Hundred Days : The Campaign That Ended World War I (9780465074907)
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The weather worsened in the first week of October. The days were now damp and chilly, with frequent squalls of rain that depressed the morale of the thousands of troops squelching up to the front in their sodden, woollen uniforms. On the day that Prince Max’s first note arrived in Washington, an American officer, Second-Lieutenant Frank Holden, marched to the front with his regiment, 328th Infantry (82nd Division). They made progress, but in the village of Varennes (in the Argonne), they met columns of mud-splattered troops coming back from the line, which slowed them down. Every few minutes motorcycles would rumble by, followed by trucks of all descriptions, all to the sounds of MPs trying to maintain some kind of order. Everything was in total darkness and the doughboys had been given strict instructions against the lighting of matches or cigarettes in case the road was shelled. ‘Broadway and Fifth Avenue were never more crowded,’ Holden wrote. ‘The confusion, congestion, jam and push cannot be fully described. The skill with which truck, motorcycle, and ambulance drivers made their way through the darkness over the front line roads was remarkable.’ When they got to their assembly position, they saw their first Germans – ‘war-weary and war-sick’ prisoners – and noticed the occasional corpse or dead horse, victims of the endemic shelling.10
For those in the front lines, the problems with supplies meant they often went hungry and thirsty. Indeed, for Pershing’s men, just keeping warm and dry, and perhaps finding something to eat, was always the foremost thing on their minds. Elton Mackin, a veteran of the Marne, recalled a damp, cold October morning in the trenches near Blanc Mont ‘that chilled our bones’. ‘Hunger pangs of more than forty active hours dulled our resistance. Men lay about in huddled groups in mounds of dew-wet blankets, keeping warm. We had not thought to sleep at all, but animal heat, soaked in from blanket mates, and weariness put most of us to dozing.’ They were shouted awake by a senior officer calling for runners, followed soon after by the opening pounding of a preliminary bombardment. ‘What do men think about at such a time?’ Mackin pondered. ‘Food. How good those blankets were. And casually, sometimes, is my number up today? Is this the place I’ve waited for?’11
If the Meuse–Argonne was what the Americans had waited for, then perhaps it was all a waste of time. By the first week of October the American offensive was going nowhere. No matter how many times Pershing shouted at his subordinates to push on regardless of loss, and no matter how many senior officers he removed, the front lines of the US First Army stubbornly refused to move in the way he wanted. For the past few days the American situation seemed to be epitomized by the plight of what became known as the ‘lost battalion’, a group of 679 men from 308th Infantry Regiment, belonging to 77th ‘Liberty’ Division, under the command of Major Charles Whittlesey, the tall New York lawyer who had caused much hilarity when trying on a French greatcoat in the days before the offensive. On 2 October, his men had been cut off on wooded slopes north of the village of Binarville and, having been ordered to stay put, held their positions against increasingly ferocious attempts to wipe them out. The ‘lost battalion’ would become an American legend of the war as exhausted and parched doughboys fought desperately against veteran German soldiers in the scarred woodland of the Argonne.12
After the cessation of what became known as First Meuse–Argonne on 29 September, the Americans reinforced their lines, improved their logistics, and restocked their depleted ammunition supplies. Now more than ever, Pershing had to achieve success – to push on through the wooded, hilly country to his north and deliver a crushing blow to the enemy. At this point First Army had driven roughly eight miles into the German line, but still faced formidable obstacles. It had not been able to clear the Argonne forest – where Whittlesey’s men remained – and, in the centre, its divisions were facing the ominous Romagne Heights, where the enemy’s third main line of defence was situated. As Pershing would later write:
In the entire area on our front, as well as on the dominating heights mentioned, the large groups of woods were staggered in such a way that local flanking manoeuvres caused excessive losses. Concealed in each group of woods were machine guns without number, covering the flanks and front of adjacent woods, and the timber lessened the effectiveness of our artillery fire.13
Even worse, they were still under flanking fire from German batteries on the east bank of the Meuse, watching every move Pershing made, shelling his men mercilessly.
Despite their success in maintaining their position, the German situation in this sector remained precarious. On 3 October, General von der Marwitz drove out to an observation post belonging to one of his divisions and spent several hours looking over the ground. In stark contrast to the US First Army, which had spent most of its existence fighting uphill, the Germans occupied the critical high ground.
You need to climb perhaps an hour from the foot of the hill to the steep heights, but then you get a great view. The hills rise steeply out of the plains, scattered with villages and crossed with streets. Each of the hilltops looks different from every side, so that you often get lost if you’ve driven on for a bit. Scattered all over the far-reaching hillsides are built-in machine guns, individual guns, mortars, surveillance posts and so on. There is only one connected trench at the actual line of defence, but it isn’t valued as much as the scattered machine gun clusters. How tactics have changed, a complete turnaround!14
Marwitz’s men were holding on, but the rumours of peace began to sap morale and make soldiers question whether they should continue to fight. Fifth Army’s censor reported that morale was ‘relatively bad’. ‘War weariness and despondency have the upper hand as before. Numerous statements on this matter often take on forms that make the censor question whether he should let such highly demoralizing information pass into the home country.’ There were increasing indications that Austro-Hungary would soon offer peace – it would send its first note to President Wilson through the Legation of Sweden on 7 October15 – but this was ‘received with mistrust and criticized disparagingly by the troops right from the start. Although in some letters, renewed hopes of a speedy peace are kindled, others are so bluntly resigned to their fate that they do not even mention the offer.’16
Pershing’s renewed assault began at 5.30 a.m. on 4 October, the massed fire of his French 75mm artillery batteries dropping a rolling barrage about 600 yards in front of the waiting infantry. It was one of those black, dark mornings with the fields thick with dank fog – a perfect day for murder. Five divisions went forward and gained some ground, but progress was slower than expected against murderous fire and the usual obstacles. Army Group Gallwitz crowed that the attacks collapsed ‘under the brave and obstinate resistance of our infantry and the performance of our artillery’.17 The Americans were now paying the price for trying to do too much, too soon. As Second-Lieutenant Harold Woehl of 136th Infantry Regiment (32nd Division), who went over the top on 5 October, later explained, ‘Everyone was exhausted and sick, and muddy, and hungry . . . There was no information about our objective; there was no artillery support; there was no liaison with the regiment on our right.’18
Whittlesey’s ‘lost battalion’ was finally relieved on 7 October – although only 194 shattered survivors made it out alive from 679 officers and men – but that was a lone speck of good news in what was rapidly turning into an unrelieved nightmare. Over the coming days, fighting would spread to the east bank of the Meuse, where Major-General Henri Claudel’s XVII French Corps, bolstered by two US divisions, went into action, aiming to clear the high ground of German batteries and outflank the remaining defenders west of the river. Despite determined attacks, the offensive met with the same fate as the others had. An American officer, Second-Lieutenant Joseph Lawrence of 113th Infantry Regiment (29th Division), witnessed the chaos and confusion on this sector, having to endure an exhausting approach march through mud and rain, constant shellfire and a chaotic rush through woods where he was nearly killed. At one point, during a fierce exchange of fire between his men and the enemy about twen
ty yards away, Lawrence noticed what he called ‘a few interesting and amusing sidelights’.
A man named Gilbert, a few yards from me, had a rifle grenade that he was clumsily trying to fire . . . Finally he got it into the cup on the muzzle of his rifle and, to my horror and before I could stop him, fired it straight up. I draw up in a knot waiting for it to fall on us. It fell a few yards behind us with a loud crash, but fortunately without doing any damage. I noticed that the man next to me was cocking his rifle and pulling the trigger vigorously but the rifle was not firing. It was not loaded. I stretched my leg around and gave him a kick. That seemed to bring him to his senses. I noticed the two Heiser brothers, not over eighteen and twenty years old, operating a Chauchat automatic rifle vigorously and apparently with deadly effect. One fired the gun while the other fed the ammunition. It did not take them long to exhaust their ammunition at the rate they were firing. When the last round was fired they tossed their gun aside, jerked out their ‘forty-five’ automatic pistols, and carried on with them. On the end of the line to the left of me I observed a big Company K sergeant . . . moving back and forth on his hands and knees keeping order on that end of the line and generally stimulating the men.19
Lawrence would earn a citation for his bravery on 10 October during heavy fighting around Molleville Farm. Although his men were trying their best, they could make little progress in such difficult circumstances. Pershing later called this phase ‘the most desperate battle of our history’ and it was easy to understand why, as his men, shelled, gassed and shot at from three sides, gradually clawed their way through some of the worst ground on the Western Front and inched ever closer to their objectives, Sedan and the railway that fed the German Army in the west.20
In contrast to Pershing’s stalled offensive, further to the north British, French and Belgian forces continued harrying the retreating German armies as energetically as they could. ‘Weeks went by,’ wrote one British officer. ‘The pattern was predictable. For a number of days we would make attacks, some easy, some not so, followed by a few days rest, then back again. The elusive enemy fought a skilful rearguard action with all the advantages. The only glimpses we had of them were of figures skulking behind distant hedges or on a far-off road. Noisy, but ineffectual rifle and Lewis Gun fire would hasten them on their way.’21 By 4 October, Armentières had fallen and the British were through the dense belt of defences that had once been the Hindenburg Line. Two days later, Haig visited Foch and found him upbeat. As he entered the Marshal’s study, with its maps pinned to the walls, he saw Foch reading from a newspaper spread out on his desk. It had printed the note from the Central Powers asking for an armistice.
‘Here,’ said Foch triumphantly to Haig, stabbing the paper with his finger, ‘here is the immediate result of the British piercing of the Hindenburg Line. The enemy has asked for an armistice.’22
In 2/Manchester Regiment, Wilfred Owen now led D Company with four junior officers under his command. He led his men out of the front line on 3 October (‘by the stars, through an air mysterious with faint gas’) and back to the rear, where the usual grumbles resumed: leave, food and the war. Rumours were a feature of trench life – indeed they could spread with remarkable speed – but now, more than ever, the troops were feverish with news of the peace offers. Fourth Army had insisted that peace talk ‘in any form’ was to cease immediately, but inevitably the men talked. For his part, Owen felt shattered by his experiences on the Beaurevoir Line and every day looked in vain for parcels from home; anything to improve his mood. While censoring letters, he was buoyed by the positive comments about him by some of his men. They were ‘more pleasing than any military medals with many bars’, he told his mother. ‘No change of situation,’ he wrote a few days later, ‘except that I now live in a tent, and a change of weather has made the place more miserable. On the night when the news was officially sent us of the German “Acceptance” we spent a merry enough night; I even discovered I could sing. We still hope something may be concluded by the Mixed Commission before we go into the line again.’23
The great prize that the British First and Third Armies had been fighting for since August – the city of Cambrai – finally fell to troops of 3rd Canadian Division on the morning of 9 October. This was ‘a fitting climax to all the hard fighting of the Corps in this section that to us has fallen the honour of being the first troops to enter and pass through the city’, wrote Sir Arthur Currie, proudly, in his diary that evening.24 The capture of Cambrai was a remarkable feat for Haig’s armies. Celebrations were only muted because of the large number of fires that had been started and which lit up the sky for miles around. A Canadian, Albert West, saw the city in flames. It was, he wrote, ‘one big fire’.
The dastardly Hun is burning what he cannot plunder or carry off. I could see four or five villages also burning. It is possible he will lay waste with fire all the country before us. Surely not! It just makes my blood boil to contemplate his villainy. I am reminded by the sight of Cambrai ablaze of the burning of Moscow. I watched it till I shivered with cold.25
French officers and men were understandably appalled at the scale of the damage that was being inflicted on their towns and villages during the German retreat. General Mangin, commander of Tenth Army, had visited Saint-Quentin soon after its liberation and ‘shook with anger’ at what he found. ‘The Boche is leaving Saint-Quentin in flames,’ he wrote. ‘Only the threat of reprisals will be able to prevent it from being ransacked before they leave.’ He wanted the Government to make an official announcement that German prisoners of war would only be returned once they had rebuilt French villages, but this was unlikely. Those he captured were immediately put to use clearing roads, repairing houses and erecting headquarters. Although Mangin was pleased to see some local farmers returning to their land, he was distressed because ‘The Boche systematically removed all the furniture, except in some houses that were inhabited by officers . . . No house was left intact by the bombardment. The town is absolutely uninhabited.’26
British and French troops were now becoming used to liberating towns and villages as they pressed on eastwards. For some, it was one of the most abiding memories of the war: marching through the shattered ruins of homes and streets to be greeted by destitute, half-starved civilians who had suffered four years of occupation. This is what they had come to France to do; this was a visible sign that their fortunes were changing and that peace might be possible. On 10 October, a British battery commander, Major F. J. Rice, passed through the villages of Bertry and Troisvilles, just outside Le Cateau. ‘The men lifted their caps to us as they had been made to do to the Boche,’ he remembered. ‘There were one or two of our cavalrymen lying dead in the streets, and we also passed a number of them and their horses before reaching Bertry. All the civilians waved or cheered or cried, and lots of houses had a French flag flying . . .’ Unfortunately for Rice, what had been a memorable occasion at Troisvilles was soured when ‘a Boche shell crashed through the wall of a house just in front of us, and as we passed an old man came out, wringing his hands which were covered in blood’. Shortly afterwards two soldiers carried out a girl who had been badly wounded. ‘It was a terribly sad sight on the day of the liberation of these people.’27
As if the danger of German shelling was not bad enough, Allied soldiers soon became aware that the enemy may have retreated, but they had often left nasty surprises behind. As the pace of the retreat quickened, German units had to find some way of delaying the enemy as much as possible; anything to keep them from being able to launch major set-piece operations against unprepared groups of their men that might have resulted in total collapse across the front. There were scores of different booby-traps planted by the Kaiser’s forces during the Hundred Days, and they all displayed the hallmarks of imagination, ingenuity and ruthlessness that the German Army had become notorious for. Random items would often be left in vacated buildings, inviting the unwary Allied soldier to pick them up or touch them, usually with fatal results. Boo
ks rigged with grenades would lie on window ledges; poisoned food and drink would be laid out ready to be eaten; even pianos would be left intact, waiting to be played, but with keys linked to explosives. It was little wonder that veteran NCOs made it their business to repeatedly tell their men not to touch anything in French villages until it had been checked by the engineers.
Charles Henry Savage, of 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles, remembered that houses were ideal places for booby-traps. ‘Nearly all of us had seen the unpleasant results of setting off one of these traps and we had the greatest respect for them,’ he wrote. ‘Therefore visiting and inspecting houses for the first time was not the casual affair one might think.’ According to Savage, the simplest type of trap was to be found on staircases. A step would be loosened so that when weight was placed on it, it dropped about an inch or so and detonated a bomb. Although it was possible to spot these traps from inside the cellar, often the only way of getting into the cellar was via the staircase. ‘We were dependent on flashlights or candles for our light, and looking at a set of steps from above and by such light it was practically impossible to see anything suspicious,’ he remembered. ‘First we would both look each step over as carefully as we could, then one of us would feel gently on the first step to see if it seemed loose, then a little weight on the step, then the full weight. If nothing happened, the procedure would be repeated with the next step.’28