The Australian Victories in France in 1918

by Sir John Monash

An Ammunition Dump—established in Warfusee village on August 8th, 1918, after its capture the same morning.

Moreover, I put forward no suggestion that the Canal sector, then in front of me, should be the subject of a frontal attack at all. My proposal was that it should be taken by envelopment, through the breach to be made over the tunnel. At the time I regarded it as unlikely that the deep canal itself could be stormed except at great cost. I was not prepared to commit any Australian troops under my command to such an enterprise, and therefore naturally hesitated to propose that any other Corps should attempt it. For this reason I submitted an alternative plan of envelopment.

This was, however, a matter for the Army Commander to decide. My business was merely to show that the proposed action of my own Corps permitted of the co-operation of the other Corps of the Army in a specified way.

General Rawlinson's decisions were given on September 19th, at a conference which he assembled at my Headquarters. My plan for the action of the Australian and American Corps was to be adopted in its entirety, with the sole exception that the capture of the Beaurevoir line, on the first day of battle, was not to be included in the plan. It was to be left to await the results of the prior stages. In this modification I could readily concur.

As regards the action of the flank Corps, General Rawlinson held the view that a direct assault on the canal itself ought to be attempted, and that this should be entrusted to the Ninth Corps. He was doubtless influenced, in this view, by the knowledge, disclosed to us for the first time on that day, that he intended to propose that the attack on the Hindenburg Line would, if undertaken, extend over the front of at least three Armies, the French on the south, and the Fourth and Third British Armies. Such a simultaneous attack, over a very wide front, would naturally increase the prospects of success for every Corps participating.

As to the Third Corps, it was to take part only in the preliminaries of the battle, and not in the battle itself. Another Corps, the Thirteenth (Lieut.-General Sir T. L. N. Morland) was to join the Fourth Army. If the Australian Corps succeeded in effecting the breach of the Hindenburg Line as I had proposed to do, it was to be the Thirteenth Corps, and not the Third Corps, which, pouring through the breach, was to envelop the flank of the Hindenburg Line towards the north.

The main consideration that affected me was the approval of my plan for the action of the two American and three Australian Divisions. I was able to begin immediately the development in detail of that plan, a task which proved at once the most arduous, the most responsible, and the most difficult of any that I have had to undertake throughout the whole of the war.

The first step was to get the American Divisions into the line opposite their prospective battle fronts, and the next was to hand over what had hitherto been the Australian Corps front to the Ninth Corps.