by Lloyd, Nick
J. Boff, ‘Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days: The Case of Third Army’, RAF Air Power Review, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Autumn 2009), pp. 77–88
W. Deist, ‘The Military Collapse of the German Empire: The Reality behind the Stab-in-the-Back Myth’, War in History, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 186–207
M. Geyer, ‘Insurrectionary Warfare: The German Debate about a Levée en Masse in October 1918’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, No. 3 (September 2001), pp. 459–527
D. Jordan, ‘The Royal Air Force and Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days’, RAF Air Power Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer 2008), pp. 12–29
A. G. L. McNaughton, ‘The Development of Artillery in the Great War’, Canadian Defence Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 2 (January 1929), pp. 160–71
—, ‘The Capture of Valenciennes: A Study in Coordination’, Canadian Defence Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 3 (April 1933), pp. 279–94
J. McRandle and J. Quirk, ‘The Blood Test Revisited: A New Look at German Casualty Counts in World War I’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 70, No. 3 (July 2006), pp. 667–701
G. C. Wynne, ‘The Hindenburg Line’, Army Quarterly, Vol. XXXVII (October 1938 and January 1939), pp. 205–28
Unpublished theses
T. Gale, ‘La Salamandre: The French Army’s Artillerie Spéciale and the Development of Armoured Warfare in the First World War’ (Ph.D., King’s College London, 2010)
References
BA-MA
Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg
CLIP
Canadian Letters and Images Project [www.canadianletters.ca]
CWM
Canadian War Museum, Ottawa
IWM
Imperial War Museum, London
JMO
Journal de Marche et d’Opérations (French Army war diaries)
[http://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr/jmo/cdc.html]
LAC
Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa
MHI
Military History Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle Pennsylvania
TNA
The National Archives of the UK, Kew
USAWW
United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919
Preface: Death at Gouzeaucourt
1E. Blunden, Undertones of War (London: Penguin Books, 2010; first publ. 1928), p. 214.
2Ibid., pp. 186 and 188.
3C. A. Bill, The 15th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment (and Birmingham Battalion) in the Great War (Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 1932), p. 119.
4Army records show that Tom enlisted at Shotton and was originally posted to the Cheshire Regiment, before being transferred to the War-wicks. The reason why Tom found himself in a Warwickshire battalion was because he had been born in Willenhall in the Black Country (on 18 March 1899), which was a traditional recruiting ground for the Warwickshire Regiment. His army file seems to have been one of many that were destroyed by German bombing raids on the Public Record Office in the Second World War (the ‘burnt documents’), so it is impossible to delve any deeper.
5T. Carter, Birmingham Pals. 14th, 15th & 16th (Service) Battalions of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment: A History of the Three City Battalions Raised in Birmingham in World War One (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 1997), p. 139.
6Bill, The 15th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment, pp. 147–8.
7The term ‘Hundred Days’ has been criticized for being Anglocentric and for missing the role that the French and American forces played in the turning point of the war on the Western Front, the Second Battle of the Marne that began on 15 July. This book begins at the Marne, but uses the term ‘Hundred Days’ in its wider sense to refer to the series of remarkable triumphs won by the Allied armies that began on 18 July and continued until the Armistice.
8J. Terraine, To Win a War. 1918: The Year of Victory (London: Cassell, 2000; first publ. 1978), p. 13.
9D. Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall. Victory and Defeat in 1918 (London: Allen Lane, 2011), p. xvii.
10It is impossible to find precise casualty figures for this period. British casualties between 7 August and 12 November 1918 were 298,125, including over 13,000 officers. French casualties between 1 July and 15 September were approximately 279,000. Total American losses were 130,000 with the vast majority being sustained between July and November 1918. See Sir J. Edmonds and R. Maxwell-Hyslop (eds.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, V, 26th September–11th November. The Advance to Victory (London: HMSO, 1947), p. 562; Terraine, To Win a War, p. 202; and G. Mead, Doughboys. America and the First World War (London: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 353. German losses are even more difficult to ascertain. The German Medical History only covers the war up to the end of July 1918, thus missing out the heavy losses throughout August to November. According to Wilhelm Deist, German dead and wounded may have been as high as 420,000 in the final phase of the war (plus upwards of 340,000 prisoners). See Reichskriegsministerium Heeressanitätsinspektion, Sanitätsbericht über das Deutsche Heer (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1934–8); W. Deist, ‘The Military Collapse of the German Empire: The Reality behind the Stab-in-the-Back Myth’, War in History, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 186–207 (p. 203), and J. McRandle and J. Quirk, ‘The Blood Test Revisited: A New Look at German Casualty Counts in World War I’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 70, No. 3 (July 2006), pp. 667–701.
Prologue: ‘Surprise was complete’
1J. de Pierrefeu, French Headquarters 1915–1918, trans. Major C. J. C. Street (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1924), p. 277.
2MHI: WWI 246, Corporal F. L. Faulkner, letter, 1 February 1919.
3M. S. Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne (Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 100.
4T. Gale, ‘La Salamandre: The French Army’s Artillerie Spéciale and the Development of Armoured Warfare in the First World War’ (Ph.D., King’s College London, 2010), p. 202.
5C. M. Chenu, Du képi rouge aux chars d’assaut (Paris: Albin Michel, 1932), p. 289.
6Bundesarchiv, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918, XIV, Die Kriegführung an der Westfront im Jahre 1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1944), p. 478.
7D. Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives. A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 273–5.
8Chenu, Du képi rouge, p. 290.
9E. E. Mackin, Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die. Memoirs of a World War I Marine (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1993), p. 92.
10MHI: WWI 5499 (Folder 3), ‘The Luck of a Buck’, by Private R. L. Williams, pp. 147–8.
11MHI: WWI 2487, ‘My Memories of World War I’, by Captain M. B. Helm, p. 12.
12Chenu, Du képi rouge, p. 290.
13JMO: 26 N 18/1, Groupe d’Armées de Réserve, ‘Journal de Marche période du 18 février au 11 novembre 1918’, p. 94.
14JMO: 26 N 39/7, VI Armée, ‘Journal des marches et opérations du 29 juin au 10 septembre 1918’.
15Reinhardt cited in G. S. Viereck (ed.), As They Saw Us. Foch, Ludendorff and Other Leaders Write Our War History (Cranbury, NJ: Scholar’s Bookshelf, 2005; first publ. 1929), pp. 112–13.
16E. von Ludendorff, Concise Ludendorff Memoirs 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1933), p. 283.
17H. Sulzbach, With the German Guns. Four Years on the Western Front 1914–1918, trans. R. Thonger (London: Frederick Warne, 1981; first publ. 1973), p. 209.
1. Decision on the Marne
1Speech of 4 June 1918 cited in G. Clemenceau, Grandeur and Misery of Victory (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1930), p. 54.
2R. Binding, A Fatalist at War, trans. I. F. D. Morrow (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929), pp. 238–9.
3TNA: WO 157/197, Fourth Army Summary of Information, 3 July 1918.
4G. Bucher, In the Line 1914–1918, trans. Norman Gullick (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2005; first publ. 1932), pp. 265–6.
5Crown Prince Wilhelm, The Memoirs of the Crown Prince of Germany (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1922), p. 197.
>
6TNA: WO 157/196, Fourth Army Weekly Appreciation, 13 July 1918, and A. Watson, Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 179–81 and 187.
7F. von Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1939), p. 352.
8Crown Prince Wilhelm, Memoirs, pp. 195–6.
9Ibid., pp. 25–6.
10Ibid., pp. 154–5.
11M. Ludendorff, My Married Life with Ludendorff, trans. R. Somerset (London: Hutchinson, 1930), pp. 19 and 232.
12E. von Ludendorff, Concise Ludendorff Memoirs 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1933), p. 16.
13See W. J. Astore and D. E. Showalter, Hindenburg. Icon of German Militarism (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), p. 66.
14See D. Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives. A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), ch. 11.
15TNA: WO 157/34, GHQ Summary of Intelligence, 9 August 1918.
16BA-MA: MSG2/5710, Leutnant Richard Schütt, letter, 12 August 1918.
17Cited in Prince Max of Baden, The Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden, trans. W. M. Calder and C. W. H. Sutton (2 vols., London: Constable, 1928), I, p. 307.
18J. P. Guéno and Y. Laplume (eds.), Paroles de poilus. Lettres et carnets du front 1914–1918 (Paris: Radio France, 1998), p. 476.
19Sir J. Edmonds (ed.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, III, May–July. The German Diversion Offensives and the First Allied Counter-Offensive (London: Macmillan & Co., 1939), p. 305.
20A. Stenger, Schicksalswende. Von der Marne bis zur Vesle 1918 (Berlin: Stalling, 1930), p. 219.
21J. McRandle and J. Quirk, ‘The Blood Test Revisited: A New Look at German Casualty Counts in World War I’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 70, No. 3 (July 2006), pp. 667–701 (p. 683), Table 6.
22MHI: WWI 5499 (Folder 3), ‘The Luck of a Buck’, by Private R. L. Williams, pp. 153–4.
23N. Johnson, Britain and the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic. A Dark Epilogue (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 82.
24Sir W. G. Macpherson, Medical Services. Diseases of the War (London: HMSO, 1921), I, pp. 174–7 and 179–81.
25Reichskriegsministerium Heeressanitätsinspektion, Sanitätsbericht über das Deutsche Heer (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1934–8), III, p. 123.
26S. Weintraub, A Stillness Heard Round the World. The End of the Great War: November 1918 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 9.
27One contemporary described Clemenceau’s words as being ‘like cold, sharp, well-tempered steel’. ‘No more pacifist campaigns, no more German intrigues’, he had said before the Chamber of Deputies on 20 November 1917 in what would become one of his most famous speeches. ‘Neither treason, nor semi-treason: the war. Nothing but the war. Our armies will not be caught between fire from two sides. Justice will be done. The country will know that it is defended.’ Clemenceau cited in D.R. Watson, Georges Clemenceau. A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 271. The ‘well-tempered steel’ reference was from an early biographical sketch written in 1883, cited p. 72.
28B. H. Liddell Hart, Reputations (London: John Murray, 1928), p. 176.
29Colonel C. J. C. Grant cited in Sir G. Aston, The Biography of the Late Marshal Foch (London: Hutchinson, 1932), pp. 128–9.
30Aston, Biography of the Late Marshal Foch, p. 116.
31See E. Greenhalgh, Foch in Command. The Forging of a First World War General (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 301–9.
32J. de Pierrefeu, French Headquarters 1915–1918, trans. Major C. J. C. Street (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1924), p. 284.
33Liddell Hart, Reputations, p. 215.
34Hellé cited in G. S. Viereck (ed.), As They Saw Us. Foch, Ludendorff and Other Leaders Write Our War History (Cranbury, NJ: Scholar’s Bookshelf, 2005; first publ. 1929), p. 127.
35D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (2 vols., London: Odhams Press, 1933–6).
36G. S. Duncan, Douglas Haig as I Knew Him (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), p. 23.
37Details of the meeting on 24 July 1918 taken from F. Foch, The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, trans. T. Bentley Mott (London: William Heinemann, 1931), pp. 425–30.
38B. H. Liddell Hart, Foch. The Man of Orleans (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1931), p. 342.
39R. L. Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of the War (New York: Double day, 1925), p. 42.
40Haig to Sir Henry Wilson (Chief of the Imperial General Staff), 24 July 1918, in D. Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918, eds. G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 430.
2. ‘Neglect nothing’
1Sir J. Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1920), p. 105.
2C. Vince and S. R. Jones, England in France. Sketches Mainly with the 59th Division (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919), pp. 47 and 55.
3Sir A. Montgomery, The Story of Fourth Army in the Battles of the Hundred Days, August 8th to November 11th, 1918 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920), p. 11.
4TNA: WO 95/437, Rawlinson to Haig, 17 July 1918.
5Field Marshal Sir D. Haig, diary, 26 July 1918, in D. Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918, eds. G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 435.
6Montgomery, The Story of Fourth Army, p. 18.
7‘Organization of the Attacks of the 1st Army’, in P. Pétain, Report by the Field Marshal Commander-in-Chief of the French Armies of the North and Northeast on the Operations in 1918. The Offensive Campaign (18 July–11 November 1918) (3 parts, trans. A. Woldike), III, pp. 11–14; JMO: 26 N 20/1, ‘Journal de Marche de la 1ère Armée à partir du 1er janvier 1918 au 31 octobre 1918’, p. 479.
8See S. B. Schreiber, Shock Army of the British Empire. The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the Great War (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997).
9LAC: MG30 E100, Sir Arthur Currie Papers, Vol. 43, File 191, Notebook entitled ‘Things Worth Remembering’, and Monash, Australian Victories, p. 96.
10Haig, diary, 31 July 1918, in Haig, War Diaries and Letters, p. 436.
11Mark Vs were powered by a 150 horsepower Ricardo engine that could reach a maximum speed of 4.6 mph, but with an average speed of 3 mph. It had a nine-hour endurance that could take it up to twenty-five miles. It was crewed by one officer and seven other ranks.
12For the different characteristics of British tanks see the table in J. F. C. Fuller, Tanks in the Great War 1914–1918 (London: John Murray, 1920), p. 44. The Mark V Star was a good idea, but let down by its extremely poor conditions for passengers, who were exposed to potentially lethal engine fumes.
13A. G. L. McNaughton, ‘The Development of Artillery in the Great War’, Canadian Defence Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 2 (January 1929), pp. 160–61.
14C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (12 vols., Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941–2), VI, p. 499.
15Monash, Australian Victories, pp. 102–3.
16J. H. Morrow, Jr, The Great War in the Air. Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993), p. 294.
17H. A. Jones, The War in the Air. Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force (6 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922–37), VI, pp. 433–6.
18CLIP: Memoirs of C. H. Savage.
19IWM: 78/29/1, ‘A Field Artillery Officer, 1914–1919’, by Colonel F. J. Rice, p. 88.
20CLIP: Memoirs of C. H. Savage.
21TNA: WO 95/94, ‘Summary of Tank Actions from August 8th to October 20th’, by H. J. Elles, 29 October 1918.
22Various commanders compared the orchestration of military power in the Great War to pieces of music, to great symphonies, including Monash, who stated that ‘A perfected modern battle plan is like nothing so much as a score for orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are thei
r respective musical phrases.’: Monash, Australian Victories, p. 56.
23Sir J. Edmonds (ed.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, IV, 8th August–26th September. The Franco-British Offensive (London: HMSO, 1947), p. II.
24US Department for the Army, Historical Division, Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army Which Participated in the War (1914–1918) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920), pp. 449, 457, 594, 596, 635, 709 and 743.
25T. von Bose, Die Katastrophe des 8. August 1918 (Berlin: Stalling, 1930), p. 47.
26TNA: WO 157/196, Fourth Army Summary of Information, 29 July 1918.
27Edmonds (ed.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, IV, p. 37.
28JMO: 26 N 202/1, ‘Compte-rendu des opérations du 8 au 14 août 1918: 31 Corps d’Armée’, p. 7.
29See Edmonds (ed.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, IV, pp. 22–4, and Bean, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, VI, p. 512.
30P. Maze, A Frenchman in Khaki (Kingswood: William Heinemann, 1934), pp. 325–7.
31A. Grasset, La Guerre en action, Montdidier. Le 8 août 1918 à la 42ème Division (Paris: Éditions Berger-Levrault, 1930), p. 67.
32IWM: 80/28/1, Account of T. G. Mohan, p. 117.
33Monash, Australian Victories, pp. 120–21.
3. ‘Death will have a rich harvest’
1T. von Bose, Die Katastrophe des 8. August 1918 (Berlin: Stalling, 1930),p. 110.
2LAC: RG41, Vol. 8, Testimony of W. E. Curtis.
3Bose, Katastrophe, p. 140.
4Ibid., pp. 49–50.
5A. Grasset, La Guerre en action, Montdidier. Le 8 août 1918 à la 42ème Division (Paris: Éditions Berger-Levrault, 1930), p. 126.
6Bose, Katastrophe, p. 158.
7CLIP: Bertram Howard Cox to his brothers (Carl, Herbert and Murrill), 13 August 1918.
8J. F. B. Livesay, Canada’s Hundred Days. With the Canadian Corps from Amiens to Mons, Aug. 8–Nov. 11, 1918 (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1919), p. 28.