Chapter 18
In This Chapter
● Ludendorff’s offensives
● Allied counter attacks
● The Battle of Amiens
● Breaking the Hindenburg Line
● Defining the legacy of the First World War
As Field Marshal Hindenburg’s Chief of Staff, the German General Erich Ludendorff had a significant say in what happened in the war. Ludendorff believed that with the transfer of divisions from what had been the Eastern Front before Russia’s collapse in 1917, the Germans could win the war in the West. He considered the British to be the principal enemy, and if the Germans beat the British, he reasoned, the French would seek terms. So confident was he that he rashly promised his troops that their efforts would bring victory. After the initial scramble and relentless trench warfare of 1914-1917, the Western Front offered something different in 1918, so it gets a chapter all to itself. That something was mobility in various forms, an element unknown to most soldiers on this battlefront since the autumn of 1914.
Figure 18-1 shows British infantrymen in the First World War. Tanks and aircraft grew in importance, and towards the end of the war, as the stalemate of the trenches was left behind, cavalry made a return, too. In addition to the heavy tanks used in 1916 and 1917, the fast, light Whippet tank made an appearance in 1918.
Figure 18-1: British infantrymen, First World War.
The German army developed its own breakthrough technique employing three elements:
● A carefully orchestrated artillery programme. Colonel Bruchmuller, something of an artillery virtuoso, commanded a travelling circus of heavy guns that moved up and down the front as required, and absorbed the local artillery units into his plan. Depending on the area of front to be breached, he tailored the programme to include high explosives, phosgene gas, and smoke shells, with the object of leaving the defenders shocked, choking, and blind when the attack went in.
● Deep penetration by storm troop battalions. This involved forming battalions of storm troopers, recruited from young, fit men of proven initiative. Their favourite weapons were the grenade, of which each man carried at least one bag full, the light machine gun, and the man-pack flamethrower. They advanced in groups, usually at a run with slung rifles, taking advantage of the available ground cover. If they encountered opposition, they worked their way round it, leaving the follow-up waves of infantry to deal with it. Continual movement was the essence of their tactics, the ultimate object of which was to destroy brigade and divisional headquarters.
● Continuous support by ground-attack aircraft. This technique consisted of battle flights of up to six aircraft, trained to strafe enemy troops in the immediate path of the storm troopers from a height of 60 metres (200 feet). This produced less satisfactory results than the Royal Flying Corps’ squadrons, which attacked at ground level, and this difference led to complaints from the storm troopers that the battle flights were not doing their job properly.
Thanks to politicians retaining a needlessly large number of troops for home defence, the manpower resources of the British armies in France and Belgium had become stretched to their limit. The nine battalions now forming each infantry division contained, on average, 500 men in contrast to the 1000 with which they had gone to war. With this in mind, the British introduced a new defensive layout that unintentionally favoured every aspect of Ludendorff’s plans:
● First was a forward zone, consisting of strongpoints that were little more than fortified outposts. These actually provided the storm troopers with the very opportunities they sought to infiltrate.
● Second, three or four kilometres behind but still within range of the German artillery and lacking dugouts, lay a battle zone trench system containing about one third of the defenders.
● Thirdly, beyond this, a rear zone was intended to house the reserves, but in places this consisted of little more than a line of spit-locked turf.
The Ludendorff Offensives, March-June 1918
Ludendorff’s first offensive, lasting from 21 March to 5 April, effected a breakthrough on a 95-kilometre (60-mile) front and penetrated to a depth of 65 kilometres (40 miles). The British lost all the gains they had so painfully made on the Somme and the Germans all but destroyed Gough’s Fifth Army. The Allies sustained 255,000 casualties, including 90,000 taken prisoner, and the loss of 1100 guns. Together, self-sacrificial stands and small ad hoc groups made up of stragglers, cooks, drivers, clerks, storemen, and mess waiters thrust into the gaps managed to hold the line in desperate fighting. The offensive failed in its primary object of separating the British and French armies by a drive on Amiens and the Somme estuary. German losses were also heavier than they had allowed for, amounting to 250,000, mainly in the storm troop battalions. On 9 April Ludendorff tried again. His second offensive recovered all the ground lost at Passchendaele, reduced the Ypres salient to a rump, recaptured Messines Ridge, and inflicted 82,000 casualties. It did not, as planned, break through to the Channel ports and it cost 98,000 men. The sidebar ‘Tank versus tank’ highlights one of many actions fought during this period.
Between 27 May and 6 June, Ludendorff struck at the French on the Chemin des Dames sector in the hope of them withdrawing their reserves from Flanders, enabling him to strike a decisive blow against the British. He gained ground, at considerable cost, but now found himself without sufficient troops to man the salient that he had formed. Ludendorff then mounted a fourth offensive with the object of shortening the line between two salients. This failed because the Allies were by now familiar with the German methods and were prepared to meet the attack.
Tank versus tank
When the Germans began to produce tanks of their own, it was inevitable that tank would meet tank on the battlefield sooner or later. The meeting happened at Villers-Bretonneux, east of Amiens, on 24 April 1918. Here, in the Bois de l'Abbe, the crews of the three Mark IV tanks of No 1 Section, A Company, 1st Battalion Tank Corps were recovering from the effects of gas shells. Commanded by Captain J.C. Brown, the section consisted of two female tanks (armed solely with machine guns) and one male tank (armed with 6-pounder guns and machine guns). Second Lieutenant Francis Mitchell commanded the male tank.
On learning that the Germans were leading their attack with tanks, No 1 Section moved out to meet them at 8.45 a.m. Four German tanks were present, all A7Vs, the abbreviated title of the German design committee. The A7V consisted of a large, box-like armoured superstructure mounted on an extended commercial tractor chassis, armed with a 57-millimetre gun in the front plate and machine guns, and no fewer than 16 men manned it.
Only Mitchell's tank competed on equal terms. The Germans soon forced the two females out of the action by blowing holes through their armour. Mitchell's left 6-pounder gunner began ranging on an A7V. He scored three hits, the tank lurched to a standstill, and the crew made off as fast as they could run. Mitchell now engaged two more A7Vs. One, after absorbing some punishment, backed away and the other turned and followed it. Unknown to Mitchell, a fourth A7V, named Elfrieda, had overturned in a sandpit before getting into action.
Later that morning a British reconnaissance aircraft spotted two storm troop battalions resting in a hollow near Cachy, just a few hundred metres from the scene of the tank battle. The pilot dropped a message to a company of the Tank Corps' 3rd Battalion, suggesting that if the tanks hurried they would catch the enemy in the open. The company was equipped with Whippet light tanks (developed to work with the cavalry), and its commander, Captain Thomas Price, seized the opportunity at once. In line abreast with 35 metres (40 yards) between them, his seven tanks tore through the hollow twice, machine guns blazing. They killed or wounded over 400 of the storm troopers. An A7V that had remained in the area knocked out one tank that ignored Price's instructions to avoid showing itself on the skyline, and damaged three more. The last act in this, the first tank battle in history, was the diffident return of 11 survivors of the crew belonging to Mitchell's first tank victim, after dark. They had been told to go and get their vehicle, or else - luckily for them, they managed it.
German morale nose-dived. The promised victory had not materialised. Most of the storm troopers were now dead, the remainder of the German army was of lesser quality, and the manpower reserve provided by the Eastern Front divisions had been used up. Letters from home complained about shortages of food and other things brought about by the British blockade. The Americans were reaching Europe in large numbers and being equipped by the British and French, who seemed to possess all the tanks, guns, rations, and supplies they needed. For the average German soldier in the middle of 1918, the future was bleak.
The Allies Fight Back
The shape of things to come became apparent on 4 July, when 60 of the new Mark V tanks supported an attack by ten Australian battalions and four American companies on a 5.5-kilometre (3.5-mile) frontage. The objective was the village of Le Hamel, situated on a low ridge to the northeast of Villers-Bretonneux, 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) behind the German lines. Incredibly, the Allies took the village within an hour. The Australians sustained 775 casualties and the Americans 134. The tank crews had 13 men wounded. Shellfire damaged five tanks, but the British recovered all of them. The German losses included 1500 men taken prisoner, 2 field guns, and 171 machine guns. Two weeks later the French and Americans struck a hammer blow into the flank of a salient south of Soissons. Their assault, spearheaded by 346 tanks, punched a hole 6.5 kilometres (4 miles) wide in the enemy defences. During the next few days the offensive ran down, enabling the Germans to retreat in good order to a shorter line. Despite this, they left no fewer than 25,000 prisoners in Allied hands.
On 23 July the Tank Corps’ 9th Battalion won a unique distinction during the Battle of Sauvillers (sometimes called Moreuil). On loan to the French 3rd Division, the Corps led a successful attack at small cost to its allies, taking 1858 prisoners, plus 5 field guns and 275 machine guns. The battalion’s losses were 54 men killed or wounded and 11 of its 34 tanks knocked out. Delighted, the French awarded the battalion a corporate Croix de Guerre as well as conferring on its men the honour of wearing the 3rd Division’s insignia as an arm badge.
As a result of these successes, Ludendorff realised that the battle had begun to turn against him. Gibbering with rage, he declaimed:
It is to the tanks that the enemy owes his success . . . As soon as the tanks are destroyed the whole attack fails!
It wasn’t quite as simple as that and in a little while he was given something to really gibber about - the Battle of Amiens (see the next section).
The Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918
The local successes of July prompted General Sir Henry Rawlinson, commanding the Fourth Army, to suggest that the British III Corps, the Australian Corps, and the Canadian Corps mount a major offensive east of Amiens, spearheaded by the Tank Corps. His choice of Dominion troops was deliberate, partly because their divisions were still largely up to strength and partly because they had retained their offensive spirit. Most British formations, on the other hand, were still recovering from the enemy’s spring offensives and were seriously short of men.
The Allies accepted Rawlinson’s suggestion. Four tank battalions (1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th) were allocated to the Canadian Corps on the right, four more (2nd, 8th, 13th, and 15th) plus the Austin armoured cars of the Tank Corps’ 17th Battalion to the Australian Corps in the centre, and one tank battalion (10th) to the British III Corps on the left. The Cavalry Corps, given the task of exploiting the breakthrough, was allocated the 3rd and 6th Battalions, both of which were equipped with the Whippet light tank. In total, the attack would be made by 324 Mark V or V* heavy tanks, with a further 42 in immediate reserve, 96 Whippets,120 supply tanks, and 22 gun carriers (cut-down Mark Is designed to carry 60-pounder guns or 6-inch (15-centimetre) howitzers across no-man’s land). The Fourth Army had 684 heavy guns and 1386 field guns available, while the neighbouring French First Army, which was to extend the attack southwards, had another 826 heavy and 780 field guns.
An elaborate deception plan drew the enemy’s attention elsewhere. Newly arrived artillery batteries, for example, simply registered their designated targets then lapsed into silence. The tanks arrived by train during the night of 6/7 August. As they dispersed to their assembly areas, the rumble of engines and the squeal of tracks were drowned out by the noise of low-flying aircraft. Opposite the Allies was General von der Marwitz’s Second Army, consisting of 11 divisions each with an average strength of 3000 men. Recent failures and news of growing unrest at home had demoralised the infantrymen, although the machine gunners and artillery were as reliable as ever. A new anti-tank rifle had been issued, but this did not compensate for a general nervousness among the Germans about tank attacks.
At 4.20 a.m. on 8 August the Allied artillery exploded into life. In a morning mist that smoke shells made thicker, long lines of tanks and infantry moved forward in the wake of a rolling barrage. The Germans could hear the distinctive sound of engines and tracks long before they could see anything of the
attackers. Then, quite suddenly, the huge shapes burst out of the grey curtain at point-blank range, crushing wire, straddling trenches, spitting machine gun fire, high-explosive shells, and scything case shot. Hundreds threw up their hands in surrender at once. Between 6.30 and 7 a.m. the Allies overran the German front line so easily that it might never have existed. At 6.45 a.m. the mist had begun to clear and as the tanks probed deeper the German field gunners could see them. In the fight that followed, no quarter was given or expected. When the battle was over no fewer than 109 tanks had become blazing wrecks or were too badly damaged to continue, but the enemy’s divisional artillery regiments had ceased to exist. The advance rolled on.
By 11 a.m. the Allies had taken the second designated objective. By 1 p.m. they had taken the third.
A gap 18 kilometres (11 miles) wide and 11 kilometres (7 miles) deep now existed in the German line. The Cavalry Corps had reached the front too late to do any good at High Wood during the Somme battle, and they were late again at Cambrai (see Chapter 17 for these battles). Now, they were on time and desperate to show what they could do. In places they did well. They captured a large railway gun and field batteries trying to escape to the rear and rounded up prisoners by the score. Sadly, the bottom line was that cavalry and tanks were simply not compatible. When little or no opposition existed, the horsemen cantered ahead, leaving the Whippet tanks, capable of only 8.3 miles per hour at best, far behind. When the cavalry encountered serious resistance, they were pinned down and had to wait for the Whippets.
The official German report on the day’s fighting made it clear that the Second Army sustained a disastrous defeat. It recorded the total losses of this sector at between 600 and 700 officers and 26,000 and 27,000 men, plus 400 guns and an enormous quantity of machine guns, mortars, and other equipment. It further stated that over two-thirds of the personnel casualties resulted from mass surrenders. Others who had not surrendered simply abandoned their weapons and took to their heels. The report actually underestimated the scale of the losses. The true casualty figure was in the region of 75,000, including almost 30,000 prisoners. Ludendorff described 8 August as ‘The Black Day of the German army’. Officers were horrified when troops retiring from the battle yelled insulting remarks at divisions moving forward to plug the gap, calling them blacklegs and scabs. ‘Our war machine was no longer efficient,’ concluded Ludendorff.
On 9 August the Allies had only 145 tanks available. Next day the number was even lower and as fresh German divisions moved into the gap, the battle ran down. British casualties totalled 22,000 killed, wounded, and missing, while those of the French First Army were about half that figure. Haig had every cause for satisfaction. Together, the mass surrenders and interrogation of prisoners revealed that, at long last, he had broken the German will to fight.
Breaking the Hindenburg Line
In the weeks following the Battle of Amiens the Allied offensive became general along the Western Front. Much of the burden fell on the British armies. Mobility was back on the battlefield and the British adapted quickly to its demands. Throughout August and September 1918 the advance continued. Tanks led local attacks that steadily gnawed away at the German defences.
On 29 September a second tank battle took place near Cambrai when groups of German tanks, most of them captured British vehicles, led a counterattack. The Tank Corps’ 12th Battalion met them and sustained some loss, but destroyed six of the eleven enemy tanks. The Germans had begun to fight harder once more, not because they had any hope of victory, but because their leaders had told them they were now defending the Fatherland. Despite this, the Allies had broken through the formidable defences of the Hindenburg Line by 5 October. Simultaneously, in Flanders, the British and Belgian armies finally broke out of the Ypres salient. In late October and early November, the pace of the advance was beyond even that of the Whippet tanks. Whenever the cavalry were not held up, they followed the German armies as the enemy retreated towards their homeland. When the Allies reached Mons, the Belgian town may have stirred memories among some of the troopers. After all, for the British Army, the war had started here, over four years earlier.
On 6 October Germany indicated that it welcomed an armistice. The Allies replied that they would not negotiate with a military dictatorship. Ludendorff resigned on 27 October to permit negotiations to continue, but his gesture was too late. Two days later the German High Seas Fleet, rusting at its moorings since Jutland (see Chapter 17), mutinied. Riots, rebellions, and mutinies in the cause of peace spread like wildfire across Germany. On 9 November a republic was proclaimed. Next day Kaiser Wilhelm formally abdicated, then scuttled off to neutral Holland. The new government finally agreed terms with the Allies and an armistice came into effect at 11 a.m. on 11 November. Haig considered that the humiliating terms that the victorious Allies imposed on Germany would simply lead to another war, and he was right (see Part VI).
Reflecting on the War: Lions, Donkeys, and Poets
Hardly a family in Great Britain did not lose at least one of its members during the First World War. The trauma remains deep-seated within the national consciousness. Very few war memorials existed prior to 1918. Subsequently, they appeared in every city, town, village, hamlet, and even in the workplaces of those who had been killed. In such times of raw grief, thinking of rational explanations was difficult when the nation had suffered nearly one million casualties.
A popular saying was that during a conversation between Hindenburg and Ludendorff they described the British Army as ‘lions led by donkeys’. No such conversation ever took place, but the phrase entered common usage. Of course, the prior experience of most generals had not prepared them for the realities of trench warfare, and some were incompetent or promoted beyond their abilities as the army expanded, but the same was true of every army in the field. What is interesting is that the generals were considered competent enough before trench warfare set in during the autumn of 1914, and also when mobility returned to the battlefield in 1918.
Most staff officers performed to the best of their abilities, but others worked their way into staff jobs that offered safe, comfortable billets and the opportunity for a spot of bureaucratic empire building. The staff lived and worked well behind the lines, in or near their general’s chateau, generally in some style. The troops resented their clean-shaven, spick-and-span visits to the front line, which the occupants shared with greedy lice, well-fed rats, and corpses, not simply because they were tactless, but because the orders they brought usually meant trouble of one sort or another for someone. Staff offers wore the same red band around their service dress caps and the same red lapel tabs as their generals. Such, however, was the dislike and contempt of the front-line soldier for the staff, expressed in the song ‘The First Staff Officer Jumped Right Over the Second Staff Officer’s Back’, that these distinctions were withdrawn after the war.
Too much, perhaps, has been made of the generation of poets who served during the war. The views they expressed were personal, and many were writing in the late 1920s when the war may have been won but the peace had been lost. At such a time, all the effort and sacrifice of the war must have seemed pointless.