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

by Lloyd, Nick

  The salient was held by General-Leutnant Georg Fuchs’s Composite Army C. This was under the authority of General der Artillerie Max von Gallwitz, whose Army Group held the front between Apremon and Metz, and included Third and Fifth Armies. As the American presence opposite Saint-Mihiel became more noticeable throughout August and the first weeks of September, Gallwitz’s concerns grew. By 9 September, intelligence reports concluded that ‘it can be assumed with certainty that the Americans are accumulating ammunition and material, perhaps also heavy guns, on the south front of Composite Army C for an attack to be launched there at a not too-distant time’.24 Although Gallwitz wanted to conduct a lightning spoiling attack to dislocate the American plans, as each day passed it became clear that his men would not be ready, and in any case the forces against them were looking increasingly ominous. The Germans in the salient – possibly around 50,000 men – were greatly outnumbered. The front trenches were held by seven under-strength divisions, with four more in reserve, and had, as with much of the German Army, been suffering from poor morale and disciplinary problems.25 Of these divisions, four were noted as ‘fourth-class’ by Allied intelligence, with the majority gaining ‘third-class’ status, with often mediocre morale. Only 10th Division was regarded as being of ‘first-class’ merit, but intelligence also revealed that it had been virtually destroyed on the Marne during the summer and had been filled with inferior drafts, considerably affecting its quality.26 On 10 September, Ludendorff agreed that at the moment no counter-attack would go in and told Gallwitz to begin to abandon the salient, moving back to a series of prepared lines to the north (known as the Michel position). He was, however, ordered to postpone the withdrawal for as long as possible.27

  Pershing watched the battle with a small collection of staff officers at Fort Gironville, a commanding height overlooking the southern sector of the battlefield. It was an awful night, with sheets of rain coming down, and a chill wind that hinted at the onset of autumn. Not much could be seen through the mist, but they could all hear the sound of artillery fire, booming and crashing out over the salient. And then, at 5 a.m., the attack began. Pershing wrote:

  The sky over the battlefield, both before and after dawn, aflame with exploding shells, star signals, burning supply dumps and villages, presented a scene at once picturesque and terrible. The exultation in our minds that here, at last, after seventeen months of effort, an American army was fighting under its own flag was tempered by the realization of the sacrifice of life on both sides, and yet fate had willed it thus and we must carry through. Confidence in our troops dispelled every doubt of ultimate victory.28

  Of the American soldiers in their forming-up trenches, almost all were soaked to the skin, tired from their approach marches, and cursing the orders against smoking or talking. It had been an ugly night, but the bombardment did much to raise spirits. One witness, Corporal Earl Searcy of 78th Division, remembered the horizon ‘leaping forward in a mad blaze of jumping flashes’, leaving everyone stunned and silent, all watching the incredible spectacle, and inviting the inevitable references to the Fourth of July.29 After a few hours, Pershing returned to his headquarters, watching as columns of dazed German prisoners were marched to stockades in the rear. Reports filtered in from the front divisions: ground had been gained; losses had been light.

  In the end the Battle of Saint-Mihiel was something of an anti-climax. Some called it a ‘picnic’; others even doubted whether there had been a battle there at all. By the afternoon of 13 September, all of Pershing’s objectives had been secured. Sixteen thousand prisoners and 443 guns had been taken.30 The main attack was on the southern face of the salient and here enemy resistance was weak. The toughest thing – at least initially – was getting through the tangles of barbed wire that ringed the German defences, some of which had been in place since 1915. One member of 2nd US Division remembered seeing up to a third of his men without trousers, because they had all been torn away.31 Most of the defending divisions were practically destroyed, and many American soldiers helped themselves to scores of battlefield souvenirs to proudly show off to their friends: Lugers, helmets, and bits and pieces of German uniforms. Douglas MacArthur, commander of 84 Brigade, recalled that in the village of Essay he saw ‘a sight I shall never quite forget’:

  Our advance had been so rapid the Germans had evacuated in a panic. There was a German officer’s horse saddled and equipped standing in a barn, a battery of guns complete in every detail, and the entire instrumentation and music of a regimental band.32

  In truth, almost everything that could have gone wrong did so for the German Army that day. The Americans struck at the exact moment when two divisions were withdrawing to their reserve lines, catching them in the open and causing heavy casualties. The poor weather interfered with aerial reconnaissance and meant that commanders in the rear had little idea what was going on and no clue as to the seriousness of the situation. Even more unfortunately, American shells destroyed the entire telephone network in the salient, meaning units had to rely on Morse lamps and runners all day.33 The attack on the western face was led by V Corps, with two divisions, including the French 15th Colonial Division, attempting to sever the neck of the bulge. Here resistance was tougher as German units fought hard to keep the salient open, at least until the bulk of their forces could get away. Nevertheless, the overwhelming advantages possessed by the Americans meant that they were able to secure their objectives on time, pinching out the Saint-Mihiel salient with fewer than 7,000 casualties. Newton Baker, the bespectacled Secretary of State who had been staying at Pershing’s headquarters, was delighted. This was the great battle they had promised; the battle had actually gone to plan; they had achieved victory.

  For Pershing, Saint-Mihiel was nothing less than a triumph. ‘An American Army was an accomplished fact,’ he enthused, ‘and the enemy had felt its power. No form of propaganda could overcome the depressing effect on the morale of the enemy of this demonstration of our ability to organize a large American force and drive it successfully through his defences.’34 Whatever criticisms Haig or Foch had made about Pershing and his determination to form an independent American army, there was no doubt that at Saint-Mihiel he was proved right because the mood at German Supreme Headquarters slumped again as news of the battle came in. Losing such ground to the Americans was nothing less than a humiliation and a disaster. On 17 September, Hindenburg, now seemingly roused from his usual lack of interest, sent a furious telegram to Gallwitz complaining about his ‘faulty leadership’ and reminding him that he would bear full responsibility for holding his present position. ‘I am not willing to admit that one American division is worth two German,’ he wrote, angrily. ‘Wherever commanders and troops have been determined to hold their position and the artillery has been well organized, even weak German divisions have repulsed the mass attacks of American divisions and inflicted especially heavy losses on the enemy.’35

  For Gallwitz, the truth of the matter was more complex. Although defending the salient from a converging attack was not easy, he felt that tactically the Germans had been outfought. German armies had long relied upon a system of defence in depth, with the forward zone being held with relatively few troops, with progressively greater resistance being offered deeper into their lines. This had been very effective at saving their men from heavy artillery bombardments and leaving them to counter-attack when the enemy were at their weakest. But it was different now. The problem at Saint-Mihiel was that ‘the main line of resistance was too thinly occupied’. When troops were unsteady or lacked sufficient manpower, spreading them out only resulted in disintegration. ‘The method of attack often used by the enemy nowadays, that is, a brief artillery preparation and a surprise attack with masses of troops, allows, in fact demands, a stronger occupation of the main line of resistance contrary to former procedure.’36 Gallwitz would later write in his memoirs that he had ‘experienced a good many things in the five years of war’. Yet Saint-Mihiel stood out. ‘I must count 12 September a
mong my few black days,’ he admitted.37 Black days, it seemed, were becoming almost daily occurrences for the Kaiser’s army.

  8. ‘A country of horror and desolation’

  Halted against the shade of a last hill

  They fed, and eased of pack-loads, were at ease;

  And leaning on the nearest chest or knees

  Carelessly slept.

  But many there stood still

  To face the stark blank sky beyond the ridge,

  Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

  Wilfred Owen, ‘Spring Offensive’1

  17–25 September 1918

  The Western Front may have been entering its final stages, but it still exerted a powerful emotional and psychological pull on all those who served in it. Major H. J. C. Marshall of 46th (North Midland) Division, the unit that would break the Hindenburg Line, returned to France that autumn, cramped in a slow train that rolled past Amiens up the line to Villers-Bretonneux. ‘We passed through Amiens in the moonlight,’ he wrote. ‘The buildings showed marks of bombardment, and the Station, usually so thronged and active, seemed quite deserted, the platforms glittering in the moonlight from broken glass from the skylights overhead. Onwards the troop train crawled, into a country of horror and desolation.’ Perhaps the first thing you noticed as you got nearer the front was the smell.

  Every now and then a strong gust of mustard gas would blow into the windowless carriages, accompanied by that extraordinary odour, reminiscent of burnt wool, which seems to pervade a battlefield. The whole gave the impression of a nightmare – the few trees left being mere stumps, slashed with white scars from the shells and the entire landscape a mere distortion. This went on from weary mile to wearier mile, the dawn breaking while we passed through Rosiers and Puseaux, at the reckless speed of a mile an hour.2

  Despite the desolation, despite the smell, despite the fear that would gradually increase the nearer you got to the line, some could find a kind of beauty in the Western Front. T. H. Holmes recorded in his memoirs the experience of night marches up to the trenches.

  On some of those night marches when the moon was up, the landscape took on an eerie sort of beauty. The poor stumps of trees, and the fingers of ruined buildings, would stand up sharp against the sky, and the muck and muddle of no-man’s-land would be hidden in the darkness, and you fell to wondering whether it was ever going to end, and whether you’d come through it, and what you’d give to be able to walk along upright, and whether the man outlined in front of you was thinking the same thing. And you’d plod on, silent, except for the clump clump of your heavy boots.3

  The poet Wilfred Owen had rejoined his battalion on 15 September at the town of Corbie on the Somme, with its grand seventh-century abbey that looked out on to miles of open ground that had recently seen much fighting. Owen had been here before. In the spring of 1917 he had visited it and ‘listened under the nave . . . for the voice of the middle age’.4 This was typical, romantic Owen; the kind of man who stuffed a copy of Keats’s poems in his tunic and saw beauty in everything around him. But there was little beauty behind the lines. The tide of war had washed out and left scattered debris everywhere, with burnt-out tanks lying like milestones marking the advance. One observer remarked that ‘The whole country is littered with rubbish or as we call it salvage – guns and ammunition, trench mortars, equipment and so on – all the litter of war: tanks derelict and desolate by the roadside, and lorries upside down.’5

  That September the rear lines of the Allied armies teemed with activity and the mundane business of supplying the front with everything it needed: troops, ammunition, food, water and a thousand other things. Paul Maze remembered how ‘Train-loads of ammunition came up every day; they had to be unloaded and every shell reloaded on to lorries which in long columns made their way through the inevitable congestion of moving troops and transports, the forerunners of an attack.’6 The weather was wet and there was a growing chill in the air. On 22 September, Owen wrote to his friend and fellow war-poet, Siegfried Sassoon. ‘You said it would be a good thing for my poetry if I went back’, he joked. ‘That is my consolation for feeling a fool. This is what shells scream at me every time: Haven’t you got the wits to keep out of this?’ He gave Sassoon his mother’s address in Shrewsbury and told him, somewhat ominously, ‘I know you would try to see her, if I failed to see her again.’7 Enclosed with the letter was the poem ‘Spring Offensive’; one of Owen’s most haunting last works, contrasting the coming of spring and the renewal of life with the slaughter on the battlefield. Although it had originally been written about the Arras offensive of the previous year – when Owen had been concussed from shellfire – it could have equally applied to the situation that faced the British and French forces in late September 1918 with its ominous references to a ‘stark blank sky beyond the ridge’ and the ‘end of the world’ – metaphors perhaps for the Hindenburg Line.

  The nearer the Allies got to the enemy’s main defensive system, the slower their advance became. 5th Division, like most of the British Third Army, saw Cambrai as its great objective; indeed on some days, through the smoke and mist and cloud, the tower of its baroque cathedral could be seen on the horizon like some kind of beacon. By 18 September Third Army was closing in on the city, but progress had been slow for the past ten days. It had got within four miles of the Saint-Quentin canal, where the Hindenburg Line lay, but needed to secure a number of villages on the high ground to the west of it before any assault could be made. For the past week the weather had been poor, which hampered ground and air observation and turned the roads, which had been dry and dusty in August, into muddy bogs, which did little to help the harassed logistical services bring up supplies to the front. German artillery had also become more active, particularly mustard gas shells that settled in the hollows and proved both annoying and deadly.8

  The men of 15/Royal Warwicks had been in reserve for most of the month, spending their time resting, cleaning their kit, having lectures, and every so often being inspected by their officers. The battalion practised making platoon attacks on strongpoints; engaging enemy positions with fire, while flanking units were despatched to get around and force them to surrender. Their time out of the line was coming to an end, however. On 12 September the brigade received orders to be prepared to move off and the following day it marched to the small village of Ytres to relieve part of the New Zealand Division, which had been at the front. On 14 September 15/Royal Warwicks relieved the Wellington Battalion, spending the next few days in the front lines opposite a German position known as Smut Trench. Patrols were frequently sent out to ascertain what resistance lay in front of them. At 4.20 a.m. on 16 September a four-man patrol crawled out into no-man’s-land and made their way to the enemy front line. They realized very quickly that the trenches were manned and held strongly. That afternoon another small patrol was sent out in daylight, and once again found out that enemy units were holding the line. In this sector at least, it looked like the advance had come to a halt.9

  On 16 September General Pershing closed down the Saint-Mihiel operation and began moving his divisions to the Meuse–Argonne, northwest of Verdun, a distance of about sixty miles. It was a decision that still rankled with many American soldiers, who were incensed at having to redeploy after waiting so long to concentrate their forces.10 Pershing had originally envisaged continuing Saint-Mihiel far after the reduction of the salient, with American divisions driving north to secure the city of Metz, severing German lateral rail communications, and then occupying crucial iron- and coal-producing areas. However, after a series of tense meetings with Foch on 30 August and 2 September, it was agreed to limit the Saint-Mihiel operation to just the reduction of the salient and then switch the bulk of US strength to the Meuse–Argonne for a joint attack towards Mézières. At the time Pershing had not been happy, complaining bitterly to Foch that ‘on the very day that you turn over a sector to the American Army, and almost on the eve of an offensive, you ask me to reduce the operati
on so that you can take away several of my divisions . . . leaving me with little to do except hold what will become a quiet sector after the Saint-Mihiel offensive. This virtually destroys the American army that we have been trying so long to form.’11

  Pershing’s frustration was understandable. He had spent months working for a unified American Army with its own sector, and was anxious to get going, envisaging Saint-Mihiel to be the start of a grand, war-winning offensive. Although he recognized that there were important objectives north of the Argonne, including the Mézières–Sedan–Metz railway and the Briey iron basin, he could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that this was just the latest Allied attempt to limit his independence; just another French push for amalgamation. It was finally settled at Bombon on 2 September that Pershing’s First Army would mount an attack west of the Meuse, with the French Fourth Army covering its left flank, sometime between 20 and 25 September. Foch had initially suggested that the French would lead the attack and be reinforced by American divisions, but Pershing made it quite clear that he could ‘no longer agree to any plan which involves a dispersion of our units’ and said that if the Americans were to be involved, then they would do so as a whole army, even if they were dependent on French guns, aircraft and tanks. The decision, however, left the Americans praying for a logistical miracle to move their men and supplies from Saint-Mihiel to the Argonne within a matter of days before launching another large offensive.12