The British Campaign in France and Flanders—July to November, 1918

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Events were now following each other in very rapid succession as the pressure upon the flanks increased. On the one side it was Ostend; on the other, as already recorded, it was Douai, which the Eighth Division had entered on October 17. Finally, on the morning of October 18, Haking's Eleventh Corps from Birdwood's Army held Lille in their grasp. The Fifty-seventh and Fifty-ninth Divisions were north and south of the town, which was occupied before evening, to the immense joy of the liberated inhabitants. Meanwhile De Lisle's Fifteenth Corps pushed on in the north and occupied both Roubaix and Tourcoing. There was little resistance to these operations, for the Flemish advance on one side and that to Le Cateau on the other had made the position of the German garrisons impossible. By October 22 the troops were on the line of the Escaut from Valenciennes to Avelghem.

Oct. 25.

Though the advance of Birdwood's Army was comparatively bloodless there was still some obstinate fighting in the north, and the divisions which forced the Lys had by no means a holiday task. This operation was carried out on October 20 and 21, and owing to some delay on the part of the French Seventh Corps in getting into position the flank of the Thirty-sixth Ulster Division was exposed to enfilade fire which caused great loss. As the Ulsters advanced across the river they had to throw back a defensive flank 6000 yards deep before evening of the 21st. On the 22nd the Germans were still fighting stoutly, and delivered at least one dangerous counter-attack by storm-troops, while on the 25th they brought a new division, the Twenty-third Reserve, an old opponent of early Ypres days, into the line, and held their ground well. There were changes in the British fighting line also, as the Thirty-first relieved the Twenty-ninth, while the Thirty-fourth, coming from the south, took the place of the Ulsters.

These two divisions attacked once more on October 31, the Thirty-first surrounding Caster while the Thirty-fourth captured Anseghem, the 8th Scottish Rifles forcing their way into the town, and joining up with the French at Winterkan. That evening the enemy retired across the Escaut, and the line was definitely made good. The bridges over the river had been destroyed, but the French were advancing rapidly from the north, and on November 2 had reached Driesen and Peterghem. They then extended south and took over the whole front of the Second Corps, joining up with the left of the Nineteenth Corps. The Second Corps drew out from its last battle, having since the advance began captured 7500 prisoners and 150 guns, at a loss to itself of 11,000 casualties. At this period the operations of the north may be said to have reached their term.

The weight of the campaign never fell fully upon Birdwood's Fifth Army, but it was comprised of divisions which had been knocked to pieces elsewhere and which would not have been battle-worthy at all had they not been of splendid individual material. Some of them were actually called B divisions, but upon one of them doing thirty-three miles in thirty hours it was decreed by their General that such an invidious title must cease. The Portuguese troops accompanied the British in the Fifth Army. There was a good deal of discontent in the ranks of this contingent, largely due to the fact that it was impossible to grant the men the same privileges in the way of leave as were given to the officers. By a great concession they were broken up, however, among the British brigades, with the result that they did very well during the last phases of the fighting. The fact that General Birdwood with his depleted and inexperienced divisions was able to drive the Germans through Merville, Estaires, La Bassée, and on over the Aubers Ridge and out of Lille, forcing the Scheldt and reaching as far as Ath, will always be a memorable military exploit. It is on record that the last bag of prisoners by this Army was at 10.57 on the 11th November, three minutes before time.

On November 15 Marshal Foch visited the Headquarters of the Fifth Army, and his remarks on that occasion were meant, no doubt, to apply to the whole British line. "Your soldiers," he said, "continued to march when they were exhausted, and they fought, and fought well, when they were worn out. It is with such indomitable will that the war has been won. At the moment of ceasing hostilities the enemy troops were demoralised and disorganised and their lines of communication were in a state of chaos. Had we continued the war for another fortnight we might have won a most wonderful and complete military victory. But it would have been inhuman to risk the lives of one of our soldiers unnecessarily. The Germans asked for an armistice. We renounced the certainty of further military glory and gave it to them. I am deeply sensible of the fact that Lille was delivered without damage to the town, and I am grateful for the help given so generously to the inhabitants."

So ended the Great War in the northern sector. It need not be said that while the British had been attacking again and again in the manner described, taking no heed of their own losses and exhaustion so long as they could bring the tottering giant to his knees, the French and the Americans were advancing in unison. The work of the latter in the wooded region of the Argonne was especially difficult and also especially vital, as its effect was to cut in upon the German rear and to narrow the pass through which the great multitude must make their escape from the lands which they had so wantonly invaded. On September 12 the Americans had shown their quality by their successful attack upon the St. Mihiel salient. In the advance of the Argonne the American attack extended over several weeks, was often held up, and furnished more than a hundred thousand casualties, but General Pershing and his men showed a splendid tenacity which carried them at last through all their difficulties, so that the end of the war, which their exertions had undoubtedly helped to hasten, found them with their line in Sedan and biting deeply into the German flank.

Before entering upon the terms of the Armistice and describing the subsequent conditions of peace, representing the final fruits of all the terrible sacrifices of these years of alternate hope and fear, one last glance must be cast round at the other fields of the great struggle—Italian, Salonican, Syrian, and Mesopotamian—all of which were decided at the same moment. It could almost be believed that some final spiritual fiat had gone forth placing an allotted term upon the slaughter, so simultaneous was the hostile collapse on every front. In Italy General Diaz, who had succeeded General Cadorna after the disaster of Caporetto, made a grand and victorious attack on October 25. It was a great military achievement, and justified those who had always upheld the fine quality of the Italian Army. The Austrian forces were superior in number, being roughly a million against nine hundred thousand, but they were inferior in gun power. Diaz cleverly concentrated his forces so as to have a local superiority in the central sector, but his difficulties were still very great, since a stream a mile broad lay before him, shallow in parts but deepening to five feet even at the best fords. A long island, the Grave di Papadopoli, lay near the hostile shore, and this was seized on the night of the 24th October by the 1st Welsh Fusiliers and the 2/lst Honourable Artillery Company, who held on in spite of a severe shelling and so established an advanced base for the Army. Early on October 25 crossings were made at all points, and though the bridges were frequently shot away by the Austrian guns, and one corps was unable to get a single man across, none the less those who had reached the other side, including Babington's Fourteenth Corps, which had the Seventh and Twenty-third British Divisions in the line, with the Thirty-seventh Italian Division, made excellent headway. By the evening of October 29 this Fourteenth Corps, which had been held up by having its left flank exposed through the failure of the Eighth Corps to cross the river, found a brave comrade in the Italian Eighteenth Corps which lined up with it and crashed its way right through the Kaiserstellung position forming the battle zone of the Austrian line, It was a very complete victory, and broadened to such an extent during the next few days that by November 2 the whole Austrian army had ceased to exist, and 700,000 men with 7000 guns were in the hands of the victors. Not only had they regained by arms all the ground they had lost a year before, but Trieste surrendered on November 3 and was occupied from the sea. Trento had also been taken in the north, so that the two goals of Italian ambition had both been reached. Every part of the Italian line had been equally victorious from the Alps to the sea, and great valour was shown by every formation, as well as by the French and British contingents. The British Forty-eighth Division was engaged in the northern sector, far from its comrades, and carried through its complete objective in a manner worthy of so veteran a unit, which had learned its soldiering in the hard school of the Somme and of Flanders. On November 3 the final Armistice was signed by the Austrians, by which they withdrew into their own country and waited there for the final terms of the victors.

On September 12 began the great Franco-Serbian advance on the Salonican front—a front which had been greatly strengthened by the accession of the Greek forces. Under General Franchet d'Esperey and Marshal Misitch there was an advance on a front of sixteen miles, penetrating occasionally to a depth of four miles. By September 17 this had extended to a depth of twelve miles, and it was clear that a decisive movement was on foot. On September 18 the British and Greek troops joined in on the Lake Doiran sector, and the Bulgarians were retreating along their whole front of a hundred miles. General Milne's troops were the first to cross the Bulgarian border, after a very severe action in which some units sustained heavy losses. All the Allied nations were advancing swiftly, and it was clear that the end was near. On September 30 the Bulgarian nation, misled by its own unscrupulous ambitions and by its unsavoury king, sent in its surrender, retired from the conflict, and waited to hear what the final punishment of its misdeeds might be. Thus fell the first of the four pillars of the Central Alliance.

The fate of Turkey was not long delayed. On September 19 General Allenby, who had halted long upon the line of Jerusalem while he gathered his forces for a supreme and final effort, gave the word for a fresh advance. The victory which followed will perhaps be accounted the most completely scientific and sweeping of the whole war. With his mixed force of British, Indians, Australians and smaller Allied contingents, Allenby broke through the enemy's lines near the coast, and then despatched his splendid cavalry towards Damascus in a wild pursuit which can hardly be matched for calculated temerity. Some of the troopers in that wonderful ride are said to have accomplished seventy to eighty miles in the twenty-four hours. The result was that a strong force was thrown across the Turkish rear and that their Seventh and Eighth Armies were practically annihilated. In the final tally no less than 80,000 men and 250 guns were in the hands of the victors. It was a shattering blow. Damascus was occupied, the Turks were driven pell-mell out of Syria, General Marshall advanced in Mesopotamia, and Turkey was finally brought to her knees after a battle on the Tigris in which her last army was destroyed. On October 30 she signed an armistice by which the Allied fleets might enter the Dardanelles and occupy Constantinople, while all Allied prisoners should at once be returned. As in the case of the Germans the feelings with which the Allies, and especially the British, regarded the Turks were greatly embittered by their consistent brutality to the unfortunate captives whom the fortune of war had placed in their hands. There can be no peace and no sense of justice in the world until these crimes have been absolutely expiated. The last spark of sympathy which Britain retained for her old Oriental ally was extinguished for ever by the long-drawn murder of the prisoners of Kut. It should be added that the small German force in East Africa still continued to dodge the pursuing columns, and that it was intact in Rhodesia at the time when the general collapse compelled it to lay down its arms. It was a most remarkable achievement, this resistance of four years when cut away from a base, and reflects great credit upon General von Lettow-Vorbeck, whose name should certainly shine among the future reconstructors of Germany.