the original Mark V and was designed as an armoured personnel carrier, with enough space inside to fit twenty men.12
Hopes were also high for the use of quicker, lighter vehicles, the Medium Mark A, the so-called Whippet, which would be used for exploitation with the cavalry. The Medium Mark A was very different from the rhomboid-shaped Mark Vs. It weighed only 14 tons and carried four machine-guns in a fighting turret above the chassis. Calling them ‘whippets’ was perhaps unfortunate. Although with a top speed of just over 8 mph they were almost twice as fast as the Mark V, they were still painfully slow and could not keep up with horses at a canter, meaning that cooperation with the cavalry would be difficult. Nevertheless, tanks would play a vital role in the assault. A total of 430 machines would start at Amiens on 8 August, the most that the British had ever employed in battle. The Tank Corps hoped that the mass use of this weapon – something it had only ever managed to do at Cambrai the previous year – would bring great success. The French, by contrast, had only two tank battalions, which were sent to Debeney two days before the attack. Most of the French tank force had been engaged on the Marne that July and had taken heavy losses, hence Debeney’s insistence that without armour he would require a forty-five-minute artillery bombardment to clear the way for his troops.
As Debeney well knew, artillery had become vital to operations on the Western Front. By the Armistice the British alone had over 6,000 guns, a third of which were classified as heavy (or siege) artillery. The French had even more. They ranged from the ubiquitous British 18-pounder or French 75mm, to the heavier 8 inch, 12 inch and 15 inch howitzers that fired a bigger shell. As well as these regular types, the Western Front also saw the use of large railway-mounted naval guns that fired huge 1,500lb shells on targets up to twenty miles away.13 Although the spirit and élan of attacking soldiers were still of importance – particularly when artillery or armour were not available – artillery had become the weapon that unlocked defences and allowed infantry to manoeuvre on the battlefield. Without it, they would almost always suffer crippling losses, having to advance in the face of unsuppressed enemy machine-gun and rifle fire or watch powerlessly as enemy batteries opened up on them. By 1918 the use of artillery, by all sides, was marked by a great degree of expertise, professionalism and technological prowess that allowed increasing amounts of firepower to be targeted accurately and responsively on the battlefield. In contrast to the earlier years of the war, corrections were now being made for the temperature of the air and the charge being used, the velocity and direction of the wind, the age and wear of the guns, and the type of shell and fuse. When these measurements were taken and used in conjunction with reconnaissance from the air, much greater accuracy could be achieved.
Rawlinson, for his part, could think about not opting for the kind of long, draining bombardment that had preceded the attacks of earlier years. After extensive discussion it was agreed that – as on the Marne – there would be no preliminary bombardment. The state of the enemy’s defences was such that it would not be required: there were no deep dug-outs or pill-boxes and few sections of well-wired and strengthened trenches, just thin slits covered by machine-guns. At Zero Hour a creeping barrage would be fired for three minutes 200 yards ahead of the infantry, lifting up to forty times in a carefully programmed shoot that would ‘cover’ the infantry up to 4,500 yards into the German lines.14 If any wire or enemy strongpoints remained then the tanks would deal with them. By keeping the guns silent until the moment of advance the precious element of surprise would be maintained and give the enemy no time to prepare for counter-battery fire. This was of crucial importance. Only by the autumn of 1917 had it become possible to fire accurately without ‘registering’ guns beforehand; essentially firing at specified reference points and then noting the errors in range or direction from where the shell landed. By using a complex series of mathematical equations it was possible to work out the necessary corrections for each gun to make sure they were as accurate as possible. Had Fourth Army attempted to do this before the attack, large numbers of shells would have fallen on the German positions, thus alerting the enemy to the powerful increase in artillery opposite them. By 1918, it was possible to do without this pre-registering phase of operations. Batteries would fire their guns at a special series of wired screens behind the line, from which muzzle velocity and directional errors could be identified. Armed with this information, corrections could then be made. Sir John Monash noted the ‘feverish activity’ at the calibration range of the Australian Corps in the early days of August. ‘All day long, battery after battery of guns could be seen route-marching to the testing ground, going through the performance of firing six rounds per gun, and then route-marching back again the same night . . . So rapid was the procedure that long before he had reached his destination the Battery Commander had received the full error sheet of every one of his guns, and by means of it was enabled to go into action whenever required without any previous registration whatever.’ Staff officers and other VIPs who came to see Monash were always taken to see the complex mathematical alchemy taking place in his ‘calibration hut’ and all left suitably impressed.15
A key element of the artillery preparation prior to the battle was identifying and (if possible) knocking out German batteries. Counter-batt
ery fire, as it was called, was notoriously difficult – requiring detailed reconnaissance and pinpoint accuracy – and many Allied offensives earlier in the war had been strangled by curtains of enemy shellfire descending between the leading troops and the follow-on forces. It was estimated that the Germans had around 500 guns in the Amiens sector, far fewer than combined British and French barrels, but still enough to do considerable damage to any attack should they be left unmolested. In this important task Arthur Currie was fortunate in being able to call upon the services of one of the most outstanding soldiers of the war: his Corps Counter-Battery officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew McNaughton, whose speciality, it turned out, was destroying German guns. Two thirds of the heavy guns would be devoted to taking on German batteries and making sure that they could not interfere with the infantry assault. If this could be achieved, the German defenders would be on their own.
As well as artillery and tanks, air power would play a key role in the coming battle. By the summer of 1918, after a war of technological and numerical parity, the Allies had opened up an appreciable lead over their German adversaries. Led by the French, who surpassed both Britain and the USA in aircraft production, they were able to win the battle of aerial attrition by building more aircraft and training more aircrew than their enemies. In the last year of the war, the French alone produced just under 25,000 aircraft and nearly 45,000 engines, making them the world’s largest air force.16 Although British and French aircraft may not have had the finesse or craftsmanship of the best German models, a new generation of fighters (including improved Spads, Sopwith Camels and Bristol Fighters) were very capable and were reaching deeper and deeper into enemy lines. By 7 August the Allies had attained a huge numerical advantage on this front, with 1,904 aircraft being deployed, against just over 300 German machines. Both the RAF and the French Division Aérienne would play a crucial role at Amiens. They were tasked with securing control of the air by bombing German aerodromes, engaging their fighters in the air, and assisting the troops in a variety of ways, ranging from ground attack and contact patrols, to spotting and even the dropping of smoke.17
None of these preparations would be effective, however, without the element of surprise; indeed, with the huge number of troops, tanks and guns gradually crowding into the Amiens sector, including two powerful corps packed into a front just over eight miles wide, there was a grave danger that should the Germans suspect a forthcoming attack, they could shell the approaches to the front line with predictable results – smashed artillery batteries; maddened horses; scattered battalions; and burning tanks. From the beginning of the planning process secrecy had been stressed at all levels and was the reason why a complex, ambitious and unprecedented deception programme had been undertaken. In discussions prior to the attack, both Rawlinson and Haig had been keen to achieve tactical success on the battlefield. The Canadian Corps, which Haig wanted to spearhead the attack, had been in GHQ Reserve, but if it were to enter the lines east of Amiens, alongside the Australians, then it would not take long for German High Command to realize that an offensive was imminent. The task was to get the Canadians into the line, but without anyone knowing it.
The deception plan prior to Amiens was not only imaginative and forward-thinking, it was also executed with a ruthlessness and professionalism that had never been seen before. In order to make sure the arrival of the Canadian Corps was a surprise, an elaborate series of orders were drafted that made it look like the Canadians were being deployed for an attack on the Mount Kemmel sector in Flanders to the north. Corps headquarters was packed off to the front, casualty clearing stations were set up, two Canadian battalions were detrained, and extensive wireless traffic was faked, all in order to convince the German High Command that the Canadians were there. And then, one unit at a time, the Canadian Corps began to move to its real destination. Some divisions took odd routes, initially moving north, or east, but all gradually began to track back down to the south, much to the bemusement of the officers and men, very few of whom knew the real destination. It was, as one Canadian veteran later remarked, ‘a miracle of staff work’. To a casual observer, ‘everything would have appeared in hopeless confusion, but such was not the case’.18
Secrecy was of paramount importance. Major F. J. Rice, an artillery battery commander, remembered how in the first week of August the divisional artillery staff:
began to talk about our taking part in a ‘raid’. This ‘raid’ became a Divisional joke during the next few days, but the secret was probably kept, I think, in spite of the conjectures as to what it all really meant. The batteries began to take up ammunition by night in positions they had selected about half a mile to a mile behind the front line. Straw was put on forward roads, ropes were wrapped around wheels, and everything possible was done to preserve secrecy.19
Charles Henry Savage, serving with 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles, remembered that ‘It was a beautifully planned show.’ A notice was posted in every man’s pay book that read simply: ‘KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT’ alongside advice on how best to preserve secrecy. For example, it stated that ‘If you hear anyone else talking about operations, stop him at once. The success of the operations and the lives of your comrades depend upon your SILENCE.’ Indeed, such was the preoccupation with secrecy in the front lines before the attack that it often caused anger and frustration, as well as some hilarity. As battalions moved up in the dark, silently passing the guns and moving quietly along tree-lined roads, it was often difficult to work out where they were. ‘To ask anyone on the road where such and such a battalion was,’ Savage remembered, ‘would generally bring the reply “keep your mouth shut”.’20
The Allies had learnt about secrecy the hard way. Bitter experience had taught them the folly of attacking in full view of the enemy after long bombardments that only revealed the frontage of the coming operation. But this time, their preparation would be meticulous and imaginative. For Tank Corps HQ, the task of moving up six battalions of tanks to the front without them being noticed was of great importance. The headquarters of each unit was despatched in advance to unknown destinations and the tanks themselves were sent by rail under sealed orders. No communication was allowed between battalion headquarters and their units until they arrived at their assigned sector. Hugh Elles and his staff had also concocted a cunning series of ruses designed to throw German intelligence off their scent. Tank wireless detachments were set up in other army areas further to the north and one group of tanks were even sent to a quiet front within view of enemy observation balloons, where they then performed daily movements forward throughout the period of concentration.21 Yet behind this ruse the main strength of the Tank Corps was on the move, concentrating near Amiens, and covered by the sound of aircraft near the front, flying back and forth every day, their engine noise drowning out the roar of the tanks. It was just like a symphony; every instrument was in its right place.22
German accounts of the days leading up to the opening of the offensive betray little of the frantic activity taking place on the other side of the line. The front was held by Second Army commanded by General der Kavallerie Georg von der Marwitz, a highly experienced soldier who had served on both Eastern and Western Fronts and was noticeable for his brisk white moustache. Marwitz’s command held the line from Albert (opposite the British III Corps) to Hargicourt (opposite the French IX Corps), and was composed of three corps, containing fourteen divisions in all.23 Although on paper this was an impressively strong force, Second Army was not in the best of condition. Extensive combat operations earlier in the year during the spring had drained it of manpower and dented its morale. Although it contained the extremely well-regarded 27th Württemberg Division, seven of its divisions were classified by Allied intelligence as ‘third-class’ that could be relied upon to hold the front but for little more. There were also worrying signs of disorder and growing discontent in some units. The Commanding Officer of 41st Division, which occupied a central position at the front, had recently noticed an increase in insu
bordination, with some men refusing to march to the front and officers adopting a relaxed attitude to discipline. Several men had even been shot for refusing to follow orders.24
Second Army did not have the luxury of sitting behind prepared positions and well-dug trench systems; the kind of defensive lines that German units had long become accustomed to holding. The ground it occupied was not particularly strong and there had not been enough time to improve it. One of the units tasked with resisting any attack was 43rd Reserve Division, which occupied the northern part of the front at Sailly-Laurette and Chipilly. One of its soldiers, Leutnant Albers, complained that his position lay ‘in a very uneven zigzag line, not complete or connected but in the form of chest-high sections of trenches. There were practically no obstacles’, and few construction materials available; something that was a familiar feature across the front. The positions were also dangerously isolated. It was impossible to move in daylight and the telephone lines to headquarters were continually being destroyed by shellfire. Morale was not helped by the late arrival of food, often coming in cold from field kitchens several kilometres behind the line. ‘It was no wonder,’ he wrote, ‘that the men rapidly lost confidence.’25
Regular aerial reconnaissance revealed that the German defences were poor and were not being improved or maintained properly throughout July and August. Patrols undertaken by the famously alert Australians also reinforced the rapidly growing appreciation that the German defenders in this sector were soft. On the morning of 29 July, Australian units mounted a surprise raid on the German positions between Morlancourt and Sailly-Laurette, capturing 4,000 yards of front-line trench and taking over 100 prisoners. Those prisoners were ‘a very poor lot of men’ with low morale; their companies were very weak and they had received no drafts. One of their officers said ‘that the morale of both officers and men had been very adversely affected by the success of the Allied counter-stroke on the Marne’.26 That may have been so, but other German units were more professional and had noted signs of preparation on their sectors, sending back reports, but getting little response.