by John Buchan
IV
After Passchendaele and Caporetto some inquisition into military methods was inevitable. The first changes were at British Headquarters. The Prime Minister would fain have seen an alteration in the chief command, but Haig would not be forced from his place, though certain lesser resignations were compelled, much to the advantage of his staff’s efficiency. But he made a bold bid for more unity in command. After Caporetto it was decided that a War Council should sit at Versailles, consisting of the Prime Minister and one other statesman from each of the Allies, with four military delegates to act as advisers. The soldiers objected naturally to being mere advisers without executive power, and in January 1918 a revised machinery was framed — a military Committee with Foch as president, empowered to create a general reserve by contributions from the Allied armies. The device had few merits. The same authority that controls general operations must control reserves, and a committee cannot with success command an army — these are elementary principles in war. But the scheme was never tried, for it shipwrecked upon Haig, who, when asked to allocate divisions to the reserve, refused, since he believed that he had none to give.
The controversy led to the resignation of Sir William Robertson, who was succeeded as Chief of the Imperial General Staff by Sir Henry Wilson. Robertson had done valuable work in creating the new British Army, but it was his misfortune to be the sole conduit between two much abler men, neither of whom he could interpret to the other. He could not expound Haig’s mind to Mr. Lloyd George or the Prime Minister’s mind to Haig. This unfortunate lack of contact was the cause of misunderstandings for which neither party was altogether to blame. The Prime Minister at the time was wrong on many points. His view that the Western Front was “over insured” was wrong: his proposal for a great Palestine offensive was in the circumstances a dangerous folly; he was wrong as to the Versailles machinery, wrong in his anticipation of Germany’s plans, wrong in his starving of Haig and the impossible task which he laid on him. But there is something to be said on his side. He saw the danger of disunion and proposed a remedy; it was a faulty one, but the soldiers contented themselves with criticising. If in the beginning of 1918 Haig and Robertson had demanded a Generalissimo and had proposed Foch, they would certainly have carried their point, in spite of the Prime Minister’s declaration of the previous November. He might fairly have complained that he did not get sufficient help from his official military advisers, and he turned naturally to the fertile, if fantastic, mind of Sir Henry Wilson. In a democracy relations between soldiers and statesmen must always be delicate, but they were notably less strained in Britain than in France or Italy. The War Cabinet never interfered with Haig as Jefferson Davis interfered with Lee before Fredericksburg, and as Lincoln interfered with every Northern general save Grant.
At the close of the third year, for British opinion the outline of the War, which had seemed clear and firm, was now blurred again. Russia had fallen out of line, and new and unknown quantities had entered the problem. It had been a depressing year, which, beginning with the promise of a decision, had closed for the Allies in a deep uncertainty. They had won no indisputable successes except in remote lands; the taking of Bagdad and Jerusalem affected only Turkey, and while it weakened her extremities did not strike at her heart. Discomfort was growing in every British home, since lights were darkened and rations were reduced, and there was the unvarying tale of losses to rend the heart. The Russian revolution, followed by the Stockholm Conference, let loose a flood of theorising; there were incessant disputes with Labour, war-weary, puzzled, suspicious, poisoned to some extent by false propaganda. All zest and daylight had gone out of the struggle. The cause for which we had entered it was now half forgotten, for men’s minds had grown numb. Civilians at home, as well as soldiers in the field, felt themselves in the grip of an inexorable machine.
It was a dangerous mood — dangerous to the enemy, for it meant that grim shutting of the teeth which with Britain is a formidable thing. But it was dangerous also to ourselves, for it might have resulted in a coarsening of fibre and a blindness to the longer view and the greater issues. That this was not its consequence was in large part due to the King, who by his visits to every industrial centre kept before dazed and weary minds the greatness of the national purpose and the unity of the people. Wherever he went he seemed to unseal the founts of human sympathy. He visited the Clyde, the Tyne, and most of the chief munition works; and, to the disquiet of the War Cabinet, he went to Lancashire during a strike and was most royally welcomed. Let me set down his Prime Minister’s tribute: “The loyalty of the people was heartened and encouraged . . . by the presence of their Sovereign in their midst, and by the warm personal interest he showed in their work and their anxieties. In estimating the value of the different factors which conduced to the maintenance of our home front in 1917, a very high place must be given to the affection inspired by the King, and the unremitting diligence with which he set himself in those dark days to discharge the functions of his high office.” To the workers he seemed to come not only as monarch but as comrade, with the words of Richard II on his lips: “I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends.”
V
With the coming of 1918 the initiative passed to the enemy. Russia’s collapse enabled him to put larger forces on the Western Front than the Allies could muster. They had resigned themselves to a defensive campaign till America could send her armies; it was Germany’s purpose before that date to reach a decision in the field. It was her last chance. The submarine campaign had failed, and daily the menace from beyond the Atlantic drew nearer. Her people were weak with privations and sick with hope deferred. A little longer and their wonderful fortitude would break. With all the strength she could muster, with her new tactics to aid her, and with a desperate necessity to goad her, she undertook the last great sally and staked everything on victory.
Ludendorff’s general plan was to isolate the British Army, roll it up from its right, and drive it into the sea, or pin it down to an entrenched camp between the Somme and the Channel — a Torres Vedras from which it would emerge only on the signature of peace. This done, he could hold it with few troops, swing round on the French, and put them out of action. He must strike, therefore, with all his might at the point of junction of Haig and Pétain, on the western face of the great salient, where the Allies were weakest and the ground easiest. His position on interior lines gave him the chance of surprise, for till the actual attack the Allies would not know on which side of the salient the blow was to fall. His admirable communications would enable him to obtain a great local predominance. For the first stage of the great battle he had sixty-three divisions in line or in immediate reserve.
The Versailles Council miscalculated both the place and the date of the attack. Haig’s Intelligence service informed him of the exact hour, but he had neither the time nor the resources to prepare an adequate defence. He held 130 miles of line, and these the most critical in the West, with approximately the same numbers as he had had two years before, when his front was only 80 miles long and Russia was still in the field. An initial German success was almost predestined. Nineteen divisions in line and thirteen in reserve can scarcely stand against a first attacking wave of thirty-seven divisions, which was presently to grow to sixty-three.
This most perilous stage for the British Army — and, except for the First Marne, the most perilous for the Allied cause — opened in the fog of the early morning of March 21st, when at a quarter to five four thousand German guns were released against the British front, while all the back areas were drenched with gas, which hung like a pall in the moist air. The fortnight of the Somme retreat cannot be told in a simple Homeric narrative; it was a medley of confused operations, improvised plans, chances, mischances, and incredible heroisms. On the first day forty miles of the British line were submerged, and, in a week, forty miles off the enemy tide was lapping the walls of Amiens. Ludendorff achieved much, but he did not achieve his main purpose,
for by April 5th the battle had died down, Amiens was not taken, the front had been restored, and the French and British were not separated. This failure was due to many causes; he was false to the spirit of his own tactics, and, instead of exploiting weakness when he had found it, wasted his strength on the steadfast bastion of Arras; half-way through he fumbled, forgot his true aim, and became the hasty improviser. Perhaps he sought to achieve the impossible, for his troops outmarched their supplies and their stamina, and, accustomed to short commons, lost discipline often when they found Allied stores to plunder. Yet he won a notable victory, and, to the ultimate advantage of the Allies, was encouraged to continue, for, had his blow been parried at the start, he might have relapsed on the defensive, and thereby protracted the war.
The British Army had written a shining page in its history, for a retreat may be as glorious as an advance. By the end of March seventy-three German divisions had engaged thirty-seven British. The disparity was in reality far greater than two to one, for, owing to the German power of local concentration, in many parts of the field the odds had been three or four to one. After the second day we had no prepared lines on which to retire, and the rivers parallel to our front were useless from the drought. It was a marvel that our gossamer front wavered and blew in the wind but never wholly disappeared. Again and again complete disaster was miraculously averted. Scratch forces held up storm troops; cavalry did work that no cavalry had ever done before in the history of war; gunners broke every rule of the textbooks. The retreat was in flat defiance of all precedent and law, and it succeeded only because of the stubborn value of the British soldier.
The moment was too solemn for half-measures. A divided command could not defend the long, lean front of the Allies against Germany’s organised might, directed by a single brain towards a single purpose. One strong hand must be on the helm, and one only. On March 23rd Haig, after seeing Pétain, telegraphed to London for the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. At the request of the Prime Minister Lord Milner also crossed the Channel on the 24th, and on the 26th he and Sir Henry Wilson met Clemenceau and Poincaré, Haig, Foch and Pétain at Doullens. This conference, held amid the backwash of the great retreat, was in a sense the turning point of the war. The proposal for a supreme commander-in-chief, urged by Milner and supported by Clemenceau, was accepted by Pétain and welcomed by Haig, and for the post Foch was unanimously chosen. The Allies in their extremity turned with one accord to the slight, grizzled, deep-eyed man of sixty-six, who during a laborious lifetime had made himself a master of war.
The ordeal was the source of other blessings. America increased her recruiting, and strained every nerve to quicken the dispatch of troops, so that she might soon stand in line with her allies. Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau appealed to President Wilson, and no appeal was ever more generously met. General Pershing postponed his plan of a separate American section of operations, and offered to Foch every man, gun and lorry which America had in Europe. France showed that quiet and almost prosaic resolution to win or perish which two years before had inspired her troops at Verdun. In Britain the threat of industrial strikes disappeared, and of their own accord the workers gave up their Easter holiday in order to make up by an increased output for lost guns and stores. On April 10th the House of Commons passed by a large majority a Bill raising the limit of military age to fifty, and giving the Government power to abolish the ordinary exemptions. Divisions were transferred from Palestine and Salonika to France, the old precautions against invasion were dropped, and, within a month from March 21st, 355,000 men were sent across the Channel.
But when the King visited his armies in France in the last days of March the situation was still on a razor’s edge. He had gone to them for a week during the flood-tide of the Somme battles; he had visited them again, accompanied by the Queen, on the eve of Passchendaele. Now he went to them in the throes of their sternest trial. He saw remnants of battalions which had been through the retreat, and he saw units which in a week or two were to be engaged in the not less desperate stand on the Lys. The battle-field was a solemn place, for already we had lost more men than in the whole thirty-four weeks of the Dardanelles campaign. The King’s visit was an appeal to his troops to “take counsel from the valour of their hearts,” an appeal which Haig, the least rhetorical of men, was a fortnight later to put into grave and memorable words:
There is no other course but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.
CHAPTER IV. SURRENDER
I
On April 1st came Ludendorff’s second blow. Originally designed as a mere diversion, it grew by its startling success into a major effort, and thereby further compromised his main strategy. His aim was to push through between La Bassée and Armentières, and then, pressing north-west, to capture Hazebrouck and the hills beyond Bailleul. This would mean a general British retirement and a direct threat to Calais and Boulogne, and would eat up the Allied reserves. It achieved that indeed, but it also ate up his own. In three days he had advanced eleven miles, and for a week and more there was a stern resistance against odds. Foch, by his delay in sending help, tried Haig’s patience high, but the issue proved that he was wise. The British front sagged and bent but it held, and by the end of April Ludendorff realised that he must try elsewhere.
He was becoming desperate; his original strategical scheme had gone, and his efforts were now in the nature of a gambler’s throw. On May 27th the new storm broke on the Aisne heights, and by the evening the French gains in three great actions had vanished like smoke, and the enemy was across the river. On the second day he was beyond the Vesle, and on the third his vanguard was looking down from the heights of the Tardenois on the waters of the Marne. It was the swiftest advance made in the West since the beginning of trench warfare. But Ludendorff could turn it to no account. He tried to press westward and failed; on June 9th he tried to cut off the Allied salient between the two great dents which he had made, and failed again. His position was brilliant but without hope. He was the victim of his own successes.
His last offensive came on July 15th, east and west of Rheims. It achieved nothing, for, though the enemy crossed the Marne, it was only to enter the Allied trap. Hitherto Foch had stood patiently on the defensive, hoarding his assets. He had tried almost too highly the fortitude of the British soldier. Now he had got his reserve, and Haig, to augment it, had, to the consternation of the War Cabinet, dangerously thinned his own front in the north. The moment had come to use it. On July 18th he struck at the right flank of the new German salient and drove it in. It was not the great counterstroke, but the blow which stops a boxer’s rush and forces him to pause and consider. Ludendorff realised what it meant, halted, and began to withdraw from the Marne pocket. He had lost the initiative, and had begun his long retreat.
Foch had now freedom of movement, for with him at last was the new American army. In July there were already a million Americans in France. The German command had long been aware of the greatness of this menace, but the German press and people had been told that it was only a force in buckram. Even up to July this newspaper belittlement continued. But at Chateau-Thierry in June an American contingent had fought with furious gallantry; and on July 15th in the same area one American division and elements from another had rolled back the German assault. These were the troops who, according to the German belief, would not land in Europe unless they could swim like fishes or fly like birds. Like the doubting noble of Samaria, the enemy had declared “If the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” The inconceivable had been brought to pass. Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane.
On August 8th at Amiens came the true counterstroke, the first stage of the three months’ battle which compelled Germany’s surrender. The
plan, the choice of the place, and the ordering of the attack were wholly British. Haig had now come to the height of his powers, and was a different man from the cautious, orthodox soldier of earlier days. He had not always been happy with his French colleagues: he was in some ways too like Pétain, and in every way too unlike Foch, to be quite at ease with either of them. But now his mind and Foch’s seemed to move towards a closer partnership. The Generalissimo was big enough to take advice, and from Haig he drew not only his chief weapon, the tank, but much of his tactics, and certain vital points in his strategy. The British army in the past months had suffered far more than the French, but nevertheless they now took the chief rôle, and retained it to the last day of the war. It was Foch’s proof of the reverence in which he held his ally.
The Battle of Amiens lasted from August 8th to August 12th, when our advance was halted by the tangled wastes of the old Somme battle-field. It was the most brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed of any British action on the Western Front. Its success was due to the profound secrecy in which the forces of attack had been assembled — for example, the moving from the north of the Canadian corps, which the enemy regarded as storm-troops, was most ingeniously concealed; to the absence of a preliminary artillery bombardment, and the use instead of a swarm of 456 tanks; to the ground mist of the early morning; to the continuity in the use of reserves; and to the wise parsimony which did not press it too far.
