History of the World War

by Jr. Francis A. March; Richard J. Beamish

CHAPTER XLIII

ENGLAND AND FRANCE STRIKE IN THE NORTH

Up to July 18, 1918, the Allied armies in France had been steadily on the defensive, but on that date the tide turned. General Foch, who had been yielding territory for several months in the great German drives, now assumed the offensive himself and began the series of great drives which was to crush the German power and drive the enemy in defeat headlong from France.

The first of these great blows was the one which began with the appearance of the Americans at Chateau-Thierry. The Germans had formed a huge salient whose eastern extremity lay near Rheims, and its western extremity west of Soissons. It was like a great pocket reaching down in the direction of Paris from those two points. Against this salient the French and Americans had directed a tremendous thrust. The Germans resisted with desperation. It was the turning point of the war, but they were compelled to yield. Town after town was regained by the French and American troops, until, by August 5th, the Crown Prince had been driven from the Marne to the Vesle, and the salient obliterated.

On August 7th General Foch delivered his second blow. During the fighting on the Marne it had often been wondered by those who were observing the great French general's strategy, why the British seemed to make no move. Occasionally there had been reports of minor assaults, either on the Lys salient, far north, or on the Somme and Montdidier sectors, lying between. It had not been noticed that in these minor assaults the English had been obtaining positions of strategic importance, and that they were steadily getting ready for an English offensive.

But their time had now come, and on August 7th the armies of Sir Douglas
Haig began an attack against the armies of Prince Rupprecht on the Lys
salient. This was followed, on August 8th, by another still greater
Allied advance in Picardy, between Albert and Montdidier.

Both of these attacks met with notable success. On the Lys salient the English penetrated a distance of one thousand yards over a four-mile front, and followed up this advance by persistent attacks which led to the reoccupation, on August 19th, of Merville, and on August 31st, of Mont Kemmel. On this front the Germans had weakened their strength by withdrawing troops to aid other parts of their front, and the British were constantly taking advantage of this weakening.

The Germans had found this salient a failure. It had failed to attain its objective, the flanking of the Lens line south. They therefore were steadily retreating without any intention other than to extricate themselves from positions of no value, in the most economical manner. The quick operations of the British, however, led to the capture of many prisoners and guns.

The English offensive in Picardy was a more serious matter, and from some points of view was the greatest offensive in the war. The Allied front had been prepared for offensive operations by minor attacks which had secured for the Allied troops dominating positions. The attack was a surprise attack. The Germans were expecting local attacks but not a movement of this magnitude. The surprise was increased because it was made through a heavy mist which prevented observation. It was preceded by tremendous artillery fire which lasted for four minutes, and which was followed by the charge of infantry and tanks. The German artillery hardly replied at all, and only the resistance of a few rifles and machine guns fired vaguely through the fog met the charging troops.

The attack was on a twenty-five-mile front and on the first day gained seven miles, captured seven thousand men and a hundred guns. On the following day there was an advance of about five miles and seventeen thousand more prisoners were captured.

The Germans were now retiring in great haste, blowing up ammunition dumps and abandoning an enormous quantity of stores of all kinds. The English were using cavalry and airplanes, which were flying low over the field and throwing the German troops into confusion. Over three hundred guns, including many of heavy caliber, were captured. The ground had been plowed up by shells and thousands of bodies of men and horses were found lying where they fell. A feature of the attack was the swift whippet tanks which advanced far ahead of the infantry lines.

[Illustration: Photograph]
Copyright Western Newspaper Union
British Official Photo
FORWARD WITH THE TANKS AGAINST BAPAUME
This picture gives an excellent idea of the method of combined tank
and infantry attack. Behind a low ridge among artillery positions they
are forming their line. A company falls in behind one of the waddling
monsters that will break a way for it through all obstacles, while on
both sides of the road other detachments await the arrival of the tank
they are to accompany.

[Illustration: Photograph: Line of marching soldiers stretching back to
the horizon. Several men resting in the foreground.]
Canadian Official Photograph.
From Underwood and Underwood, N. Y.
CANADIANS IN THE GREAT CAMBRAI DRIVE
One of the busy scenes just preceding the victorious attack by the
Canadians upon Cambrai. In the center can be seen captured Germans
carrying in one of their wounded comrades.

In the French official report occurred the following statement:

"The brilliant operation which we, in concert with British troops, executed yesterday has been a surprise for the enemy. As occurred in the offensive of July 18th the soldiers of General Debeney have captured enemy soldiers engaged in the peaceful pursuit of harvesting the fields behind the German lines."

By August 10th the Germans had fallen back to a line running through Chaulnes and Roye. Montdidier had been captured, and eleven German divisions had been smashed. By August 12th the number of prisoners was 40,000, and by the 18th the Allied front was almost in the same line as it was in the summer of 1916, before the battle of the Somme.

The next step was to capture Bapaume and Peronne. The French, on August 19th, captured the Lassigny Massif, and continued to press on their attack. Noyon fell on the 29th, Roye on the 27th, Chaulnes on the 29th. Further north the British had captured Albert, and on the 29th occupied Bapaume. On September 1st they took Peronne with two thousand prisoners.

The advance still continued, and the German weakness was becoming more and more apparent. On September 6th the whole Allied line swept forward, with an average penetration of eight miles. Chauny was captured and the fortress of Ham. On September 17th the British were close to St. Quentin and the French in their own old intrenchments before La Fere. On September 18th a surprise advance over a twenty-two-mile front crossed the Hindenburg line at two points north of St. Quentin, Villeret and from Pontru to Hollom.

The first and third British armies, a little further to the north, were moving toward Cambrai and Douai, threatening not only them, but to get in the rear of Lens. This force proceeded up the Albert-Bapaume highway, and on August 27th captured a considerable portion of the Hindenburg line. On the 30th they reached Bullecourt and on September 2d crossed the Drocourt-Queant line on a six-mile-front. This was the famous switch line, meant to supplement the Hindenburg line and its capture meant the complete overthrow of the German intrenched positions at this point.

[Illustration: MAP: Arras in the Southwest corner, Douai in the
Northeast.]
THE FAMOUS HINDENBURG LINE THAT CRUMBLED IN 1918.

The Germans retreated hastily to the Canal du Nord, and on September 3d Queant was captured by an advance on a twenty mile front, along with ten thousand prisoners. The Allied forces were moving steadily forward. On September 18th the British reached the defenses of Cambrai and were encircling the city of St. Quentin. On October 3d the advance upon Cambrai forced the Germans to evacuate the Lens coal fields, and on October 9th another advance over a thirty-mile front enabled the Allies to occupy Cambrai and St. Quentin. On the 11th they had reached the suburbs of Douai. By this time the whole of the Picardy salient had been wiped out.

The preceding summary of this great movement gives little idea of the tremendous struggle which had gone on during these two critical months, and hardly does more than suggest the tremendous importance of the British operations. The Hindenburg line was like a great fortification, and for more than a year had been regarded as impregnable. At Bullecourt there were two main lines. One hundred and twenty-five yards in front of the first line was a belt of wire twenty-five feet broad, so thick that it could not be seen through. The line itself contained double machine-gun emplacements of ferro-concrete, one hundred and twenty-five yards apart, with lesser emplacements between them. More belts of wire protected the support line. Here a continuous tunnel had been constructed at a depth of over forty feet. Every thirty-five yards there were exits with flights of forty-five steps. The tunnels were roofed and lined and bottomed with heavy timber, and numerous rooms branched off. They were lighted by electricity. Large nine-inch trench mortars stood at the traverses and strong machine-gun positions covered the line from behind.

The Hindenburg line was really only one of a series of twenty lines, each connected with the others by communicating trenches. The main lines were solid concrete, separated by an unending vista of wire entanglements. At points this barrier barbed wire extended in solid formation for ten miles. This tremendous system of defenses was originally called by the Germans the Siegfried line, and in the spring of 1917 they found it wise, at points where a strong offensive was expected, to fall back to it for protection. It had been their hope that it would prove an impassable barrier to the Allied troops, but now it had been broken, and the moral effect of the British success was even greater than the material.

One of the most noticeable results of the British advance had been the capture of Lens. It had been captured without a fight, because of the British threat upon its rear, but its capture was of tremendous importance. Lens had been the scene of bitter fighting in the latter part of August, 1917, when the Canadians had specially distinguished themselves. This city had been heavily fortified by the Germans who had recognized its importance as being the center of the great Lens coal fields, and they had never given it up. It had sometimes been described as the strongest single position that had ever confronted the Allies on the western front. It had been made a sort of citadel of reinforced concrete. Even the courage and power of the Canadians had only given them possession of some of its suburbs. Between these suburbs and the concrete citadel were the coal pits, with their fathomless depths of ages and the mysteries of kultural strategy. The struggle became a succession of avalanches of gas, burning oil, rifle and machine-gun fire. Both sides lost terrifically, but the Germans had held the town. Now it was given up without a blow and its great coal fields were once more in possession of the French. Before retreating the Germans showed their usual destructive energy and the mines were found flooded as a result of consistent and scientific use of dynamite.

The recapture of Lens was cheering news in Paris. Not the least of the many sufferings of the French during the last two years of the war was that which came from the scarcity of coal. Indeed, more than once during those two winters coal could not be obtained at any price. These periods unfortunately came in the latter part of the winter, and it happened they were unusual periods of intense cold. Thousands of people stayed in bed all day in order to keep warm. The capture of Lens, therefore, had been anxiously desired. Nearly the whole of the French coal supply had come from Lens and the adjacent Bethune coal fields. The Bethune field, although steadily working, had never produced enough coal for even the pressing necessities of the French munition works.

The news that Bapaume had fallen on August 29th brought back, especially to the British, memories not only of the previous year and of the great forward movement which, on March 17th, had swept them over Bapaume and Peronne, but also bitter memories of the retreat in the previous March, which had carried them back under the overwhelming German pressure. The capture therefore was balm to their spirits, and an English correspondent, Mr. Philip Gibbs, who had accompanied the British on their previous advance, found officers and men full of laughter and full of memories.

On all sides were the battle-fields of 1916 and 1917; Mametz Wood, Belleville Wood, Usna Hill, Ginchy, Morval, Guillemont. The fields were covered with battle debris, and yet to the English it was sacred ground from the graves of the men who fell there. Those graves still remained. The British shell fire had not touched them, but as the English advanced there were many bodies of gray-clad men on the roads and fields, and dead horses, and a litter of barbed wire, and deep shelters dug under banks, and shell craters, and helmets, gas masks, and rifles thrown here and there by the enemy as they fled. Now it was the Germans that were fleeing, and fleeing hopelessly, sullen, bitter at their officers, impatient of discipline.

One of the great differences between the attacks of the Allies in their last year of the war and those of preceding years, was the increased use and the improved character of the tanks. The tanks were a development of the war. Before the war, however, the development of the caterpillar tractor had suggested to a few farsighted people the possibility of evolving from this invention a machine capable of offensive use over rough country in close warfare. Experiments were made in behalf of the English War Office for some time without practical results.

At last, after these experiments had resulted in various failures, a type of tractor was finally designed which produced satisfactory results. It was a caterpillar tractor, with an endless self-laid track, over which internal driving wheels could be propelled by the engines. It was not until July, 1916, that the first consignment of these new engines of warfare arrived at the secret maneuver ground.

There were two kinds. One called the male was armed with two Hotchkiss quick-fire guns, as well as with an armament of machine guns. The other type, called the female, was armed only with machine guns. The male tank was designed for dealing with the concrete emplacements for the German machine guns. The other was more suitable for dealing with machine-gun personnel and riflemen. Some time was taken in training men to use these tanks, for the crew of a tank must suffer a great deal of hardship on account of the noise of the engine every command had to be made by signs, and the motion of the tank being like that of a ship on a heavy sea, was likely to produce seasickness.

The tanks were painted with weird colors for the purpose of concealment, and when they first appeared caused a great deal of wonder and amusement. They were first used in battle on September 15, 1916, in a continuation of the battle of the Somme, and proved a great surprise to the Germans. The Germans directed all available rifle and machine-gun fire upon them without success. A correspondent narrates that: "As the 'Creme de Menthe' moved on its way, the bullets fell from its sides harmlessly. It advanced upon a broken wall, leaned up against it heavily, until it fell with a crash of bricks, and then rose on to the bricks and passed over them and walked straight into the midst of factory ruins." They were an immense success and had come to stay.