by Lloyd, Nick
The man who had been instrumental in the appointment of Foch was the British Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.34 He had been in France since August 1914, guiding the British Expeditionary Force through its bloody rite of passage on the Somme in 1916 and throughout the heavy fighting of the following year, but was having to work increasingly hard to maintain his position against the machinations of Britain’s mercurial Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. Lloyd George hated Haig. To him, Haig represented all that was reactionary and outdated about the British Army, and he would fill pages of his voluminous memoirs with vitriol about Haig and the unthinking ‘military mind’.35 In spite of the later controversies surrounding Haig’s command, he looked every inch the soldier, with his stern gaze and his back ramrod straight. One of those who knew him well, his chaplain, G. S. Duncan, described his appearance as ‘certainly impressive’ and ‘singularly handsome’. ‘Preeminently he was a man of action,’ Duncan wrote:
but that broad square forehead marked him out also as the calm, concentrated and logical thinker, and the look in his eye suggested unplumbed depths of feeling and understanding. As he spoke to you, you realised instinctively that here was a man of transparent honesty, who for all his reserve had a warm heart, who in all his judgments was accustomed to look below the surface, and who brought to all his several practical tasks a strong measure of far-sightedness and idealism.36
Duncan knew Haig well and had served with him for many years, but others found it harder to grasp the man beneath the stiff demeanour and struggled to hold him in such warm regard. Haig was a complex man. In private he was supremely confident in his own ability, and had for many years garnered a reputation as a talented, educated soldier, but he was not a great communicator, and often struggled to get his message across. He was a curious mix of the modern and traditional: a cavalry officer who maintained the importance of the mounted arm in war, yet who had overseen the greatest expansion of artillery and firepower in the history of the British Army. A man who would later maintain that he had fought a war of attrition to wear down the might of the German Army, yet who was always drawn to the dramatic breakthrough operations that were redolent of the great Napoleonic manoeuvres he had studied as a student at Camberley. Haig embodied the contradictions, strengths and weaknesses of the British nation at war.
In June 1918 Foch’s headquarters had moved to the Château de Bombon, an elegant seventeenth-century building on the outskirts of the town of Melun, twenty-five miles southeast of Paris. It had been built in the traditional French style, with elegant brickwork, a slate roof and large rectangular windows that looked out on to extensive gardens, flush with the greens of summer. Surprisingly, for such an important location, Bombon was a quiet, understated place. Foch only employed a small staff, barely a dozen officers, who were trusted to provide the general with everything he needed. Bombon was a home where Foch could think, go for walks and rides in the surrounding countryside, and direct the war that he was determined to win. On the morning of 24 July, it was the venue for an event of singular importance, a meeting of the three Allied contingent commanders: Haig; Pétain; and the American, General John Pershing. The four men had met before, but Bombon was one of the rare instances when they were all in the same room together, something that would only happen on a few brief occasions during the war. It came at a time of considerable importance.
The men arrived punctually at 10.30 a.m. and were invited in to meet Foch.37 After the introductions, Foch instructed his Chief of Staff, Maxime Weygand, to read out a memorandum that had been prepared on the future situation in the west. It had been written by Weygand, but Foch – in his persistent wish to avoid writing things down – had agreed with every word.38 Firstly, Weygand announced that the recent German offensive (the fifth since March) had failed. The recent counter-attack on the Marne had turned it into a defeat, which ‘must first of all be exploited thoroughly on the field of battle itself. That is why we are pursuing our attacks without pause and with all our energy.’ As things now stood, the Allies had a rough equality in numbers to their enemy, but the Germans were tired and many divisions were both reduced in strength and exhausted by constant operations. Furthermore, the Allies had a great superiority in materiel, tanks and artillery. This, combined with the 250,000 US troops who were arriving in France every month, provided further proof of the changing situation. As well as the ‘materiel’ factor, Weygand stressed ‘the moral ascendancy which had been maintained by our side from the beginning of the battle’, and said that a ‘turning point’ had now arrived. The Allies had recovered from the enemy offensives and had rebuilt their forces. The principles of war, he said, now compelled them to seize the initiative. ‘The moment has come to abandon the general defensive attitude forced upon us until now by numerical inferiority and to pass to the offensive.’
Foch had devised what he called a ‘series of movements’ intended to inflict a ‘succession of blows’ against the enemy. The main thrust of these attacks was, first of all, to clear three main railway lines that were vital to the war effort. The fighting of 1918 had brought the German Army to within striking distance of Paris and threatened a number of key logistical hubs. Railways were essential to moving troops across the Allied front, yet the Paris–Avricourt line in the Marne had been cut at Château-Thierry, the Amiens rail junction was within range of enemy guns, and German troops in Saint-Mihiel were only ten miles from the Paris–Avricourt line in the southeast. Foch was convinced that the moment to secure these positions had now arrived. He was also planning other operations to drive the enemy from the vicinity of Dunkirk and Calais in the north. Foch knew that only by coordinating the actions of the Allies as closely as possible and striking back could the German Army be kept off balance and forced to retreat.
To Foch’s evident dismay, the responses of the three men were not encouraging, yet, in their own way, they summed up the positions of the three national contingents at that moment. Haig spoke first. He complained that his army had been ‘entirely disorganized by the events of March and April’ and was still ‘far from being re-established’. Pétain agreed, echoing Haig’s concerns and bluntly telling Foch that ‘The French Army, after four years of war and the severest trials, is at present worn out, bled white, anaemic.’ This was hardly encouraging, and it fell to General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, to instil some optimism into the proceedings. Pershing was undoubtedly more enthusiastic than his counterparts, speaking in a relaxed, Midwestern drawl that betrayed his origins in rural Missouri. He admitted that the Americans only wished to fight. He did, however, warn Foch that his troops were not yet ready. Although ten days earlier a First US Army had been created, American military power in France remained a work in progress. It may not have been battle-hardened or experienced, but it was getting there. Thousands of men were arriving at French ports every day, swarming off the jammed transport ships and slowly making their way eastwards towards the sound of the guns; the eager, young doughboys chattering nervously about what it would be like and whether the war would end before they got there. But how were these Americans to be incorporated into the war effort? The British and French commanders undoubtedly wanted American help, but they wanted it on their own terms – in other words American units amalgamated into their own armies – and this was something that Pershing could not allow. If Americans were to fight, he continually reminded them, they would fight as a single, independent force under his command. It would be a source of constant friction.
Foch, Pétain and Haig were old acquaintances, but Pershing was, in every sense of the word, an outsider. Known as ‘Black Jack’ after serving in an all black regiment, Pershing was, at fifty-seven years of age, slightly younger than both Haig (sixty) and Pétain (sixty-two). He had been appointed to command the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in May 1917, the same month that Pétain had become Commander-in-Chief. At that time the AEF did not really exist; the American military was even more unprepared
for war than the British had been in 1914, so it was necessary to appoint someone with administrative ability, drive and determination. Pershing had been promoted over the heads of at least five more senior officers, and understandably this aroused some jealousy. In the end he was chosen because of his recent campaign experience (in Mexico), his acknowledged promise, a strong constitution and a devoted professionalism. A senior officer of the AEF, Robert Lee Bullard, later remarked that he ‘won followers and admirers, but not personal worshippers’. He was ‘peculiarly impersonal, dispassionate, hard and firm . . . His manner carried to the minds of those under him the suggestion, nay, the conviction of unquestioned right to obedience.’39 These traits were even more evident after a devastating fire had killed his wife, Frances, and three of their four children in August 1915. Pershing had always been a hard man, driven and determined to succeed, but in his youth there had been another side to his character; he was known as something of a ladies’ man and was an excellent poker player. But from the moment he lost his family, there was only one side to Pershing: a cold, unyielding will. His determination would be essential to Allied victory in 1918.
At the meeting there was little sense the war would be over by Christmas. Although Haig later wrote that everyone was in ‘great spirits’, there remained understandable concern about what more could be achieved that year.40 Foch took their objections calmly. He pointed out that while he agreed with their observations, he urged them to think about how a ‘proper combination of our forces’ could make the attacks practicable and effective. After some further discussion, no more points were raised and the commanders agreed to take Foch’s note with them, discuss it with their staffs and let him know as soon as possible. With the meeting now over, the four men walked outside, into the bright sunshine, and posed for a photograph. Foch stood in the middle, a slight smirk upon his face, his hands neatly behind his back. To his right was Haig, cane in hand, and then Pétain, his dull, blue eyes staring out from beneath the peak of his képi, arms by his side. To Foch’s left, slightly distant, was Pershing, his expression inscrutable, his eyes hidden beneath his cap.
The bulb flashed and then, shaking hands once more, the four men disappeared into the warm afternoon.
2. ‘Neglect nothing’
It was therefore possible to adopt the conjurer’s trick of directing the special attention of the observer to those things which do not particularly matter, in order to distract his attention from other things which really do matter very much.
Sir John Monash1
26 July–7 August 1918
Compared to other places in northern France – those that had been in a warzone for four years – Amiens had suffered relatively lightly. Although many of its houses had been demolished and shells had struck the cathedral, gouging out great scars in its masonry, the town had survived largely intact. Yet concern over the safety of its civilian population had forced the French Government to evacuate the town, leaving it empty and lifeless. A British officer, Charles Vince, rode through Amiens that summer. ‘One went through street after forsaken street of empty, morose houses, with nothing harmed, nothing touched, no sign of destruction, except that the broken wires of the tramways trailed negligently in the streets,’ he wrote. ‘It was most odd and unexpected, yet they spoke more pitifully than anything else of the people who had fled and the fear that had driven them.’ And while it was an odd place to visit in daylight, it was even worse at night. When darkness fell it became ‘a city of the dead . . . shuttered, ghostly, and desolate, without light or sign of living except for the flash of the electric torches which the military policemen swung in their hands as they directed the dark traffic through the streets’.2
Amiens had been one of the main objectives of the German Spring Offensive. The capture of its railway junction would separate the Allies and allow the British to be rolled up and sent packing across the Channel, leaving the French alone to face German might. Amiens was where the British and French Armies met and was thus the crucial link in the entire Western Front. The Germans knew that it had to be captured if the war was to be won. That summer it came under bombardment from huge railway guns that targeted the town in a vain attempt to interfere with British communications and sever its important rail links. But Amiens always remained in Allied hands. No matter how hard Ludendorff pushed, his exhausted armies could never reach it; no matter how many divisions he threw in, they always seemed to tire at the crucial moment. The town became like some floating mirage that would disappear further into the haze the nearer the Germans got to it; the perfect illustration of how limited the strategic effect of Ludendorff’s offensives had really been. Amiens would also become the first great battle of the Hundred Days.
Foch’s plan for a series of limited attacks had been approved by all Allied commanders the day after the meeting at Bombon. It had been agreed that the first of his ‘series of movements’ would take place here, in the rolling ground south of the Somme, occupied by General Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth British Army and General Eugène Debeney’s First French Army. Foch had placed Debeney temporarily under the orders of Haig to ensure cooperation in the coming attack, but the main assault would be made by Rawlinson’s troops. Plans for an attack in the Amiens sector had been maturing in Fourth Army headquarters at Flexicourt for some time. The ground was particularly favourable and intelligence reports had noted that the German troops opposite them were sheltering in light defences and suffering from poor morale. As Rawlinson’s Chief of Staff, Major-General Sir Archibald Montgomery, would later write, not only were they faced with very little in the way of organized systems of defence, but also:
the terrain was extremely favourable for an offensive with a distant objective limited only by the physical powers of endurance of horse and man. The country was open and undulating; the hard soil, with chalk very near the surface, rendered it particularly favourable for tanks and cavalry. The chances of the successful employment of these arms were further increased by the absence of shell craters and by the dry weather of the preceding months.3
If the attack was to be anywhere, it would be here.
An initial outline had been sent to GHQ on 17 July and Rawlinson met with his corps commanders four days later to discuss the forthcoming operation. He was convinced that a major attack in the Amiens sector could work, and was eager to put into practice all that had been learnt over the preceding four years, including the recent fighting on the Marne. Rawlinson was particularly keen on achieving complete surprise; therefore secrecy, in his opinion, ‘must be the basis on which the whole scheme is built up’. He wanted as many tanks as possible to ‘save casualties to the infantry, and also, to make full use of any supply tanks that may be available, so as to reduce infantry carrying parties’. Rawlinson believed that no preliminary bombardment should take place, just a rolling barrage when the infantry and tanks got going. Reserve units would then ‘leapfrog’ each other on to more distant objectives.4
Rawlinson received confirmation from Haig on 26 July (two days after the meeting with Foch at Bombon) to go ahead with the operation, then scheduled for 10 August. Although Rawlinson initially would have preferred to attack alone without French support – fearing leaks of information – Haig impressed upon him their shortage of reserves and the need to attack in full cooperation with Britain’s allies, to which Rawlinson dutifully agreed.5 It was decided that Rawlinson’s Fourth Army would push eastwards from Amiens, along the line Hangest-en-Santerre–Harbonnières–Méricourt-sur-Somme, while maintaining a strong left flank at Chipilly and on the high ground around Morlancourt.6 The right flank would be secured by Debeney’s First Army, which planned to employ three corps in the operation, beginning on the left and then gradually extending the attack to the south. The idea was for French forces to constitute what it called two ‘masses of manoeuvre’, one of which would outflank the town of Montdidier from the north – which was the main French objective – while the second struck from the south.7 If this could be achieved, Amien
s would be safe and out of range of enemy shelling and the important railway lines secured.
The spearhead of the attack was entrusted to two of the most powerful and experienced corps in the BEF: the Canadian and Australian Corps. Both were large, well-equipped and battle-hardened formations with a growing reputation for professionalism, ruthlessness and above all success. It had been the Canadian Corps that had taken Vimy Ridge in April 1917, successfully storming one of the most formidable positions on the Western Front in little over three hours. Although the Australians never enjoyed success on the scale of Vimy, they prided themselves on their effectiveness and aggression, specializing in large trench raids that they called – somewhat misleadingly – ‘peaceful penetration’. The Australians had also recently conducted the Battle of Hamel on 4 July, a beautifully crafted combined ‘all-arms’ operation that took just over ninety minutes to overrun the village of Le Hamel and surrounding woodland with minimal casualties. These formations, as was rapidly becoming clear, were the ‘shock armies’ of the BEF. They were also semi-independent formations with powerful political support back home. Haig could not boss the Canadians or Australians around in the way that he was used to doing with British divisions.8
