The Australian Victories in France in 1918

by Sir John Monash

The opening phase involved no novel or unusual features so far as the infantry were concerned, and was conceived on lines with which the fighting of 1917 had familiarized me, modified further by the accumulated experience gained from earlier mistakes in the technical details of such an enterprise. The recent battle of Hamel became the model for this phase, the conditions of that battle being now reproduced on a much enlarged scale.

But there was one very important feature which distinguished the present undertaking from the battles of Messines and Broodseinde, and that was in regard to the frontage allotted for attack to a single Division. At Messines, the Divisional battle front was 2,000 yards; in the third battle of Ypres it differed but little from the same standard. For the present battle, I adopted a battle front of two miles for each assaulting Division, or a mile for each of the four assaulting Brigades.

This innovation seemed to me to be justified by four principal factors. The first of these was that the weather, which was dry, and the state of the ground, which was hard, made the "going" easy and the stress upon the infantry comparatively light. Next, the condition of the enemy's defensive works was undeveloped and stagnant, as clearly disclosed by the air photographs which the Corps Air Squadron produced in great numbers on every fine day. No doubt this was due to the encroachments we had made on his forward works during the fighting at Hamel and in the remaining weeks of July. Thirdly, the powerful assistance anticipated from a contingent of four Battalions of Tanks which General Rawlinson had arranged to place under my orders led me to estimate that I might greatly reduce the number of men per yard of front. Lastly, the plan was justified by the known distribution of the enemy's infantry and guns along the frontage under attack. For all these reasons, I felt prepared to impose on the infantry a task which, computed solely upon the factor of frontage, was more than twice that demanded by me on any previous occasion.

At the same time, so extended a frontage involved the employment of a much higher ratio of barrage artillery to the number of battalions of Infantry actually engaged. Success depended more upon the efficiency of the fire power of the barrage than upon any other factor, and I could not afford to incur any risk by weakening the density of the barrage. For this reason, I adhered to the standard which previous experience of several major battles and many minor raids had shown to be adequate for covering the assaulting infantry, and for keeping down the enemy's fire. This standard never fluctuated widely from one field-gun per twenty yards of front, and involved the employment, on this occasion, of some 432 field-guns in the barrage alone. This result could not have been achieved if the Fourth Army authorities had not seen their way to place at my disposal five additional Brigades of Field Artillery over and above the thirteen Australian Brigades which formed a permanent part of the whole Artillery of the Corps.

Phase A, as already stated, involved a penetration of 3,000 yards, and the objective line for this phase, which came to be known as the "green" line (from the colour employed to delineate it upon all the fighting maps propounded by the Corps), was chosen, after an exhaustive study of all aeroplane photographs, and of the results of numerous observations, by many diverse means, of the locations of the enemy's Artillery, so as to make certain that during this phase the whole mass of the enemy's forward Artillery would be overrun, and captured or put out of action.

The green line was, in fact, located along the crest of the spur running north-easterly from Lamotte-en-Santerre in the direction of Cerisy-Gailly, with the object of carrying the battle well to the east of the Cerisy valley, in which large numbers of the enemy's guns had been definitely located. This would give us, by the capture of this valley, suitable concealed positions in which the Infantry destined for Phase B could rest for a short "breather;" and would land the Infantry of the original assault in a position from which they could detect and forestall any attempt on the part of the enemy to launch a counter-attack before the time for the opening of Phase B had arrived.

The task of executing Phase A of the battle fell to the Second and Third Australian Divisions, in that order from south to north, the southern flank of the Second Division resting upon the main railway line from Amiens to Péronne, and being there in contact with the Canadian Corps, under General Currie. The northern flank of the Third Division rested on the River Somme, and was there in contact with the Third British Corps under General Butler, while the inter-divisional boundary was at the southern edge of the Bois-d'Accroche.

These two Divisions were the line Divisions during the period immediately preceding the battle, and had been holding the line each with two Brigades in line and one Brigade in support. Three days prior to the battle, however, it was arranged that each Division should hold its front with only one Brigade, thereby making available two Brigades each for the actual carrying out of Phase A of the attack. These assaulting Brigades were the 7th, 5th, 9th and 11th, in that order from south to north, each Brigade having its due allotment of Tanks and machine guns, etc.

The total estimated time for the completion of Phase A was to be 143 minutes after the opening of the barrage at "zero" hour; and there was then to be a pause of 100 minutes to allow time for the advance and deployment into battle order of the succeeding two Divisions, who were to carry out the process of "leapfrogging" and to execute Phases B and C of the battle.

The planning of Phase B, or the advance from the "green" to the "red" line, involved a totally different tactical conception and the adoption of a type of warfare which had almost entirely disappeared from the Western theatre of war since those far-off days in the late autumn of 1914, when the German Army first dug itself in, in France and Belgium, and committed both combatants to the prolonged agony of over three years of stationary warfare. I allude to the moving battle, or as it is called in text-book language, "open warfare;" a type of fighting in which few of the British Forces formed since the original Expeditionary Force had any experience except on the manœuvre ground under peace conditions—a disability which applied equally to the Australian troops. Confident, however, in their adaptability and in their power of initiative under novel conditions, I did not hesitate to prescribe, for this second phase of the battle, the adoption of the principles and methods of open warfare.