Military Review of the Greatest Battle in History From March 21 to April 17, 1918
On March 21 the Germans began the great battle which military experts of both sides believe may decide the war. What was indicated in broad lines was that they wished to reach the Channel by way of the Somme and thereby isolate most of the British Army and the entire Belgian and Portuguese Armies in the north. A corollary to such an isolation would have been a movement south on Paris.
As to the narrower lines of the German military plan, however, they became clear. The Germans struck from points where their railways allowed them the greatest possible concentration of troops and at points where the lines of the Allies, owing to the uncompleted battles of Flanders and Cambrai and the failures at Lens, St. Quentin, and La Fère last year, were relatively weak or could be out-manoeuvred with superior force of men and material.
In the first phase of the battle, which carried the enemy down the Somme and its southern tributary, the Avre, to within six miles of Amiens, and to within forty-six miles of the Channel, they first eliminated the Cambrai salient so as to protect their northern flank and then concentrated their attack between St. Quentin and La Fère, near the point where the French and the British Armies joined. The flanks of the great salient thereby developed, however, made dangerous further progress down the Somme. On the north it was threatened by the Arras salient with its protecting ridge of Vimy; on the south by the watershed of the Oise and Aisne.
Frontal attacks to eliminate the Arras salient and the, Oise-Aisne watershed having failed, a flanking movement against the former, which should also have strategic ramifications further north, followed as a matter of military expediency. Thus on April 9 the second phase began. Again they sought the line of cleavage between two armies, where differences of language and tactics made military cohesion difficult—between the British and the Portuguese on the Lille front. A successful penetration of this front for a distance of ten miles would have placed the enemy on the left-rear of Vimy Ridge in the south, and in the north on the right-rear of Messines Ridge, which protects Ypres, the capture of which by the British a year ago had made the subsequent battle of Flanders and their occupation of Passchendaele in the direction of Roulers possible.
In other words, Vimy Ridge bears the same relation to Arras that Messines and its contiguous hills do to Ypres, but while the former ridge also flanks the great German salient stretching down to the Oise, the latter ridge flanks from the southeast the British salient at Ypres developed by the battle of Flanders.
In this second phase of the great battle the German penetration, through military design or expediency, has so far been developed in the direction of Ypres; not in the direction of Arras.
NUMBER OF MEN ENGAGED
As to the number of men engaged on each side, experts at the front have been wide apart. It has been understood that Great Britain has in France 3,500,000 rifles, and that of these 675,000 were on the front when the attack began, thus (if these figures are correct) leaving an army of reserve and manoeuvre of 2,850,000, minus 150,000 men on leave in England. It was understood that the number of French rifles available on the Continent is between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000, of which 1,575,000 were at the front on March 21, leaving 2,425,000 for reserve and manoeuvre, which to the extent of 500,000 may have been available in the present battle, with the constant deploying of the French line in the south and the taking over of ten miles of the British line.
The potential strength of the Germans in the western theatre before the Russian revolution was estimated at 4,500,000 rifles, more than half of which were on the front. According to Sir Aukland Geddes, the British Minister of National Service, the secession of Russia added to the enemy's potential strength on the western front possibly as many as 1,600,000 men, of whom 950,000 were Germans. If we add 1,000,000 to the 4,500,000 German rifles in the west we have the 5,500,000 thus produced opposing, at least, 8,500,000 Allies, consisting of French, British, American, Belgian, Portuguese, Russian, and Polish troops. [The British official estimates on April 17 appear on Page [207].]
Nevertheless, in nearly all the engagements of the battle thus far, the Allies appear to have been measurably outnumbered in a ratio varying from three to one to five to three. Up to March 26, aside from the French being constantly forced to augment their forces in the south, only the British 3d, 4th, and 5th Armies had been engaged, approximately numbering 600,000 rifles. Against these, up to the same date, the Germans had been able to concentrate ninety-seven divisions, or 1,164,000 rifles, with special concentrations of 120,000 rifles against Bucquoy, on April 6, and 180,000 against the French between Lassigny and Noyon, on March 27 and April 3. On the subsequent development of the Lille front the Germans seemed to have been able to concentrate their forces, where they outnumber the British and Portuguese three to two.
ENORMOUS GERMAN LOSSES
It was inevitable, in the retreat forced on the British from their static positions, that a large number of men and guns should have been captured by the enemy—during the first rush the Germans claimed 75,000 and 600 respectively. But the German casualties, owing to their massed formation, must, according to all accounts, be staggering, having probably already reached the Verdun maximum of 600,000. The attrition of their war material must also be enormous. And just as the entire armies of the Allies outnumber the enemy eight to five, it may be estimated that their material, actual and immediately available, is 30 per cent. greater.
The most useful guide to the development of the plans of the enemy, their modification, transformation, and failure, either transitory or permanent, is physical geography. The initial impetus of the assault carried the Germans with "shock" and alternating forces beyond a hypothetical straight line of fifty miles extending from the Scarpe on the north to the junction of the Ailette and the Oise on the south. This was done without their moving their heavy guns, probably not even their mid-calibre guns, from their emplacements.
FIRST DAYS' RESULTS
By March 25 they had covered an area of about 500 square miles and had penetrated beyond Croisilles, Bapaume, Péronne, Brie, Nesle, and the forest northeast of Noyon. In the two following days they recovered the entire battlefield of the Somme, occupied the British railway junction and supply depot at Albert, drove the British four miles down the Somme, and took Roye and Noyon from the French, driving the latter across the Oise. On the 29th the French counterattacked and recovered eight square miles between Lassigny and Noyon, but west of this position the enemy, on a twelve-mile front with a penetration of seven miles, enveloped Montdidier. The next day the Germans gained some ground north of the Scarpe before Vimy Ridge and obliterated an ally salient with its vertex at Vrely by straightening their line between the Somme and Montdidier.
From March 29 until April 8 the enemy consolidated his positions on a front which had been expanded from seventy-five miles, including two large salients, to 125 miles, including innumerable small ones, embracing a terrain of about 800 square miles west of the front as it was on March 20.
On April 3 the enemy was strongly counterattacked by the British at Ayette and by the French at Plémont, near Lassigny. Similar counterattacks recovered Hébuterne for the British and Cantigny for the French on April 5; Beaumont Hamel and a strong position west of Albert for the British and a flanking position north of Aubvillers for the French on April 7.
Meanwhile, April 4, the Germans had occupied Hamel and two villages near Grivesnes, driving out the French, and had made a furious assault upon the positions of the latter between the Luce rivulet and the Avre River, but without success. On the 5th they had made similar attacks at five points: they were successful against the British at Dernancourt, against the French at Casel; they were driven back with heavy losses by the British at Moyenneville and Villers-Bertonneux and by the French at Cantigny. On the 6th the enemy had made concentrated attacks at six points: south of Albert, beyond the Vaire Wood, between Hailles and Rouvrel, and on the Oise east of Chauny he gained ground, but his attempt to take Mesnil beyond Montdidier and Mount Rénaud beyond Noyon were costly failures. On the 7th he attacked the British strategic position at Eucquoy and the French position east of Chauny. At the former place he was repulsed with heavy loss; at the latter his official chronicler asserted that he gained ground.
ON THE LILLE FRONT
Then north of the great salient just occupied, the Germans struck, on April 9, between the important British depots of Arras and Ypres, forty miles apart, concentrating on a twelve-mile front between Givenchy and Fleurbaix. During the two following days the concentration moved north five miles, penetrating between Armentières and Messines. On the 11th it had developed as far north as Hollebeke, four miles southeast of Ypres, had partly enveloped Messines Ridge and entirely Armentières and the town of Estaires on the Lys River. By the 12th it had swelled beyond Merville and Lestrem in the south, was threatening the railway junction of Bailleul in the middle ground, had gained a footing on Messines Ridge, and was investing the neighboring heights of Neuve Eglise and Kemmel in the north. By the morning of the 17th the German penetration had reached Locon in the south, the Nieppe Forest in the middle ground, and had occupied Bailleul and the eastern heights of the ridge in the north and threatened the western and more elevated heights of Mont Rouge and Mont Kemmel. Thus in eight days the Germans had developed a sector on the Lille front of originally twenty-two miles, a salient embracing an area of about 825 square miles with a new front of about thirty-five miles.
SUMMARY OF THE FIGHTING
The initial bombardment which preceded the first infantry advance against the Cambrai salient, at 8 o'clock on the morning of March 21, was widely distributed—as far north as Ypres and as far south as the Oise. It consisted mainly of gas and high explosive shells. The first infantry attack, which penetrated the first and second lines on a sixteen-mile front extending from Lagnicourt to Gauche Wood just south of Gouseaucourt, caused a retreat from the salient which had been left exposed to any superior attack since last December. In rapid succession the British positions, now indefinitely exposed on the north, were then attacked between Arras and La Fère, with tremendous concentration between the latter and St. Quentin. According to the German report of the 22d: "After powerful fire by our artillery and mine throwers our infantry stormed in broad sectors and everywhere captured the first enemy line."
From the 22d until the 25th the Germans kept up a heavy fire upon the French front, mingled with raids, both land and air, evidently with the intention of preventing a movement of the French behind the lines as long as the German intentions remained uncertain.
By the 24th, however, these intentions had been measurably revealed, both by documents found on prisoners and by the general tendency of the battle. On that day the enemy succeeded in crossing the Somme south of Péronne, while north of it he forced the British to retire from the line of the River Torille. On the same day Chauny and Ham were captured, the British 3d and 4th Armies were pressed behind Péronne and Ham, and the 5th Army almost lost contact with the French. Here began that wonderful feat which has made the name of General Carey famous. On the 25th the enemy, by a series of drives en masse, managed to envelop Bapaume, while south of Péronne he made still further progress, "west of the Somme."
Nesle was lost and recovered several times by the French troops, who had already begun to relieve certain portions of the British right, with its unlucky 5th Army, as early as the 23d. In the engagements between Bapaume and Péronne the German armies of von Below, who had just returned from Italy, and von der Marwitz were personally directed by Crown Prince Rupprecht, and outnumbered the British three to two.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ALBERT
From the 25th to the 27th there was a lull in the north, evidently conceived by the Germans for bringing their heavier guns up to new emplacements, but in the south during this time the enemy heavily concentrated against the new French troops that were appearing upon the lengthening line and forced them to give up Lihons and Noyon. When the German pressure was renewed in the north Albert became the obvious objective, on account of the massed attacks made upon Ablainville near by. In the battle of the Somme, Albert, as a junction and depot, performed for the British in a minor degree what Cambrai later performed for the Germans in the present battle. On March 27 the British began a retreat on a wide front on both sides of the Somme, and in the evening Albert was evacuated. The next day came the great French counterattack between Lassigny and Noyon, already mentioned in connection with the geographical development of the battle.
On the 28th the German attack was renewed on the Somme, where it pressed back the British near the Chippily crossing, and before Arras, where a frontal attack was repulsed with great enemy loss. This attack was renewed for three successive days. Then on April 3 the French again won near Lassigny and repulsed heavy German attacks around Moreuil.
On April 4 a frightful battle developed, where on a narrow ten-mile front, between Grivesnes, near the vertex of the Montdidier salient, and the Roye-Amiens road, the Germans sacrificed thousands of men in a vain attempt to drive a wedge between the newly discovered junction of the French and British Armies.
From the 4th until the 7th, with the exception of the check the enemy met with at Bucquoy on the latter date, he made a reconsolidation of his lines, partially digging in on the sector before Amiens. The British positions around Arras, to the north of the great salient, which had again and again repelled frontal attacks, and the French positions on the Montdidier salient and the Oise-Aisne watershed on the south, now warned him of the danger of further progress west without augmented protection of his flanks.
Hence, on April 9, the reason for his sudden concentration and attack on the Lille front, and particularly upon the junction of the British and Portuguese lines near La Bassée Canal to a point east of Armentières, which is still in progress. The geographical as well as the strategic features of this phase of the battle have already been described. Complete success had marked the German efforts on this sector up to April 17.
During the entire period covered the airplanes employed on the battlefront were in the ratio of seven to five in favor of the Allies, whose killings have been in the ratio of five to two. This, taken in connection with the destruction of a great German plant and airdrome at Friedrichshafen on April 15, is believed to place the dominance of the air with all it includes as to observation and the bombing of transport and arsenal in the hands of the Allies.
