Hundred Days : The Campaign That Ended World War I (9780465074907) Page 2
By the summer of 1918, after a winter on the Italian Front, the battalion was back on the Western Front, in the Forêt de Nieppe area southwest of Arras. Here it held the line, took part in the occasional trench raid, and tried to avoid the enemy snipers that were particularly pernicious on this part of the front. Its Commanding Officer was Lieutenant-Colonel G. S. Miller, a special reserve officer of the 4th Battalion, who had joined in August 1916. Some said he never wanted to command a New Army (or service) battalion – a sentiment many old regulars would have sympathized with – but, as Captain Bill later wrote, ‘time brought about a change of heart. He came to appreciate that even a Service Battalion can be good, and soon developed a real pride in his command’; he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Order and bar. His Adjutant, Major George Wilmot, was a more popular man, who had, like Miller, joined the battalion in 1916, having been transferred from the Manchester Regiment. He was not only well-liked, but also terrifically brave, and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in January 1919.6
During August and September 1918, Tom’s battalion was heavily employed in the final battles of the Great War. The attack in which he was killed was technically part of the Battle of the Canal du Nord, which the British official history informs me took place between 27 September and 1 October 1918. It did not involve (as far as I can find) any notable participants or any new or untried weapon; it was not interesting for any particular savagery or unique military manoeuvre. Yet from what we know, it was entirely typical of the experience of combat witnessed by the average British ‘Tommy’ during the last days of the First World War: battalions moving forward to flush out German positions; heavy machine-gun fire; confusion; swift enemy counter-attacks (primarily using bombs and close-quarter weapons); and then finally the German defenders vanishing like wraiths in the morning, leaving nothing but empty ration cans and piles of spent cartridges. The advance would then continue until the next defensive position was reached. As was to be expected, Tom’s death caused a huge gulf in the family and a set of wounds that never healed. Family legend has it that on the morning of his death, his mother, Florence, woke up with a searing pain in her head. When she recovered, she had a dark sense of foreboding that Tom had died. And then the dreaded telegram came on 23 October – nineteen days before the Armistice – confirming that her son had been killed in action.
Tom Cotterill died taking part in one of the last great campaigns of the First World War, what has become known as the ‘Hundred Days’ or the ‘Advance to Victory’. The term ‘Hundred Days’ is a British one – redolent of the last battles against Napoleon in 1815 – and refers to the period between the Battle of Amiens on 8 August and the Armistice on 11 November 1918, a total of ninety-five days. This marked the decisive moment in the course of a war that had been waged for over four years, but these battles, epic in their scale, intensity and ferocity, remain only patchily remembered.7 While thousands of books have been written (and continue to be published) on the causes and origins of the First World War, sadly and somewhat intriguingly, the same cannot be said of how the war ended. In the opening sentence of his To Win a War in 1978, the British historian John Terraine complained that ‘The final campaign of 1918 – the last victorious “Hundred Days” – is virtually an unknown story’, and this remains the case today.8 Private Cotterill was one of a whole generation who were wiped out in the final months of the war, but who remain lost to history.
The campaign of 1918 remains one of the most important, yet least understood, periods of the war. Writing in 2011, the historian David Stevenson claimed that ‘whereas modern comprehensive investigations now exist into the outcomes of other modern conflicts, the First World War still lacks one’.9 It had begun on 21 March, when the thunderous opening of the German Spring Offensive shattered the trench deadlock that had gripped the opposing armies for the best part of three years. Having been able to redeploy large numbers of troops to France after the collapse of Russia, Germany’s leaders vowed to strike before the Allies, buttressed by powerful American support, became invincible. The aim was to conduct a massive attack in France, separate the British and French Armies, and win the war before Germany’s perilous strategic situation worsened even further. But this great masterstroke failed. Although manoeuvre returned to the Western Front and the German armies advanced deep into northern France, the Allies evaded this knock-out blow and held on. And it was in July, when Germany’s strength began to fade, that the Allies hit back, thus beginning the final campaign of the Great War: the Hundred Days.
When I began researching this period, the lack of a really satisfactory account of these final battles, particularly one that analysed the situation from the point of view of all the main warring sides, became immediately apparent. Although there have been many good books on 1918 – a personal favourite being Gregor Dallas’s epic 1918. War and Peace (2000) – their coverage remains patchy, selective and frequently drawn from a few well-worn sources. Anglophone historians have understandably focused on the battles fought by the British Expeditionary Force and have relatively little to say about the important roles played by the French or the Americans. Other writers have claimed that the war was effectively over by the summer of 1918 – meaning that the Hundred Days was not especially important – but this remains a narrow and selective approach dependent upon hindsight. The Germans may have lost the war by July, but the Allies had certainly not won it and there was much still to do, as the staggering toll of losses reveals all too clearly. Between 18 July and 11 November the Allies sustained upwards of 700,000 casualties while the Germans lost at least another 760,000 men.10 Indeed, casualty rates among British units were some of the worst of the war, leading many commentators to assume that nothing had been learnt from previous offensives; that it was the same old story of fruitless slaughter and sacrifice in 1918 as it had been in earlier years. This may not have been the case, but the death toll of those final days – increased tragically by the so-called ‘Spanish flu’ – remains remarkable and deserves greater examination than it has hitherto received.
The reason why this last phase of the Great War has remained relatively unknown is not hard to find. For ninety years it has been overshadowed by the major trench warfare battles of the middle years of the war, those on the Somme, Ypres or Verdun in 1916 and 1917, which seem to sum up the experience and (apparent) futility of the war: the mud; the blood; the pointless slaughter. In Germany, the last battles of the war remain under-researched and little known. During the interwar period it was perhaps understandable if these battles were not greatly appreciated given the growth of a ‘stab in the back’ legend which claimed that the German Army had not really been beaten in 1918, but had been betrayed and sabotaged by a group of pacifists, Jews and socialists at home. The widespread belief that Germany had not really lost the war meant that the final battles were seen as being neither especially important nor as interesting as the great German offensives of the spring and summer of 1918. These operations, which restored movement to the Western Front and were notorious for the use of Stosstruppen (stormtroopers), have long fascinated historians and thus distorted our view of the collapse of the Army in late 1918. Therefore, for various reasons, all the combatants of the Hundred Days had their own reasons for ignoring or neglecting the last phase of the war, and this is perhaps why this period is much less well-known than others. The war had destroyed old certainties, killed millions, and this meant that the end came as a blessed relief and saw only muted celebration. It was over. That was enough.
This book tells the story of those final days, the last four months of combat on the Western Front. It begins with what would become the turning point of the war in the west, the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918 (which preceded the Battle of Amiens), and follows the course of the fighting right up to the Armistice. It does not intend to offer a full operational history of how the war ended or the justice of the subsequent peace. David Stevenson’s 2011 account, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and
Defeat in 1918, provides as comprehensive a picture as could be wished for. This book concentrates on the fighting in France and Belgium, with brief discussions of the war elsewhere, from Italy and Salonika to Palestine. It seeks to explore two main questions: firstly, to what extent had the Allies improved their so-called tactical ‘learning curve’ on the battlefield; and, secondly, was the German Army really defeated in 1918? It is based on the testimonies of those British, Commonwealth, French, German and American soldiers who served during those final days and left vivid, frequently haunting, recollections of what they went through. These accounts, drawn from the archives of five countries, offer a valuable and moving picture of what it was really like to experience the twilight of the Western Front: the shattering bombardments; the storm of machine-gun fire; the sight of hundreds of dead and wounded; the exhaustion of endless marches; the glow of burning French villages; the comradeship and fear. It ends with a description of perhaps the most iconic event of the twentieth century, the Armistice on 11 November 1918, when the guns fell silent.
Like millions of others, Private Cotterill did not live to see the Armistice celebrations. His war came to an end in the empty fields north of Gouzeaucourt. He was evacuated from the lines and buried in the British cemetery at Neuville-Bourjonval several miles to the rear. The cemetery is small by Great War standards and sits forlornly in the middle of a field, just a short way from the village, bordered by a low rubble wall. The British cemeteries in this part of France rarely see visitors. The main draws of the Western Front, Ypres and the Somme, attract thousands of tourists every year, but relatively few make their way to the bare ridges south of Cambrai, and those that do are often on the lonely pilgrimage to find a lost loved one. When I visited there was no one else around. It was a cold, wet day in spring, with a bitter wind blowing across the flat fields, and one could only be struck by the loneliness and sadness of the scene. Tom is buried in plot C30, alongside 200 other soldiers, most of whom were killed in the last year of the war. As I stood there I was filled with a powerful urge to write a history of those final days; to do all that I could to bring him home.
Prologue: ‘Surprise was complete’
The last act of the great German tragedy of 1918 was beginning.
Jean de Pierrefeu1
18 July 1918
It was a wild night; wet and windy, with thunderstorms growling out over the front and sending rain lashing down into the trenches. Corporal Frank Faulkner had arrived at his sector with the men of B Company, 23rd Infantry Regiment of 2nd US Division, on the night of 17–18 July. ‘I never saw so many men, guns, ambulances and various kinds of equipment,’ he wrote. ‘We knew that something was coming off but we did not know the importance of it till some time after. That night it rained and it was pitch dark and we hiked up to the front, the roads were congested with equipment and tanks and only a flash of lightning would show us the way.’2 Faulkner may not have known exactly what was afoot, but he could sense the immensity of the occasion. At that moment, over 300,000 men – French, North African, American, British and Italian – were moving into their assembly positions along the front from Rheims to Soissons north of the River Marne in northeastern France. Faulkner would be present at a pivotal moment in the war on the Western Front. The Second Battle of the Marne was about to enter its most critical phase.
Two days earlier, on 15 July, the last German offensive of the Great War had broken out along a sixty-five-mile front. Three German armies had concentrated forty-two divisions and massed nearly 1,700 guns in this critical sector, aiming to capture the fortified city of Rheims.3 But this time the Allies were waiting for them. Forewarned by accurate intelligence and well prepared by commanders who understood German offensive tactics, the Allies were confident that this time they could withstand whatever the enemy threw at them. Instead of packing their men in the front-line trenches like sardines, they moved the bulk of their forces back, intending to wait until the Germans had expended their energy before engaging them. As well as working out how to contain the enemy thrust, reserve forces specially detailed for a counter-attack were already filtering into position, hoping to strike when the Germans were at their weakest, pushing forward at the end of long supply lines, deep into the Marne pocket. Then and only then would the Allies hit back. The ‘mouse trap’, as it became known, had been set.
By 17 July, two days into what came to be called Operation Marneschutz-Reims, German hopes had been dashed. The long-awaited attack on 15 July went wrong from the beginning, and within two hours of going over the top the German infantry had encountered such heavy resistance that a breakthrough could not be achieved. Rheims remained in French hands and it was evident that any further advance was out of the question. And it was at this point, when the momentum of the German attack had drained away, that the Allies sprang their trap. Four large American divisions, the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 26th, were poised to strike the west face of the salient along the line Soissons to Château-Thierry on the morning of 18 July. They would be joined by fourteen French divisions, split into six corps, from their Tenth and Sixth Armies. On the opposite flank another two French corps, assisted by Italian troops that had been deployed on the Western Front, would attack the eastern face of the German lines. Their objective was the town of Fère-en-Tardenois, lying squarely in the middle of the salient. If the Allies could reach this point, German forces to the south, along the Marne, would be cut off and a major success achieved.
Getting everyone and everything into position was a monumental task. Troops, guns and supplies were brought up at night in order to prevent German observation, while aircraft buzzed overhead intercepting stray enemy planes and putting them to flight. The Allies could not know for certain whether their plans had been discovered by the enemy – the potential for word to leak out was frightening – but snippets of intelligence hinted that their plans were not suspected. The main attack was entrusted to General Charles Mangin’s French Tenth Army, spearheaded by the elite XX Corps, containing 1st and 2nd US Divisions and 1st Moroccan Division; striking eastwards from the forest of Villers-Cotterêts. For the counter-attack the French had managed to mass an unprecedented amount of armour, 540 light and 240 medium tanks, the majority of which would be deployed in this sector; hidden under the trees, covered over with tarpaulin and branches.4 In the final moments before the assault was due to go in, amid pouring rain, the crush behind the lines seemed to become desperate. A French officer, Lieutenant Charles Chenu, noted that the ‘entire forest’ of Villers-Cotterêts was ‘on the move’. ‘Troops slip ceaselessly towards the lines; artillerymen, arms bare, cut down branches, haul the guns, shift soil. As we have to be able to see, candles are lit; the forest sparkles as if enchanted, or like those towns whose twinkling lights are all that can be glimpsed at night from on board ship.’5
Mangin’s attack would be resisted by ten German divisions, about 900 guns and 900 aircraft in total, dug in behind only weak defences.6 Rumours and intelligence reports had been filtering in for some time of French and American troop movements, particularly on the west face of the salient around Villers-Cotterêts, but these were not taken seriously or were brushed aside.7 Although most of the German units were well below strength and had been exhausted by constant combat, they would still be able to offer considerable resistance, hence the need for an elaborate deception plan. French commanders knew that surprise was essential. They had decided that there would be no preliminary bombardment, nothing to warn the Germans of the impending assault, only silence. At Zero Hour, a huge creeping barrage would roar into life, smoke shells would cloak the battlefield and then the tanks, followed closely by the infantry, would push on ahead. This was a novel and state-of-the-art tactic that did not go unnoticed. The number of people who had been entrusted with the plans was kept to an absolute minimum and a junior officer like Charles Chenu was not one of them. At 4.20 a.m., five minutes before Zero Hour, Chenu went and spoke to his senior officer because he was unsure what was going on.
‘
There’s been a mistake,’ he said. ‘Zero Hour is in five minutes and we haven’t fired a shot.’
The captain looked at Chenu wearily. ‘We’ve changed our tactics,’ he replied. ‘Today, there will be no initial assault by the artillery; we take them by surprise. We will only break cover when we attack.’
Chenu was unsatisfied with this and asked his captain again, ‘Isn’t the artillery doing any more about it?’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘they will cope.’
Chenu had convinced himself, whatever anyone else said, that the attack had been postponed. For years all trench attacks had only gone in after lengthy, punishing bombardments had prepared the way; smashing down defences and pulverizing the opposing forces. Understandably, anxious troops found comfort and courage in such support, but now, by 1918, things were different. Surprise – the element that seemed to have deserted the Western Front – had returned. At that moment, he heard two shots, fired calmly, lazily almost; the first rounds of the morning, echoing away on the breeze. And then, suddenly and brutally, ‘the whole forest exploded with gunfire’. Chenu and his men looked at each other, stunned; mouthing swear words as they were ‘surrounded by guns spitting out fire, muzzles aflame’. The barrage had begun.
‘Forward, forward,’ someone shouted.8
Elton Mackin, a Marine with 2nd US Division, recalled the moment the counter-attack began. ‘One instant there was silence,’ he wrote, ‘then the world went mad in a smashing burst of sound.’