Hundred Days : The Campaign That Ended World War I (9780465074907)

by Lloyd, Nick

  For the Allies, the main problem was dealing with mustard gas – ‘the king of the war gases’ – which was used in increasing amounts by German artillery. As the retreat gathered momentum, German gunners fired thousands of these shells at their pursuers, using it as an area denial weapon, through which the Allies could not advance, or at least not without difficulty. As the historian Tim Cook has shown, ‘German gunners simply blocked out map grids and fired shells to saturate the whole sector, thereby eliminating that area from the front.’15 Ever since its introduction in the summer of 1917, mustard gas had become notorious for its effectiveness at causing casualties because of its persistence and the lack of a foolproof countermeasure. The German chemical industry produced vast amounts of this effective and unpleasant chemical compound, while the Allies could only manufacture limited amounts by the summer of 1918. Mustard gas may not have been immediately fatal (particularly if there was only minor contact), but it caused a variety of painful wounds, including lung damage (if inhaled), blisters and burns on the skin, and conjunctivitis in the eyes. The shells would explode with a dull thud or pop, leading some inexperienced soldiers to mistake its arrival for that of a ‘dud’ shell. The liquid contents would then leak out, rapidly vaporize and form terrifying yellow clouds. Because it could go through wool and cotton, there was precious little protection from its symptoms, particularly if the liquid splashed you, and it lay there, settling in shell holes and trenches, often remaining active for weeks. It is little wonder that unless dealt with quickly the fear of mustard gas had a devastating effect on unit morale. All soldiers could do was put on their gas masks and try to get out of the affected area as soon as possible. Unfortunately, this was sometimes easier said than done because German gunners had an annoying habit of creeping their gas barrages forward at the same rate as a man could walk. If you were particularly unfortunate, you could be exposed for hours.

  In late August, a British soldier, T. H. Holmes, was unfortunate enough to get caught in a bombardment of mustard gas. He quickly put on his small box respirator, but he disliked wearing one intensely. Holmes found any sort of activity for more than fifteen minutes to be ‘irksome’. ‘The goggles became clouded, and the space inside the mask, warm and wet . . . But you dare not remove them while there was gas about, and the only thing to do, apart from staying still and letting the fumes disperse, which was a long job, was to hurry through the shelling to a clear area, if you could . . .’ The first response of many soldiers once they had left an infected zone was to pull their masks off at the earliest opportunity, but that could be dangerous as there was no immediate reaction to inhaling mustard gas, often only a minor tickling at the back of the throat. By the time Holmes and two companions had managed to get clear of the gas cloud, they were desperate for fresh air and pulled off their masks. Holmes had just slipped off his headstraps when a stray gas shell exploded on the edge of a nearby crater covering them in a yellow, choking cloud. Although Holmes was able to pull his mask back on again, one man could not and ‘lay gasping and clutching his throat’. They managed to drag him to a Regimental Aid Post – all the time wheezing and coughing – but he died shortly afterwards. By that time, Holmes’s eyes were ‘completely closed up, red and swollen, and terribly painful. From my nose and mouth came a continuous stream of mucus.’16

  The Americans – who began their own offensive in September – would also encounter the horror of mustard gas. Indeed, Pershing’s forces were particularly susceptible to gas attacks as they lacked the sophisticated and well-worn anti-gas doctrine of the British and French. Whereas the Allies had been gradually improving their protective measures since 1915 (and were well aware of how deadly chemical weapons could be), there was a lack of appreciation in the US Army of how easily gas could cause casualties. Gas accounted for 27 per cent of American losses in the Great War, a frighteningly high figure that, in part, explained the speed with which large US divisions were worn out at the front.17 One American officer, Frank Holden, a Battalion Gas Officer, experienced a gas bombardment that September. It was a terrifying few hours that revealed not only how inventive gas tactics were becoming, but also how difficult they were to combat. Holden knew that the Germans often fired tear gas (or what was known as Blue Cross gas) into areas where troops had concentrated, causing intense choking, sneezing and coughing. After Blue Cross had been deployed, German gunners would then deluge the target area with more deadly agents, many men often finding it impossible to keep their respirators on if they needed to sneeze or vomit. Holden’s battalion had marched into the village of Norroy when they came under a barrage of ‘sneezing gas’ (most probably Blue Cross). He immediately ordered all gas masks to be worn.

  After the village was filled with this sneezing gas the shelling ceased. It was then that my Gas Sergeant and I kept busy running through Norroy, telling the men to keep on their masks; that if they did not they would be unable by inhaling the sneezing gas to keep them on in a few minutes when we would be shelled with phosgene or mustard gas.

  Holden was right. Within minutes, shrapnel shells were bursting over their heads, alongside mustard gas that covered the village in poisonous clouds. Although it soon ceased, Holden kept telling his men to keep their masks on. He scrambled up a nearby hillside and saw the gas clinging ‘in the valley . . . as smoke settled in lowlands on a hot summer’s afternoon’. By the time he returned, the wounded were already being taken out on stretchers. One soldier caught his eye. ‘He had to sit up on the stretcher. His back, chest and face were a solid, burning blister where the horrible mustard gas had spattered on him. Not only that, but the awful gas fumes had gotten into his lungs and he was breathing heavily.’ It was no wonder that Holden found this soldier ‘the most pitiful sight I saw in France’.18

  It was not just the infantry that had to deal with mustard gas. Allied gunners were particularly vulnerable given the extent to which it was employed as a counter-battery weapon. One British gunner, R. C. Foot, was exposed to mustard gas on 3 September at Manancourt on the Somme. He had moved his battery into what seemed like a ‘convenient hollow’, close to the infantry support line, but found, to his horror, that a trap had been laid by German gunners ‘seeking no doubt to deny the ground to the assembling infantry’. They ‘drenched the whole battery position with mustard gas shell all night’.

  We were working, getting ammunition ready to cover next morning’s attack, and inevitably nearly all of us got the mustard liquid on our clothes and hands. By the time the set piece barrage for the morning’s advance was over, nearly all of us were blistered, and many had eyelids so swollen that they could not see . . . Some forty of us, myself among them, formed a ‘crocodile’ of walking wounded, each man with a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him, to the nearest dressing station to get first aid treatment for our blistered skin. Many were so badly damaged that they were sent off to base hospitals.19

  Recovery from exposure to mustard gas could take years; some victims were never really healthy again. Despite the suffering, Foot remembered that morale was good. ‘The pain and irritation of these enormous blister wounds are frantic in their effect. Yet it was quite a cheerful procession: someone would make some silly joke, and a ripple of laughter, stopped often by the cracking of blistered lips, would run from front to rear as we stumbled along.’ Although the German Army would increasingly experience the horror of mustard gas being fired back at them, it remained a major problem for the Allies throughout the Hundred Days as they were advancing through shelled areas. The determination, professionalism and – as Foot revealed – humour with which Allied forces kept going was remarkable.

  Notwithstanding the chemical environment, to advance successfully and surely, the Allies also required immense logistical support. Indeed, as they gradually followed up the retreating German armies, they had to try and solve one of the most pernicious problems of the Great War: how to supply and reinforce an army on the move. By 1918 both the British and French were very experienced at making lim
ited advances, often across difficult ground, but – as had been seen at Amiens – they found it much more taxing to make sustained leaps, primarily because of the seemingly insurmountable logistical problems this posed. The further troops went from their railheads – where all their supplies were deposited – the more difficult it was to keep going, usually no more than ten or twelve miles. Not only would they lack basic supplies, but they would also find that artillery support was not available. Guns, particularly the heavier varieties, took much time and effort to move, particularly across difficult ground. Their voracious appetite for ammunition presented yet more problems. It was possible to use motor vehicles to bring supplies from the railheads, but trucks had to keep to roads and bridges, and if used constantly would begin to break down. In any case, they would not get far across broken or shell-pitted ground and would have to wait until crossings – frequently demolished by the Germans – had been rebuilt, which often took several weeks.

  One of those tasked with keeping the front moving was Clifford Johnston, a lorry driver with the Canadian Corps. Although Johnston was not in the front line, his occupation was just as dangerous, not to mention exhausting. A typical night shift involved joining a convoy hauling ammunition from the railheads up to the front. Often they had to pass their own artillery batteries that were blasting away. ‘The worst part of the trip though was driving over the roads full of shell holes in the black dark – and after each flash it would be darker still,’ he remembered. They were forbidden from putting their headlights on lest they attract the attentions of enemy aircraft. ‘Coming through Arras we couldn’t see anything and ran into the side of the building once and over the pavement several times.’ The following day one of his vehicles crashed and broke an axle, although he was fortunate not to join one convoy that got stuck out in the open and was shelled all day. Indeed Johnston soon acquired a reputation for luck and skill; on 5 September his lorry slipped into a shell hole and ran over a box of live hand grenades, none of which exploded.20

  Even if trucks were available, they were not much use crossing water obstacles. The Australian Corps had great problems in getting over the Somme because all the bridges and railway sidings had been destroyed. Monash was told that the great railway bridge at Péronne could be rebuilt, but it would take two months. In the end, they managed to establish a railhead on the west bank of the Somme, and then repair all the road bridges that had been felled across the river. This entailed much traffic congestion, but after heroic amounts of hard work and spectacular improvisation, a way through was found. Monash described the ‘scenes of feverish activity’ around Brie, Éterpigny and Péronne in early September.

  Hundreds of tons of steel girders, of all lengths and sections, were hurried up, by special lorry service. Pile-driving gear was hastily improvised. The wreckage of the original bridges was overhauled for sound, useful timbers. The torn and twisted steelwork was dragged out of the way by horse or steam power, and tumbled in a confused mass into the river bed. Hammer, saw and axe were wielded with a zest and vigour rarely seen in peace-time construction.21

  The efforts of the British and French engineers, who got their armies over numerous water obstacles in the last four months of the war, were essential to the Allied advance. Between August and November 1918 the Royal Engineers erected over 330 stock span or rolled steel joint bridges – approximately double the number that had been built in the preceding four years of (largely static) warfare. These heavy bridges were essential to the advance because they could take tanks, a weapon that had not even existed before the war.22

  Almost everything was tried to help maintain the momentum of the advance. For many divisions, particularly the cavalry, finding enough water for the horses was a daunting challenge. Even in infantry divisions, the number of horses that were employed presented many difficulties, particularly when so many of the small wells in French villages had been either drunk dry or destroyed by the retreating Germans. In Major-General John Ponsonby’s 5th British Division, their divisional train was able to assist by improvising water-carriers with petrol-tins and by converting several wagons to water-tanks with the use of tarpaulins. In order to supply the infantry, three gun-carrying tanks were attached to the division. They may have been slow, but they could carry forward stores behind the leading troops. Like many units in the BEF, 5th Division also benefited from the efforts of the RAF to drop boxes of ammunition by parachute on to the battlefield; indeed, in many cases, the required stores were nearly always supplied ahead of time.23

  One of the features of the advance to the Hindenburg Line was the need for new headquarters. John Monash was reluctant to leave his luxurious château at Bertangles, but accepted it as a necessary evil. By 8 September his headquarters was situated in the devastated Somme region near Assevillers, ‘where a number of tiny wooden huts served us as bedrooms by night and offices by day’. As he later wrote, ‘The scale of comfort possible for all senior Commanders and Staff rapidly declined as the advance developed . . . From château to humbler dwelling house, and thence into bare wooden huts, and later still into mere holes hollowed out in the sides of quarries or railway cuttings.’24 As the Allies had to reposition their headquarters further forward, German units found theirs being repeatedly moved back. The pilot Rudolf Stark noted that throughout August ‘flights to the front became shorter and shorter’. 27 August was their last day at their old headquarters and was spent getting ready to leave.

  My trunks are packed; my pictures have come down from the walls; my books have disappeared. Deprived of its cloth, the table suddenly assumes a bare, forbidding aspect. The room in which I have lived so long has become a stranger to me. The mess also looks bare. Only the scantiest necessities still remain. Pictures and lamps have been removed; the window frames stand out black in a livid light. The rooms have reverted to their former condition; they are plain, bare peasants’ living quarters again.

  Stark was ‘loath to depart’. ‘We have become gypsies,’ he moaned. ‘We wander from place to place and have grown used to wandering.’25 Even senior commanders were not immune to the depressing sights of staff officers emptying their desks, packing stacks of papers and typewriters into boxes, and hitching lifts to the rear; a visual symbol of the tectonic shifts that were taking place at the front. On 6 September, Advanced OHL returned to Spa, followed by General von Boehn, who left Le Cateau and took up temporary residence at Avesnes.26

  Logistical problems were not just confined to the British and French. Although German forces had an advantage in that they were retreating and shortening their lines of communication (which had been so stretched during the spring and summer), they suffered from an acute shortage of horses. The German officer Rudolf Binding complained that his division was ‘crying out for horses’ and it was the same across the Army. A veterinary inspector told him that ‘The Entente has four and half million horses at the Front, while we have only one and a half.’ Since June his draught horses had been fed on chopped turnip and whatever else they could graze. Fodder was in short supply, leaving them in a poor condition to pull artillery batteries.27 Outbreaks of looting and disorder further disrupted supplies. By August the order which had been so ruthlessly enforced in the territories Germany had occupied was visibly breaking down. According to Crown Prince Wilhelm, ‘In the larger camps on the lines of communication, thousands of straggling shirkers and men on leave wandered about; some of them regarded every day that they could keep away from their units as a boon from heaven; some of them were totally unable to join their regiments on account of the overburdening of the railways.’ One evening Wilhelm took a journey to the front via Hirson, a major railway junction south of the Belgian border in Picardy.

  It was just dinner-time for men going on leave and stragglers, who stood about by the hundred. I mingled with the crowd and talked to many of the men. What I heard was saddening indeed. Most of them were sick and tired of the war and scarcely made an effort to hide their disinclination to rejoin their units. Nor were the
y all rascals; there was many a face there which showed that the nerves had given way, that energy was gone, that the primitive and unchecked impulse of self-preservation had got the mastery over all recognition of the necessity for holding out or resisting.28

  The Crown Prince, shocked at how quickly the deterioration seemed to have come, complained about the lack of ‘comprehensive and thorough measures’ to restore order and determination, but it was too late. Faith in victory – that essential component of morale – had been shattered by the failure of Ludendorff’s ‘peace offensive’ in March and April. Now all that was left was either to give in, become a prisoner or desert, or remain at your post and try to endure what was coming.

  Probably the worst thing German soldiers had to endure was the shellfire, which scourged their lines and made the artillery bombardments of earlier years seem light in comparison. As the American historian Scott Stephenson has written, ‘To be a German defender in the path of a major Allied attack late in the war was to experience the horrors of Dante’s Inferno.’29 The firepower that the Allies were able to bring to bear upon German positions in the last months of the war was accurate, devastating and, at times, neverending; having a terrible effect not only on men’s bodies, but also on their nerves and emotions, leaving them shattered, quivering wrecks. Patient records housed in Freiburg highlight the devastating psychological impact the war was having on German troops, who were succumbing to war neurosis and shell-shock in increasing numbers. One soldier, Guido Hermann, began his military service in April 1918, but was evacuated to a military hospital in late October suffering from exhaustion, heart strain and what seemed like shell-shock. He lies quietly in bed, his file noted, but if a doctor approaches him ‘a violent tremor begins immediately through his whole body, his teeth chatter, and he groans and writhes in the bed’. Another patient was Cyrus Karl, who broke down in the summer of 1918 after experiencing nightmares, uncontrollable body movements and an unstoppable desire to run away. The stress of the daily retreats seemed to have sparked his collapse. He became ‘quite incapable of action’ during this time. ‘If he was alarmed, he would gather his things, and become so excited that he would start trembling, run away and wander about, completely under the influence of his compulsive movements.’ He was haunted by his war service; unable to sleep, often sitting quietly; his face pale, his thoughts elsewhere.30