by Lloyd, Nick
The front in Flanders was held by the German Fourth Army and although heavily outnumbered by the combined Belgian, British and French forces – about six divisions to ten – it occupied what high ground there was, and lay behind a wilderness of shell holes and waterlogged fields that had been fought over so intensely the previous year.24 Like most of the German Army, Fourth Army was now manned by a motley collection of teenagers and older veterans who all hoped that the battle, raging to the south, would pass them by. But it was not to be. At 2.30 a.m., in the blackness of a wet night, German sentries, peering out from beneath their heavy steel helmets across the wasteland in front of them, were rocked by a thunderous bombardment that suddenly burst upon them, lighting up the darkness as if the sky had been ripped apart. What they were witnessing were the opening salvos of a three-hour preliminary bombardment that signalled the beginning of the Fourth Battle of Ypres, when Allied forces, spearheaded by General Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second British Army, broke out of the salient where so much blood had been spilled since 1914.
The day that followed saw some of the most dramatic gains of the war. Plumer’s forces – split into four corps from Armentières to Ypres – with Belgian divisions on their left, pushed forward behind their creeping barrage and gained much ground. Despite the difficult conditions, and tough resistance in places (particularly in Houthulst forest, which was simply a ‘nest of cannons, machine guns and devices of every kind’), the German position in Flanders crumbled with alarming speed, and within hours 6,000 prisoners were being shepherded to the rear.25 Major Carl Degelow, commander of Jagdstaffel 40 at Lille, was woken by the sound of artillery fire that morning, and soon became aware that something very bad had happened.
Drowsily I rub my eyes, searching my thoughts just to catch the military bearing of the still tired body that is enjoying a state of equilibrium in which reality is surrounded by a dream-like presence. The barrage increases in intensity, the windows clatter and the wooden barracks that serve as our shelter vibrate to the tune of this hellish music hitting us from the front. That which apparently registers as cold on the senses in this twilight condition is no figment of the imagination, no illusion.
The drumfire continued throughout the day (‘muzzle flashes of the heavy artillery blaze across the front like bolts of lightning’) as the rain, a fine grey drizzle, came down incessantly. In such poor weather, it was impossible to fly so Degelow and his men haunted the mess, dressed in their flying suits, drinking endless cups of tea. For his compatriots in their trenches, there would be little support from the air that day.26
Ludendorff spent 28 September at Spa following his usual routine: poring over maps of the front, ringing around his commanders, asking them what units they had available and telling them where they should be deployed. One of those who saw him at this time described him as like ‘a cat on hot bricks’.27 But no matter how much energy he commanded with, no matter how many telephone calls he made, or how many telegrams he dashed off, the front seemed to be on the verge of collapse. The heavy British attacks around Cambrai and the crossing of the Canal du Nord were bad enough, but now his northern flank had been broken and there seemed little in the way to prevent the Allies from liberating all of Belgium. It was at this point that something in him snapped. The previously manic commander, who had planned and conducted Germany’s military operations since 1916 with an iron determination and unquenchable thirst for victory, just seemed to give up. At 6 p.m. that day, as news came in of the collapse in Flanders, he shuffled in to see Hindenburg and told him that an armistice offer must now be made. Hindenburg, getting up from his desk to greet his colleague, recorded years later that ‘I could see in his face what had brought him to me.’28 Reluctantly, he agreed with Ludendorff’s appreciation of the situation. Even if the Western Front could be held, the disasters elsewhere meant that Germany’s position would only deteriorate. Her allies were falling away. The situation in the homeland teetered on the brink of revolution. Yet there was still time to get something out of negotiations. ‘Our one task now,’ Ludendorff said, banging the table with his fist, ‘was to act definitely and firmly, without delay.’
Ludendorff’s volte face was a dramatic moment – one of the most dramatic of the war. He would later claim that he came to this conclusion ‘bit by bit’, ‘from the beginning of August onwards and through many hard inward struggles’, but there were rumours that he had collapsed in his office, suffering some kind of nervous breakdown, clawing at this throat and foaming at the mouth.29 His psychiatrist, Dr Hochheimer, who had been pleased at the apparent improvement in Ludendorff’s condition during September, wrote cryptically to his wife on 28 September that ‘It storms at Ludendorff from all sides.’ Hochheimer always denied that his patient had suffered some kind of collapse, but it remains difficult to be certain of anything at this time, particularly given his fragile mental and emotional condition. When he saw Ludendorff a week later he noted that ‘although the world is collapsing in ruins all around him’, he was ‘relaxed, released, redeemed and is breathing and sleeping again’. On 5 October, he saw Ludendorff for the last time. Sitting on his bed, the general ‘spoke to him about the most darkly concealed part of his soul, his dismal loneliness’. Hochheimer found him ‘secretive and mistrustful, full of bad experiences with people, yet physically, he is once again fresher and healthier and likely to live longer than anyone’.30
The breakthrough in Flanders seems to have been the point at which Ludendorff’s will broke. Whether he had collapsed is impossible to say, but his inability to remedy Germany’s dire situation – one that he was, in part, responsible for – produced some kind of nervous breakdown. Mendaciously as ever, he lambasted the failure of Germany’s diplomats to make any progress in bringing the war to an end after the council meetings of 13–14 August – despite concealing the truth as best he could. Therefore, he reasoned, it was up to him to take the necessary measures. He wanted to make some kind of approach, directly, to President Wilson. The American may have been derided, but he was likely to favour what some called a ‘peace of justice’; in other words allowing Germany to keep some of her territorial gains in the east. Pride and vanity prevented the Quartermaster-General from contacting Marshal Foch directly – he hated the little Frenchman with a passion – so it was obvious that their hopes lay with Wilson. There may have also been a belief that by contacting the President, fissures between the Allies could be opened, thus allowing Germany more room to manoeuvre. Wilson was someone they had long scoffed at and ridiculed but who now held the fate of Germany in his hands.
For Hindenburg, there was no dissent. He did not quarrel with Ludendorff or tell him to pull himself together; he simply accepted that if his friend and colleague believed an appeal must be made, then there was little use in prolonging the inevitable. It was a moment that the ‘wooden titan’ had long dreaded, but he recognized that anything was preferable to the complete destruction of the Army, which was now looking increasingly possible. Like Ludendorff, he hoped for armistice conditions that would allow them to evacuate occupied territory quickly and then, if peace terms were harsh, resume hostilities on the German border. There was something touchingly sentimental – romantic even – about their faith in an Allied response that would be a kind of grand sporting gesture, allowing them to break off contact in the west and then resume fighting when it suited them. These two hard, stony-faced Prussians, men who had subjugated Eastern Europe and western Russia and bled Belgium and eastern France dry, now expected mercy and understanding from their enemy. ‘The Field Marshal and I parted with a firm handshake,’ wrote Ludendorff, ‘like men who have buried their dearest hopes, and who are resolved to hold together in the hardest hours of human life as they had held together in success.’31
Paul von Hintze, the Secretary of State, whom Ludendorff had called to Spa several days earlier, held a conference at ten o’clock the following morning, 29 September. Hintze made it clear that any appeal to Wilson would have to be followed by immediate
political reform – a kind of ‘revolution from above’ as he called it – something that Ludendorff was naturally horrified by, but which Hintze stressed was absolutely essential. ‘Revolution was standing at our door,’ he argued ‘and we had the choice of meeting it with a dictatorship or concessions.’32 Hintze had a much clearer appreciation of the political situation back home, something that Hindenburg and Ludendorff had long ignored, so it was essential that certain steps be taken by forming a new parliamentary government, bringing in the Socialist and Independent parties, and by appointing a new chancellor. When the Kaiser was told he said nothing, receiving the news with the ‘utmost calm’. He issued instructions that peace should be sued for without delay and that preparations must be made for the evacuation of the Belgian coast. Then everyone went to the Kaiser’s villa (the Château de la Fraineuse, a short walk from the Hôtel Britannique) for lunch; ‘everyone tried to be nonchalant’, one witness recorded. ‘They did not succeed.’33
Despite the lack of a breakthrough in the Argonne, Foch’s plan was succeeding perfectly; indeed it was surpassing even his expectations. There was only one question left: could the Allies cross the Saint-Quentin canal and get through the Hindenburg Line?
11. The Tomb of the German World Empire
In five weeks you’ll have peace, though you swine don’t deserve it!
Note dropped over German lines by a British pilot, 30 September 19181
29 September–5 October 1918
Like a boxer who seeks to land the knockout punch, the Allied armies continued jabbing away at the German line, keeping the enemy under remorseless pressure. On the day that von Hintze arrived in Spa, the fourth part of Foch’s sequence of offensives began – the assault on the main Hindenburg system along the Saint-Quentin canal. The preliminary bombardment had opened on 26 September and over the next three days a carefully planned shoot with every available gun fired over 750,000 shells into the German lines. It was a devastating illustration of the firepower now available to Haig’s armies. Barbed wire entanglements were targeted by thousands of shells – including many armed with the new 106-type fuse that allowed for instantaneous detonation – while heavy guns methodically and mercilessly searched out enemy gun positions, the roads and tracks leading to the front, and other areas of concentration. Thousands of newly arrived gas shells were also thrown into the mix, deluging dug-outs and bunkers with 30,000 rounds of mustard gas and making the lives of the German defenders utterly miserable. Indeed, those who had hoped the Hindenburg Line, with its miles of bunkers and acres of concrete, would be a place of safety and refuge were to be disappointed. Far from being an unbreakable bastion, this last line of defence was fast becoming an anvil upon which the remaining German armies would be broken.
Unbeknown to the Supreme Command, Fourth Army staff had got their hands on a complete plan of the German defences. The documents had originally been stored at a corps headquarters at Framerville on the Amiens battlefield and had been captured by an enterprising member of the Royal Tank Corps, Lieutenant Ernest Rollings, on 8 August.2 Quickly realizing the importance of the files, they were sent to Fourth Army HQ and pored over by Rawlinson’s staff, who were amazed at the completeness of the find. Now they knew where every trench and barbed wire entanglement was; the position of every artillery and infantry headquarters; the location of every battery (including its calibre and observation post); map references of divisional sectors and supply dumps, billets and camps; accommodation for men and horses; and communication and electric power installations.3 With this information Fourth Army fine-tuned its bombardment to make sure it hit every key point again and again, destroying, neutralizing, and rendering useless the elaborate defences in front of it. For the German defenders, supplies had only arrived intermittently, if at all, since the bombardment had begun. I Bavarian Corps, holding the front southeast of Bellicourt, reported that ‘heavy harassing fire of all calibres is continuously falling on the north half of the corps sector, particularly on rear areas, rear villages, canal crossings, and approaches’.4 In the garrison, morale was poor, the food was terrible, and there was little hope of either reinforcement or relief. For those battalions sheltering in the dank Bellicourt tunnel, the booming of the shelling shook the nerves and tried the patience. The weather was poor, with rain, low cloud and mist, which obscured the skies and prevented aircraft from operating, leaving the defenders in a kind of isolated Hell, anxiously awaiting the inevitable end, which would come at dawn on 29 September.
The night before the attack was predictably tense. On the other side of the line not much could be seen through the thick, grey fog, but the occasional shell could be heard. British artillery had spent the night simulating ‘normal activity’ so as not to arouse any special concerns, every so often shelling well-known concentration areas. The German artillery responded fitfully, giving what one observer called ‘a hush of expectancy’ over the battlefield, and leaving those men who would be going over the top at Zero Hour a little time with their own thoughts. Some tried to sleep, but most could not. Officers studied their trench maps, NCOs repeated warnings to their men not to bunch up in no-man’s-land, and soldiers cleaned their weapons. Whatever they were doing, all shivered in their muddy forming-up trenches and wondered what the day would bring. For one witness, ‘We had to lay there all night and worry . . . it is impossible to describe the feeling a man has with that in front of him. I always said I knew how a man felt that was condemned to die, for we all thought that was our last night. We thought of our families and the ones we loved.’5 And then at 4.50 a.m., in a dim, misty dawn, the bombardment began, the flashes of hundreds of guns lighting up the sky as a torrent of shells flew towards the German lines. Perhaps with a sense of relief, now that the waiting was finally over, the assaulting formations exited their trenches and stalked out into the darkness, following the creeping barrage that would escort them through the German positions, the dull roar of shells exploding in front of them like the distant crash of surf.
It would be a day of hard fighting, with German units trying desperately to maintain their hold on the canal and equally intensive efforts to push them off. Attached to Fourth Army was Herbert Read’s II US Corps, which had been brought in to spearhead the attack. Unfortunately, the men got bogged down in the high ground around Gillemont Farm, which overlooked the canal, and ran into fierce resistance, heavy shelling and regular counter-attacks.6 One of the combat engineers detailed to help the tanks get through in this sector was Walter J. Strauss (attached to 27th US Division), whose squad was to hunt for anti-tank mines. ‘They were round,’ he remembered, ‘about 10" with a short fuse sticking to one side, the top of which was even with the ground level so that when the tank rolled over it, the fuse would ignite the mine.’ Here the Hindenburg position was protected by ‘an extraordinary mass of wire’ and the trenches west of the canal had been ‘perfected with dugouts, concrete machine-gun and mortar emplacements and underground shelters. They were protected by belt after belt of barbed wire entanglements, in a fashion which no-one understood better or achieved more thoroughly than the Germans.’ Strauss was fortunate to survive his perilous work, which consisted of sticking his bayonet into the ground and rummaging around until he found something. At one point a sudden rain of shells forced him to dive into a shell hole. As Strauss jumped in, he felt ‘a thud in my side’. He found, to his amazement, that a machine-gun bullet had pierced his backpack and lodged into his copy of the New Testament. ‘A quarter of an inch to the right would have punctured my lung and I would have died quickly,’ he later admitted.7
As the battle wore on, the lack of a breakthrough became increasingly worrying. Monash, who had a reputation as a calm and methodical commander, even lost his temper with his aides, frustrated at the slow progress of the attacking divisions. During the morning, the liaison officer, Paul Maze, entered an American dug-out to find out what was going on.
The muggy atmosphere outside made the deep dug-out absolutely stifling. At a table sat a Col
onel and two staff officers, in stiff jackets with high collars facing a map at which the Colonel kept glancing through tortoise-shell glasses attached to a silk cord, which he kept putting on and taking off his big nose. They had no news of their attacking regiments. ‘Waal,’ he drawled adjusting his glasses, ‘I have no news yet of how the boys have gotton [sic] on, but they went over at scheduled time, and I am confident that they have done their dooty [sic].’
Maze was unimpressed, knowing from experience that no news often meant bad news. He expressed his surprise to the colonel and suggested that he should go and try to find out what was happening. When Maze left the dug-out, he saw groups of soldiers returning from the front. He got on his motorbike and drove over to them, finding stragglers coming back without any officers, most of whom, they said, had been killed. Barking orders, Maze got them to stay where they were and place their machine-guns to face the enemy, while ordering the rest to rejoin the battle, which they did. Pleased with his work, Maze returned to the dug-out shortly afterwards, only to find that it had been heavily shelled in his absence, ‘shattered as if by an earthquake’. Three corpses – a sentry and two officers – were lying together covered by a sack. Maze stepped into what remained of the dug-out and found the colonel, sitting alone, mopping his brow. The man looked up at him and said, with a sigh, ‘Say, Captain, this certainly is war.’8