The Australian Victories in France in 1918

by Sir John Monash

Final Instructions to the Platoon—an incident of the battle of August 8th, 1918. The platoon is waiting to advance to Phase B of the battle.

An Armoured Car—disabled near Bony, during the battle of September 29th, 1918.

The strategic object in view was to make the line of the Somme useless to the enemy as a defensive line, and thereby render probable his immediate further enforced retreat to the Hindenburg line.

The tactical process by which this was to be achieved was to be an attack upon and the seizure of the key position of the whole line, the dominating hill of Mont St. Quentin.

But the paramount consideration was that the attack must be delivered without delay and that the enemy should not be allowed a single hour longer than necessary to establish himself upon that hill.

Often since those days, wondering at the success which came to the Australian Corps at Mont St. Quentin, I have tried justly to estimate the causes which won us that success. And I have always come back to the same conclusion, that it was due firstly and chiefly to the wonderful gallantry of the men who participated, secondly to the rapidity with which our plans were put into action, and thirdly to the sheer daring of the attempt.

Mont St. Quentin lies a mile north of Péronne. It stands as a sentinel guarding the northern and western approaches to the town, a bastion of solid defence against any advance from the west designed to encircle it. The paintings and drawings of many artists who have visited the historic spot will familiarize the world with its gentle contours.

Viewed from the west, from the vantage point of the high ground near Biaches in the very angle of the bend of the river, Mont St. Quentin constitutes no striking feature in the landscape. But standing upon the hill itself one speedily realizes how fully its possession dominates the whole of the approaches to it. So placed that both stretches of the river can from it be commanded by fire, and giving full and uninterrupted observation over all the country to the west and north and south of it, the hill is ringed around with line upon line of wire entanglements, and its forward slopes are glacis-like and bare of almost any cover.