by Peter Brune
Before he left, Monash had made preliminary plans with Blamey and had left General Hobbs (5th Division) in command. The extraordinary aspect of that effort was that it took a mere day, and yet these plans addressed all of the essential logistical facets of the Australian Corps’s Amiens offensive. And on his return to his Bertangles Chateau HQ on 29 July, Monash, according to Blamey, spent the morning of the 30th working through many of those issues with him. He then retired to his room, studied the intricacies of the plan and, when he conducted his first conference with his divisional commanders the following day, ‘he was outstanding in his completeness of plan, grasp of all requirements and clarity of expression of them’.13 We have earlier identified Monash’s outstanding intellect and, more importantly, his tremendous discipline in its application. His conference notes for 31 July 1918 bear ample testimony not only to his personal ‘grip’ of the upcoming battle, but also to the now established part played by his staff, his senior commanders and his supporting arms.14 Once those processes of constructive questioning, of input, and of eventual agreement to the plan were completed, there was an unqualified confidence instilled in all concerned—right through the chain of command—to successfully execute it. On 1 August Monash issued a memorandum to his senior commanders addressing all issues raised on the previous day, and three days later he held another conference in which his final instructions were given and were endorsed.
It will be recalled that due to the depth of penetration planned for Amiens, Haig, and then the Fourth Army, had identified the need for a ‘leapfrogging’ of infantry units. Monash’s planning and implementation of this tactic were both masterly and innovative. He decided to employ his 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th AIF Divisions in the attack with his soon-to-arrive 1st Division as his Corps reserve. Two likely roles for that reserve division were identified: the first was one of potential exploitation, while the second was possibly to thicken his line in case of a German counter-attack.
To execute Phase A—the opening set-piece 3000-yard assault to the Green Line—Monash chose his 3rd and 2nd Divisions. Major-General Gellibrand’s 3rd Division was to attack along a two-mile-wide front starting at the Somme and stretching down to the southern edge of Accroche Wood, with his 11th Brigade on the left, his 9th on the right, and his 10th in reserve. On the right two-mile-wide or southern flank, Major-General Rosenthal’s 2nd Division was to attack with his 5th Brigade on the left, his 7th on the right, and the 6th in reserve, between the southern edge of Accroche Wood and the railway. Phase A was essentially a set-piece attack with an accompanying creeping barrage. In his The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Monash best describes Phase A:
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.15
Monash anticipated that Phase A would be complete within 143 minutes. He then foresaw a pause of 100 minutes, whereby a consolidation of the Green Line and the execution of a ‘leapfrog’ by the 4th and 5th Divisions through the 3rd and 2nd Divisions, would occur. Phase B—an advance of some 4500 yards—was to be what Monash referred to as an ‘open-warfare advance’ to the Red Line. Phase C consisted of a 1500-yard exploitation operation to the final Blue Line objective.
We now come to a Monash invention of tremendous importance. After having gained the Green Line, he planned to comply with Rawlinson’s recommendation of a ‘leapfrogging’ of his first force. The fact is that Monash planned three ‘leapfrogs’. He deployed his second two divisions: the 4th (Major-General Sinclair-Maclagan), which was to ‘leapfrog’ on the Green Line from behind Gellibrand’s 3rd Division; and the 5th (Major-General Hobbs), which was to ‘leapfrog’ from behind Rosenthal’s 2nd Division), forward of those two first-into-battle divisions on his start line. On the night of 7 August, the 3rd and 2nd Divisions would ‘leapfrog’ through the 4th and 5th to their starting-tapes for the attack upon the Green Line. By so doing, Monash was cutting a crucial three miles off the approach march of his exploiting 4th and 5th Divisions. We noted in the last chapter Corporal Geddes’s wry comment about the weight of his pack and the fact that he doubted whether he would have the strength to ‘bayonet a plum pudding, let alone a Fritz’. Geddes and his 13th Battalion, 4th Division, were now going to reach their objective in a decisively fitter state. Thus, both the initial 3rd and 2nd Divisions and their ‘leapfrogging’ 4th and 5th Divisions’ exploitation forces were now destined to march roughly the same distances. And after the Green and Red Lines had been occupied by his 4th and 5th Divisions, the third ‘leapfrog’ would occur by passing their reserve brigades through them to the final objective: the Blue Line.
If the Australian Corps Commander’s plan—especially in hindsight—looked logical and indeed simple enough on paper, then its ramifications for Monash’s divisional, brigade, battalion and supporting arms’ commanders were both complex and fraught with the potential for monumental chaos. Here we again note both the expertise of the Australian Corps staff work, and the confidence and trust placed in them by Monash. He would later state that ‘The whole plan, thanks to an intelligent interpretation by all Commanders and Staffs concerned, worked like a well oiled machine, with smoothness, precision and punctuality, and achieved to the fullest extent the advantages aimed at.’16 Other than his early allotment of roads to them, Monash left his divisional commanders to their work, knowing that such considerations as boundaries and liaison between them and their supporting arms would be done thoroughly.
While Monash’s employment of a refined method of ‘leapfrogging’ his infantry was impressive, his decision that each of his divisions would operate along a two-mile front is also noteworthy. At Broodseinde and the Third Battle of Ypres, his divisional fronts were 2000 yards. At Amiens, therefore, Monash sought to ‘greatly reduce the number of men per yard of front’.17 In this we note the principle that firepower not manpower had now become the prime consideration in an infantry advance. The Principle of War ‘concentration of force’ was now as much a matter of a concentration of supporting tank, machine gun, mortar, and, most of all, field and heavy artillery fire, as it was the hitherto crude massed-infantry crossing of no-man’s-land, after days of artillery shelling designed in the vain hope that the enemy and his trenches might be obliterated. Of critical importance was the fact that the concentration of those supporting arms’ fire was now much more accurate. If the gradual learning curves of 1916 and 1917 had evolved into a more intricate display of interlocking arms at battles such as Hamel, then Amiens would see that doctrine’s further maturation.
The use of tanks at Amiens drew upon the lessons of Hamel. The Australian Corps and its supporting 5th Tank Brigade had formed a trust, and indeed a strong esprit de corps, during both their combined training at Vaux and the Battle of Hamel. Both knew that they now had a reliable tank; the practice of tanks staying with a prescribed unit was maintained; aircraft were once again designated to drown out the tanks’ noise on the approach; a creeping barrage would be employed during Phase A, with tanks and infantry to follow it closely; and supply tanks would once again assist in carrying essential supplies forward.
Across his entire Fourth Army front, Rawlinson was able to deploy 432 tanks (of all types). The 5th Tank Brigade was to support the Australian Corps with 24 Mark V Tanks for both the 3rd and 2nd divisions during Phase A; a further 24 Mark Vs for each of the ‘leapfrogging’ 4th and 5th divisions (together with the surviving Tanks from Phase A) were assigned to support the capture of the Red Line.18
On 1 August 1918, the 5th Tank Brigade (2nd, 8th and 13th Battalions) received a reinforcement. The 15th Tank Battalion had just been equipped with the new Mark V One Star Tanks (often denoted in records as the ‘Mark V* Tank’).19 While thi
s tank had the same essential characteristics as the Mark V in terms of its weight, armament, engine, transmission, steering and number of crew, it was six feet longer than the Mark V. Its original purpose was to traverse any wider German trenches, but most of all to carry extra men into battle.20 For the exploitation phase to the Blue Line, eighteen Mark V* Tanks for both the 4th and 5th Divisions would each carry fifteen men, along with their Vickers or Lewis Guns. Here we note an attempt to as rapidly as possible move concentrated machine gun fire to reinforce the final capture of the Blue Line. The Mark V* Tanks were to deploy their machine gun crews just forward of that line.
On 4 August another attribute was added to the exploitation phase of the Amiens plan. The 17th Armoured Car Battalion’s sixteen cars were assigned to the Australian Corps. It was hoped that these vehicles would be able to travel along the Roman Road from Villers–Bretonneux and move through the German lines to assault such venues as billets, HQ, dumps and railway points. In a concerted effort to enable those armoured cars increased opportunity for movement, Monash assigned a number of parties of pioneers to work on the Roman Road, and, in addition, the armoured car crews were hurriedly trained with a number of tanks at Vaux so as to be towed through shelled areas if need be.21 The final tank establishment for Amiens also consisted of one gun-carrying company for infantry supplies, one tank supply company and one tank field company for the purpose of first aid and salvage work in the field.22
Two weapons had literally shredded substantial numbers of BEF infantry during the 1916–17 offensives: the artillery gun and machine gun. Hamel had shown that during an infantry advance, the deployment of tanks in mutual cooperation with infantry could locate, engage and then destroy machine gun posts. Any small number of missed enemy posts (often deployed in woods) could be destroyed by an infantry–tank outflanking movement and a resulting heavy enfiladed fire or, at worst, they could be mopped up by a succeeding wave of infantry and tanks. But Hamel had also shown that such an advance required a creeping artillery barrage, lifting as accurately as possible with its closely following infantry, so as to maintain a progressive blanket of fire to either obliterate those posts or neutralise them. When a percentage of smoke was added to that barrage (or was at times called in), the enemy’s ability to identify and then engage the tanks and infantry was prejudiced. However, the most destructive killer of infantry moving across no-man’s-land was the German artillery. By 1918 the essential role of the BEF artillery had become accurate counter-battery fire, rather than the former crude and redundant attempts to obliterate the enemy trench line.
For Amiens the Fourth Army was able to call upon some 2000 guns, of which around half were 18-pounders. On the Australian Corps front Monash was allocated 348, which gave him an 18-pounder for every 22 yards of his front.23 Charles Bean: ‘The fire would creep forward in 100 yards’ lifts, the first two lifts occurring at two-minute intervals, the next eight at three minutes, and the later ones at four minutes, the infantry being thus given more time to fight its way around obstacles as the attack proceeded.’24 In addition to this field artillery, the Fourth Army deployed around 450 heavy guns. These guns had three roles. The first was to assist in the barrage, particularly during the advance to the far-distant Red and Blue Lines. The second was to shell the German HQ, dumps and billets. But its third and prime task was counter-battery fire, in which two-thirds of the Fourth Army’s heavy guns were employed.
We have noted the gradual prowess in the BEF’s ability to identify enemy batteries by the use of such measures as flash spotting, sound ranging and aerial photography. Further, through the use of accurate weather data, the calibration of their guns, and artillery boards, we have also noted the ability of the BEF’s guns, to engage in accurate predicted fire. One illustration of this voluminous but precise collection of data is the fact that on 1 August 1918 alone, the Air Force was able to take 731 aerial photos for its Topographical Sections to compose accurate maps of the German defences, and particularly their battery positions.25 Some idea of the effectiveness of the multitude of that predicted-fire intelligence cited above is the fact that by 8 August, of the 530 German guns facing Fourth Army, 504 had been identified and plotted—a staggering 95 per cent.26 This first-class intelligence was complemented by a lavish Fourth Army ammunition supply. Of 427 053 rounds to be fired on 8 August, three different guns’ shell expenditure gives some concept of the artillery firepower: 279 699 were 18-pounder shells (153 358 shrapnel, 113 764 HE, and 12 577 smoke); 60 500 were 4.5-inch Howitzer shells; the heavy artillery’s 60-pounder guns fired 27 627; and its 6-inch Howitzers fired 57 329.27 Two points should be stressed. The first is that this massive artillery fire employed the priceless asset of surprise; and the second is that, unlike 1916–17, the ‘surprise’ was most accurate.
The complexity in the level of planning and expertise for the advance of the artillery is noteworthy. A Fourth Army Report would later declare that:
Roads and tracks were allotted, and preparations made for bridging trenches rapidly. A few units were held mobile from the start, but the majority detailed to advance joined in the barrage and subsequently limbered up to advance at predetermined times. The artillery . . . advanced in waves. First of all, Brigades under orders of Divisions, with Sections pushed out to the front. Then a limited number of 60-pdrs . . . They were followed by further Brigades of Field Artillery. The remainder of the Field and Heavy Artillery moved up subsequently under Corps orders. The change in command from Corps to Divisions, and subsequently the resumption of command by Corps, worked smoothly. A special point was made of pushing forward the 6-inch howitzer guns as early as possible in order to shell the approaches and bridges over the SOMME.28
By the time of Amiens, the Royal Air Force was able to present a separate air plan to Haig, Rawlinson and then to the corps commanders, which was a recognition of its inclusion in the overall battle plan. One of the critical factors in the upcoming battle was undoubtedly air superiority: while the Germans were forced to deploy substantial numbers of their aircraft in the Champagne sector, the Allies at Amiens would enjoy a superiority of around five to one (about 1000 French, 800 British, against 360). That superiority allowed for a significant advantage in intelligence gathering. And that advantage took two forms. The first has been mentioned, which was a comprehensive aerial photo contribution to the counter-battery efforts of the artillery. But its second was central to the whole operation’s chances of success: surprise. That great superiority in aircraft inhibited the Germans’ ability to conduct their own reconnaissance. As a result, one side was undertaking astute, detailed reconnaissance and gaining accurate intelligence, while the other was being denied it.
In support of the Australian Corps, the Australian 3 Squadron’s ‘A’ Flight was tasked with artillery patrols to identify German batteries not under fire; its ‘B’ Flight’s role was to identify enemy troop locations, send that information back, and then by the use of red marker flares, guide the infantry to those points. Its ‘C’ Flight was assigned the role of contact patrols. The Australian Flying Corps Official Historian:
The contact-patrol airmen were required to memorise a special simple system of letter-code identifying all battalions; to recognise the positions reached by the advancing infantry from flares, metal discs, and rifles laid parallel across tops of trenches—all these signs being given from the ground on the call of Klaxon horns from the pilots above—and to report in messages dropped at nearest brigade headquarters the position of the attacking line.29
Some concept of the BEF’s huge change in emphasis from manpower to firepower and its development of the doctrine of interlocking arms can be appreciated when some basic comparisons are made between Amiens and 1 July 1916 on the Somme. Prior and Wilson have pointed out that for both battles a similar number of divisions were deployed across roughly the same-sized front. At Amiens the battalions were at a strength of around 500 soldiers compared with the 1000-strong battalions of 1916. However, the Amiens battalions possessed not
four Lewis machine guns but 30, eight light trench mortars not two, and the support of at least six Mark V Tanks.30
Despite all of these impressive resources and their expertise in application, the key to the whole operation was secrecy. The 3rd Australian Division Artillery provides us with but one of many examples:
The operation referred to . . . is entirely dependent for its success on secrecy . . . The area in which the Artillery is to concentrate is, for the most part, under ground observation by the enemy, and in consequence, the strictest observance of the points enumerated must be maintained.
NO digging in of guns will be carried out, and NO earth whatever will be upturned for any purpose, except that in order to lower the gun narrow wheel slits and a small trail hole may be excavated.
. . .
All work must be carried out as silently as possible, and no shouting of orders is to be permitted.
The following special precautions are to be taken to reduce the amount of noise made by guns proceeding into action and wagons bringing up ammunition:-
(1)Iron wheel tyres must be lapped with ropes if moving over metalled roads.
(2)The noise made by drag washers31 and the play of the wheels should be diminished by leather washers.
(3)Rattling of the upper and lower shields must be prevented by padding.
(4)The rattling of the limber hook and the rattling of chains and harness are to be prevented by lapping with rags.
(5)Spare poles carried under the wagons must be secured tightly.
(6)No noise is to be made dumping ammunition.
It is essential that the Divisional front shall, as nearly as possible, remain normal.
As few officers and men as possible will be informed of the plan until the last possible moment.
