by Lloyd, Nick
The constant Allied air attacks gnawed away at morale even further. German columns of infantry, marching to the front, would regularly have to scatter as British and French biplanes swooped low overhead, firing machine-guns and dropping bombs. Although the physical damage that such aircraft could do was undoubtedly limited (with only 25lb bombs), its effect on tired and nervous soldiers can well be imagined.36 One day, when General Marwitz was being driven behind the lines, he was attacked by ‘an army of fliers’. Hearing the roar of enemy aircraft overhead, Marwitz and his staff were forced to dive into the trenches and shell holes by the side of the road. While sheltering from the air attack, he found himself crouching next to one man who seemed to have lost his mind. He kept saying over and over again, ‘now he has thrown his bits of chocolate and hasn’t got anymore’. ‘Evidently,’ Marwitz remarked, ‘he was a comedian.’ On 24 August, Second Army counted over 120 bombs that had fallen in Cambrai during the day, and even one of the general’s staff, Hauptmann von Heydebreck, was stunned to find that a ‘dud’ had landed in his wash cabinet next to his bedroom.37
By late summer the RAF was reaching further into the German rear lines, bombing railways and divisional headquarters, and – with grave implications for the German Air Force – mounting surprise raids on enemy airfields. On 17 August, 80th Wing, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Strange, paid a morning visit to the German airfield at Lomme, east of Lille; the home of Jagdstaffel 40, commanded by Major Carl Degelow. Strange, a buccaneering spirit whose squadrons would become devastatingly effective against German airfields, led the raid in his Sopwith Camel, diving down into the attack ‘with every wire screaming protest’. ‘As we flattened out and streaked over those hangars,’ he wrote, ‘I tugged hard at the release thongs of my bomb gear, and then heard the most awful din of crashes when the whole of the Flight sent down their total of 24 twenty-pound bombs. The next good look I took at Lomme showed me all the six hangars on one side of the aerodrome enveloped in black smoke clouds, edged with reddish-yellow flames that poured out of the windward side.’38
For those on the ground, the attack was a terrifying spectacle of impotence and frustration. They had first been alerted to the danger by the wailing of sirens across the airfield, but by then it was too late. The strong westerly wind blew the formation – estimated at over fifty aircraft – towards them with great speed. Since there was no time to get airborne, Degelow hurriedly handed out rifles and ordered everyone into the covered trenches alongside their hangars.
Shortly before reaching our airfield, the lower swarm of the enemy squadron dived in a left turn. This was a trick, intended to devour our machine gun protection for, simultaneously, down out of the great formation of scattering single-seat units came one squadron in a dive on our hangars. At the same moment, the two-seat Bristol Fighters flying above the single-seat fighter squadron dropped their bombs in order to render our defences powerless, while British Sopwith single-seaters attacked our hangars at low altitude with concussion bombs. They flew the length of the sheds, which were all in a row, dropped their high-explosive bombs and then split up, half wheeling in a left turn, while the others turned right.39
Degelow watched as the Sopwiths flew in circles above the airfield, firing incendiary bullets and setting two of the sheds on fire. If anyone tried to get out of the trenches, they would be spotted and peppered with machine-gun bullets. All they could do was cower in their covered trenches, take potshots whenever they could, and hope that it would soon be over. The raid cost Jasta 40 four precious Fokker DVIIs and was another worrying indication that Germany was losing the war in the skies.
By the end of the month, Foch, Haig and Pétain could look favourably on what had been achieved. The ‘point of balance’ on the Marne had now been exploited and turned into a crushing series of hammer blows. By 29 August French forces had driven north from Soissons, taken the town of Noyon on the Canal du Nord, and were closing on the line of the River Somme towards Ham. The Australians had crossed the Somme, moved into Péronne, and taken the strongly held enemy positions on Mont Saint-Quentin. British forces in the north had also made good progress towards Cambrai, although they had run up against the northernmost section of the Hindenburg Line, the Drocourt–Quéant switch – a tough series of defensive lines cloaked in barbed wire – that Haig had assigned to the Canadian Corps. Apart from small-scale counter-attacks the Germans were unable to mount any serious offensive operations at this time; they had enough on their hands trying to disengage their rapidly tiring forces from the endless Allied attacks. All they could do was throw their divisions into the furnace and hope that the Allies would tire and give in. Indeed, the cost of pushing the Germans back had not been cheap. French operations between 8 and 29 August had cost just under 100,000 casualties, including 2,390 officers killed, wounded or missing, which, to Pétain at least, justified extreme caution.40
Foch, having recovered his eagerness for the offensive after the disagreement with Haig after Amiens, now wanted to extend the battle line even further. In six weeks, he wrote, ‘the enemy had lost all the gains he had made in the spring. He had lost heavily in men, munitions and stores. Most important of all, he had lost the initiative of operations – he had lost his moral ascendancy. Material and moral confusion must inevitably reign within his ranks.’41 Studying the maps of the front every day at Bombon, assisted by the quiet, reassuring presence of Weygand, Foch began to think about more than just freeing railway lines from German observation. By 30 August he had drawn up an ambitious outline for future operations. The British, supported by the French on their right, would continue to attack in the direction of Cambrai and Saint-Quentin. At the same time, the main body of the French Army would push forward and move past the River Aisne. As for the Americans, they were scheduled to make an attack on Saint-Mihiel, south of Verdun, in mid-September, but would then transfer the bulk of their forces to the Meuse–Argonne for a joint Franco-American assault towards Mézières. If these could be conducted successfully, Foch was convinced that the Germans would be unable to extricate their forces and mount any kind of large-scale counter-attack. The final battle had begun.
6. ‘The whole thing was simply magnificent’
Slaughter cattle for Wilhelm & Sons.
Graffiti on a German troop train (September 1918)1
1–11 September 1918
At midday on 2 September, OHL ordered General Otto von Below’s Seventeenth Army to begin its retreat to the Hindenburg Line. It was to start that night. Other armies were ordered to do the same in the next few days; packing up their equipment, harnessing tired horses to artillery batteries; notifying infantry regiments of their routes; preparing those units which would remain in place and cover the retreat.2 This was the ultimate result of the smashing blow the Allies had landed at the Battle of Amiens, which had unhinged the German position in France and made such a radical redeployment necessary. The one card that Ludendorff still had – the Hindenburg Line and the prospect of holding out in the west – had now been played. This defensive system would be manned, the armies withdrawn from the front, and the wire emplacements sealed. At best Germany could now hope that the defences were strong enough and that they would hold against the increasing Allied onslaught. If the German Army could maintain its position here, inflicting heavy casualties on their attackers and raising the prospect of yet more sapping attritional struggles, then maybe, just maybe, the Allies would tire and give in.
The news of retreat spread quickly through the German armies in the west and depressed morale yet further. ‘Tonight we retreated to the Siegfried Line,’ wrote Willy Schütt to his brother, Richard, on 6 September. ‘Our battalion commander was severely wounded last night and his adjutant was killed. One of our drivers was also killed last night. He would have been going on leave today.’3 Rudolf Stark, commander of Jagdstaffel 35, had been notified that their retreat would begin on 7 September. ‘All the ground we won in the spring must be given up again,’ he mused. ‘Will this retirement hel
p us like the other one did? Will the enemy launch his attack against empty air and waste months bringing up reinforcements and making preparations for a fresh offensive? Shall we be able to strengthen our front in the meanwhile?’ On 10 September he heard news that Cambrai had been evacuated. Through the pouring rain and cold wind, he drove through the city and watched the long black columns of refugees squelching through the mud, making their way eastwards, drawing carts piled high with furniture. The nearer he got to the centre of town, the worse the crowds became. ‘An old man pushes a crippled wife along in a hand-car. Sick people hobble on sticks along the rough cobblestones. At a crossroads a car lies in a ditch, with a broken wheel; all its contents are strewn in the mud. Two weeping women stand by it; a man stares helplessly at his household goods and then glowers at us with rage and hatred in his eyes.’
Among the crowds of refugees pulling their pathetic carts, Stark found German soldiers hurrying along, flinching as occasional shells clattered into the buildings, raising clouds of dust and sending the local pigeons flapping into the air. ‘Men are carrying huge bundles of documents from the town-commander’s headquarters and loading them up on to lorries. Such a mass of papers has accumulated, and now it must all be taken back somewhere.’ Stark helped bring out a number of the oldest refugees in his truck, including an old lady who sat next to him in the cabin. ‘She shivers as she wraps her old wool shawl about her lean body. In her hand she clutches a picture, the only thing she could rescue, the only thing that represents the sum of her many years. It is a photograph; a young man in French uniform. Underneath it a quavering cross has been drawn in ink, with a date and a single word: Verdun!’ Stark shuddered: ‘what misery and distress are to be seen on these roads!’4
The decision to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line had been taken reluctantly and in a hurry because the Allies were gaining ground quicker than expected. On 2 September, after several days of heavy and sustained combat, the British First Army, spearheaded by Sir Arthur Currie’s Canadian Corps, broke through the Drocourt–Quéant Line, thus unhinging the northern flank of the Hindenburg system and sending shockwaves through two Army Groups. Orders were issued within hours to abandon the position and man the main section of the Hindenburg Line to the east. Seventeenth Army would retreat immediately, followed by Second Army, to its left. In order to maintain conformity with these movements, OHL also reluctantly sanctioned the withdrawal of both Eighteenth and Ninth Armies further to the south. Even worse, it was agreed to give up the German gains around Lys in the north, which had been won at such cost in the spring, ordering both Fourth and Sixth Armies to fall back.5 ‘As a result of our victory yesterday, the hinge of the German system has been broken,’ wrote Currie in his diary on 3 September. ‘The Commander-in-Chief, the Chief of the General Staff and others called to personally express their appreciation. Today we find that the Boche is practically retiring across the Canal du Nord.’6
The breaking of the Drocourt–Quéant Line would be one of the finest achievements of the Canadian Corps during the war, Currie even rating it higher than the first day at Amiens. The position had been constructed at the same time as the Hindenburg Line and was built primarily to extend it northwards and shield the Douai plain from any Allied advance. It was a formidable line with hundreds of concrete dug-outs, interlinking trenches and swathes of barbed wire that was held in strength by seven German divisions, including 1st and 2nd Guard Reserve Divisions. Given the depth of the German defences and the inevitable lack of surprise, Currie decided to rely on his guns. Between 27 August and 2 September, the Canadian Corps fired over 10,000 tons of ammunition, almost twice what it had used at Amiens.7 After several days of preliminary operations, the main assault began at 5 a.m. on 2 September, with three Canadian divisions in line, covered by 4th British Division on its northern flank. Fighting continued all day. Because only fifty-three heavy tanks were available to support the assault, much of the fighting involved platoons and companies in a traditional infantry battle.8 Currie’s troops – men from Toronto and Vancouver, Ontario and British Columbia – fought their way through this dense defensive system, using rifle and bayonet, bomb and grenade, mortar and artillery, in what was sometimes fierce hand-to-hand fighting.
In the early stages of the attack, most battalions were covered by a precisely engineered creeping barrage, that unearthly wall of shells that fell like a curtain in front of them. But at certain points they had to get forward without it, and had to rely on good leadership, smart tactics and determined courage. In this maelstrom, there were some incredible instances of valour, including the action of Corporal Walter Rayfield of 7th Battalion. He rushed ‘a trench filled with the enemy, bayoneting two and taking ten prisoners. Later he located and engaged with great skill, under constant rifle fire, an enemy sniper who was causing many casualties.’ Not content with his day’s work, Rayfield subsequently charged a trench single-handedly and ‘so demoralized the enemy by his daring and coolness that 30 surrendered to him’. He would be awarded the Victoria Cross.9 Another remarkable tale concerned Private Arthur James Foster of 38th Battalion who would be awarded the Military Medal for his bravery that day. His men were close to their objective when they came under ‘a terrible barrage of machine gun fire’. They immediately dropped to the ground and tried to get forward, but it was no use so they lay out in no-man’s-land under heavy fire. Determined to do whatever he could, Foster got up and began attending to the wounded, dragging man after man across the fields through what he called ‘a hail storm of bullets’. After the fighting had ended he continued carrying wounded back to the dressing station and helping those scattered over the battlefield. ‘This was all done,’ he remembered, ‘amid considerable machine gun fire and a few heavy shells.’10 By the evening of 2 September, through the smoke and fire, over 6,000 German prisoners had been taken as well as sixty-five guns and nearly 500 machine-guns.11
Despite the heavy Allied losses and the daily discomfort – the hunger and thirst, the exhaustion and danger – morale in both British and French Armies rose ‘like mercury’ as the advance continued.12 They knew enough about the war to realize that something was different, that objectives that would have taken months to capture, were now falling within days, sometimes even hours. The German foe – always so solid, determined and tough – was now cracking. Haig, for one, was delighted with how things were progressing, particularly with the achievements of the Canadians. On the evening of 2 September he rode forward and personally congratulated Major-General Archibald Macdonell, commander of 1st Canadian Division, whose troops had fought their way into the Drocourt–Quéant position. It was a rare display of emotion from the usually imperturbable Commander-in-Chief.
‘Well, Macdonell, I could have long distance phoned you, but I prefer to come up and see you and shake you by the hand and personally thank your division for their magnificent work and you yourself too,’ he said, visibly moved.
Macdonell thanked his commander.
‘Please let your brigades know,’ Haig continued, before warning Macdonell against getting killed or wounded. ‘You broke the line and got through!’ he exclaimed. ‘The whole thing was simply magnificent and it was wonderful.’
Macdonell was deeply touched to receive such praise from his Commander-in-Chief. To him it showed the ‘real’ Haig – ‘a kindly, loveable gentleman, first, and great commander afterwards’. ‘Small wonder,’ he wrote, ‘that we Canadians idolized him.’13
Haig’s relief at cracking the Drocourt–Quéant Line was plain for all to see, and was, in part, a reflection of the great pressure upon him. The previous day he had received a telegram from the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, warning him of the unease in London about possible heavy casualties in future operations. ‘Just a word of caution in regard to incurring heavy losses in attacks on Hindenburg Line,’ wrote Wilson. The War Cabinet would ‘become anxious if we received heavy punishment in attacking the Hindenburg Line WITHOUT SUCCESS’. As might have been expected, Ha
ig was angry and disappointed at the telegram and wrote back furiously to Wilson, complaining about the ‘weaklings’ in the War Cabinet.14 Although Wilson tried to mollify Haig and insist that it did not show a lack of confidence in his command and it was just a kind of friendly warning, the telegram was a niggling reminder of the concerns many in London had about Haig’s command, and how much capital he had spent in earlier years with grandiose promises of breakthrough and victory. Haig had to be careful.
Following up the German armies was never easy or without cost. As well as advancing in the face of shelling, booby-traps, and machine-gun and sniper fire, the Allied armies had to operate in a terrifying and dangerous chemical environment. Although shell and machine-gun fire accounted for the majority of casualties, gas evoked a fear that was unlike any other weapon and had a significant effect on how the war was fought. It had evolved much since the first chlorine gas had been released near Ypres in 1915, maturing into a weapon that was used with a remarkable degree of ingenuity and inventiveness. By 1918 all sides had incorporated gas into their battle tactics, with both front and rear sectors regularly being deluged with gas, which poisoned the ground and caused a constant trickle of casualties. Gas shells, containing either mustard or phosgene, would often be fired alongside high explosive, in the hope that during a bombardment – with its noise and chaos – the arrival of quieter gas shells would be missed. If any soldiers survived the bombardment, then a silent, deadly killer would still await them. Gas also offered a useful and effective method of counter-battery fire. Because it was very difficult to score a direct hit on enemy gun positions, gas shells were frequently employed to force gunners to don their respirators, which often impeded their accuracy and slowed their reactions.
