The Australian Victories in France in 1918

by Sir John Monash

This consideration made the contemplated reliefs and interchanges of Corps and Divisions, and their transference from one part of our front to another a matter of great complexity, and one which required time to execute. Each stage of the process was contingent upon the due completion of a previous stage. It is, moreover, a process which cannot be unduly hastened, without serious discomfort and fatigue to the troops and animals concerned.

Troops destined for battle must be kept in the highest physical condition. This means good feeding, comfortable housing, and adequate rest. A couple of weary days and sleepless nights spent in crowded railway trains, with cold food and little exercise, are sufficient to play havoc with the fighting trim of even a crack battalion. So, the daily stages of the journey must be short, and comfortable billets must be in readiness for each night's halt. The day's supplies must arrive punctually and at the right railhead, to ensure hot, well-cooked meals.

With the very limited number of serviceable railway lines which remained available behind the British front—and with the congestion of traffic resulting from the daily transportation of many thousands of tons of artillery ammunition and other war stores—it was not surprising that as the result of the deliberations of the conference it was resolved to advise the Commander-in-Chief that it would take not less than five days to rearrange our order of battle on the lines decided upon, and another five days, after Corps and Divisions had taken over their battle fronts, to enable them to complete their preparations.

Thus, the Fourth Army could be ready at ten days' notice, and the conference broke up, pledged to secrecy and complete inaction, until formal approval had been given to the proposals and a date fixed for their realization.

The remainder of July passed with no very startling occurrences. In the south the German withdrawal from the Soissons salient and the Marne continued steadily, with the French and Americans on their heels; but it was a methodical retreat, which would bring about a substantial shortening of the German line, and so release Divisions to rest and refit, which might conceivably become available for a fresh assault elsewhere.

But there was still no sign of any such design upon that always tender spot, the Allied junction at Villers-Bretonneux. On the contrary, my second Division still continued to make free with the enemy's advanced patrols, and in a very brilliant little infantry operation by the 7th Brigade captured the "Mound," a long spoilbank beside the railway at a point about a mile east of the town, which dominated the landscape in every direction. The ardour of his troops was only enhanced when they heard that General Rosenthal himself, while reconnoitring from the Mound, had been sniped at and had received a nasty wound in the arm.

The enemy attempted nothing in the way of infantry retaliation. But whenever he had been thoroughly angered, he treated my front to a liberal drenching of mustard gas, fired by his artillery. His supplies of mustard gas shell seemed inexhaustible, and he would frequently expend as many as 10,000 of them in a single night upon the half-ruined town of Villers-Bretonneux or on the Bois l'Abbé and other woods which he suspected were sheltering my reserve infantry.

These gas attacks were annoying and troublesome, in the extreme. During the actual bombardments, troops wore their gas masks as a matter of course, but doffed them when the characteristic smell of the gas had disappeared. But it was warm weather, and as the sun rose, the poisonous liquid, which had spattered the ground over immense areas, would volatilize, and rise in sufficient volume still to attack all whose business took them to and fro across this ground. In this way hundreds of our men became incapacitated; although there were a few serious cases, most of the men would be fit to rejoin in two or three weeks. But this form of attack, and the constant dread of it, made life in the forward areas anything but endurable.

I was beset by quite another trepidation also. Prisoners captured during the German withdrawal from the Marne, which was then in progress, told tales of contemplated withdrawals on other fronts, and some even asserted that a withdrawal opposite my own front was being talked of. Judged by subsequent events, it is more than probable that these stories were stimulated by the many articles which were at that time appearing in the German newspapers from the pens of press strategists, who, in order to allay public anxiety, were representing these withdrawals as deliberate, and as a masterpiece of strategy, compelling the Allies to a costly pursuit over difficult and worthless ground.