America's War for Humanity · Chapter 10Chapter II. (4)
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The loss of life was appalling, but in the absence of official reports while the fighting was in progress, could only be guessed at, though the world knew that the rivers of France and Flanders ran with blood. The Germans attacked in masses and successive waves, and paid the penalty of their desperate strategy. For though the British, and later the French, lines were bent backward for miles, and gaps were occasionally torn in them by the foe's furious attack, the Allied defensive withstood the onslaught and after a month of the most terrific struggle the world has ever seen, both British and French forces presented an unbroken front to the disappointed enemy.
The city of Amiens, one of the keys to Paris, had been a chief objective of the German drive, but all efforts to capture that important railroad center failed. True, Noyon, Peronne, Bapaume, Albert and Montdidier, on the south, and Festubert, Neuve Chappelle, Armentieres, and Paaschendaele, to the north, were successively captured from the Allies, in spite of the most gallant and heroic resistance. But then the lines held firmly, and all the Germans had to show for an awful sacrifice of life and morale was a few miles of advance into territory already devastated by war.
On April 21, when the Hun offensive had lasted a full month, not only were the armies of the Allies intact, and better still, their spirit and morale unbroken, but the utmost confidence prevailed among them. All the Allied forces, British, French, Canadian, and American, on the Western front, had been by this time placed under the supreme command of the eminent French strategist, General Ferdinand Foch, an important step in the co-ordination of effort that met with universal approval among the Allied nations.
GENERAL PERSHING OFFERS AID
A magnanimous offer by General Pershing, approved by President Wilson, to brigade the United States troops in France with the British and French forces, was gratefully accepted by General Foch. While the Americans bore only a minor part in the big battles, or rather the continuous battle of March and April on the Somme, and had no part at all in the fighting in Flanders, they held splendidly to their section of the front-line trenches in the vicinity of Toul, and gave the enemy a taste of their quality in many a trench raid. Several attacks by German storm troops were also beaten off, the most important of these occurring late in April, when the Americans defeated a force of some 1,200 picked Hun troops, driving them back to their own lines with a loss of 400, while the total losses of the Americans was about 200.
GERMANY PREPARES TO STRIKE
The great German drive had been in course of preparation for months before it began. The Russian situation had been settled, and large bodies of troops were thereby released for service on the Western front. The Kaiser and his general staff then determined upon a final effort to win a decisive victory in the west. Their plan was to vanquish the British and French, if possible, before the United States could transport a sufficient number of men to France to turn the tide of numbers in favor of the Allies, and enable them to take the offensive with good prospects of success.
German troops were therefore concentrated near the points chosen for attack, and this was done with the utmost secrecy, the troop trains running unlighted at night, so as to escape the observation of Allied aviators. Two hundred divisions in all were gathered for the German drive, and fully half of them were assembled near the British front on the Somme. March 21 was set as the date for the attack and every precaution was taken to render it a surprise to the British. The German troops were led to believe that they would be irresistible, and that Paris, their long-looked-for goal, would soon be won.
Meanwhile the Allies had not been idle. Expecting the drive, but not knowing where it would strike first, preparations had been made all along the line, not merely for strenuous defense of the positions held, but also for eventualities in case of enforced retreat. New positions back of the lines were prepared, reserves were distributed at strategic points, and full co-operation between the Allied armies was arranged for. The British took over the section of the French front between St. Quentin and Chauny, in addition to their former front, and by so doing relieved the strain on the far-flung French line.
The Germans counted for victory upon their concentration of vast bodies of troops and the element of surprise, hoping to break through between the British and French armies before Allied reserves could be brought up in sufficient numbers to halt them.
OPENING DATS OF THE BATTLE
On the day set, Thursday, March 21, the great battle opened, after a six-hour bombardment, the British 3rd and 5th armies being attacked simultaneously. The German infantry advanced in waves, of which there seemed no end, and these were followed by batteries of trench mortars, until the front line of German trenches had been reached. Then, wave after wave, the advance was continued, in the face of a furious British fire, until the defenders were compelled to draw back through sheer force and weight of numbers. The German waves moved forward at the calculated rate of 200 yards every four minutes, wherever it was found possible to do so. Each wave, on reaching its objective point, dropped to the ground and opened fire with rifles and machine guns, placing a barrage 2,000 yards ahead of them, under cover of which the succeeding wave advanced. Thus each wave passed over the one ahead of it, and fresh troops were constantly coming to the front. With such tactics, against a spirited and determined foe, the losses of the attackers were naturally enormous. In fact, it was estimated that the casualties suffered by the Germans during the first few days of such fighting amounted to 250, men. But, driven on by ruthless commanders, they continued to advance in masses, though mowed down by the British at every successive step.
"All the German storm troops, including the guards, were in brand-new uniforms," said the correspondent of the New York Times. "They advanced in dense masses and never faltered until shattered by the machine-gun fire. The supporting waves advanced over the bodies of the dead and wounded. The German commanders were ruthless in the sacrifice of life, in the hope of overwhelming the defense by the sheer weight of numbers. * * * Still they came on, with most fanatical courage of sacrifice. When the first lines fell, their places were filled by others, and the British guns and machine-guns could not kill them fast enough." Two batteries of field artillery at Epehy, it is said, "fired steadily with open sights (that is, pointblank) at four hundred yards for four hours, into the German masses swarming over No Man's Land."
On the first day, some field batteries aided the Germans, but these were soon left behind in the advance over difficult and shell-torn ground, and the battle became one of rifle and machine-gun fire and hand-to-hand combat.
On the north the British 3rd army made a splendid resistance and held its ground well, but the 5th army farther south, which bore the principal brunt of the attack, under General Gough, was gradually forced to retreat, though in good order, in a northwesterly direction, towards Amiens. French troops were ordered from the southwest to reinforce the British in the vicinity of Noyon. There the French stemmed the tide of Germans, and the drive was soon turned northward, with Amiens as its evident objective.
ALLIED LINES BEGIN TO HOLD FIRM
The battle continued along these lines, with the British still slowly retiring, with their faces to the foe, until the 26th of March, the French stretching their lines farther and farther to the left to keep in touch with the British, and never failing to maintain connection between the two armies. The Germans' fond hope of cutting them apart was doomed to disappointment. French and British cavalry aided in keeping the line intact, and for the second time since the early days of the war the horsemen came into their own, doing valiant service in covering the retreat of the British and impeding the enemy's advance at many points where their aid proved invaluable.
On March 27 and 28, the situation began to improve. British reinforcements arrived at the points of greatest danger, and the defense stiffened, then held the lines firmly before Amiens, and at a distance from that threatened city sufficiently great to prevent its successful bombardment by all but the heaviest artillery of the enemy. The devastated and shell-torn condition of the terrain taken over by the Germans was unfavorable for bringing up the great guns to within striking distance. From that time on, the Allies were supremely confident of their ability to cope with any forces.
While the Allied armies, especially the British, lost heavily in men and guns during the Hun advance, many of the German divisions engaged in the drive were literally cut to pieces. The 88th division was reported by prisoners to be practically annihilated. The same prisoners, taken in counter-attacks, expressed the utmost surprise at the relatively small number of dead whom they had found in the British and French trenches as they advanced. They had been informed by their officers that the offensive would be over in eight days, and that a complete victory over the Allies would be won within three or four weeks.
GERMAN DRIVE IS HALTED
The eighth day of the German offensive, far from finding the Huns victorious, resulted in tremendous attacks by the Germans being stopped by the unbeatable British, while the French won a brilliant victory at the south of the line. Meanwhile the Germans had begun another attack in the Flanders sector, with the object of wresting from the British the control of Messines Ridge, which dominated the lowlands of Flanders and had been so gallantly won by the Canadians in the previous year. They gained a partial footing on the ridge, but the greater part of it was grimly held, and all efforts of the enemy to advance through Ypres towards the Channel ports were frustrated.
Another sector was added to the north end of the battle line on the eighth day, March 28, when the Germans attacked heavily on both sides of the River Scarpe toward Arras. Here some of the fiercest fighting of the offensive soon developed, but the ground gained by the Germans was insignificant. Daily, however, they claimed to have captured thousands of Allied troops and hundreds of guns; while, on the other hand, enormously long ambulance trains were reported passing through Belgium with the German wounded, the hospitals in northern France not having sufficient accommodation for the sufferers. On every battlefield of the 100-mile front—for the fighting now covered that enormous stretch of territory, in two sections, north of La Bassee and south of Arras—the German dead lay literally in heaps.
On March 29, the ninth day of the great battle in France, the German drive was practically halted, and both British and French reports noted a decrease of the fighting, enemy activity being manifested only by local attacks all along the front, which was being strengthened each day by the arrival of Allied reinforcements.
PARIS BOMBARDED AT LONG RANGE
Soon after the great offensive opened, the city of Paris was surprised by being bombarded from a distance of approximately 70 miles by a new German long-range gun, which was discovered by French airmen to be concealed in a concrete tunnel in a wood behind the German lines, A number of persons were killed and wounded by the nine-inch shells from this new weapon, 54 women being killed when a shell struck a church in the suburbs of the city on Good Friday. The Allied commanders refused to regard the long-range gun as of any great military importance except as a means of spreading terror among the civilian population,—and the population of Paris refused to be terrorized by such a method, exhibiting the same spirit as that of the people of England with regard to the futile aerial raids.
French estimates of the German losses for the first eleven days of the offensive placed them at between 275,000 and 300,000 men. The Germans claimed that during the same period they had captured 70,000 prisoners and 1,000 field guns.
ANOTHER ATTACK ON AMIENS
Having been foiled in an attempt on March 31 to break through the valley of the Oise, Paris ceased to be the German objective, and another offensive against Amiens was undertaken on April 4. By this time a French army had repaired the ragged line between the French on the south and the remainder of the British army of General Gough, whose enforced retirement had been conducted in good order. Though outnumbered two to one, the British and French repulsed the attack on Amiens with heavy losses to the Germans, who were effectually stopped at a distance of fifteen kilometers (nine miles) from that city. This ended the first phase of the great battle.
BATTLE RENEWED IN THE NORTH
The second phase of the battle which was expected to prove decisive began April 9 with an attack on the British, aided by Portuguese troops, on a front of fifteen miles, from La Bassee to Ypres. The center, held by three Portuguese divisions, was broken through, and on April 12 the situation seemed critical. Determined counterattacks by the British, however, and reinforcements by the French, stopped the Germans in the next few days, and this offensive, like that farther south in the valley of the Somme, gradually died out, leaving the Germans with gains of only a few square miles of devastated territory to show for their continued heavy losses. And the reserve forces of the Allies were still intact, the strategy of General Foch in this respect being universally applauded as correct under the circumstances.
SHELLS FIRED BY THE MILLION
In the beginning of the offensive which thus failed to accomplish its object, the most desperate means were employed by the Germans to break down resistance; In the first six hours of bombardment on March 21, when three great German armies were massed for the attack, under Generals Von Bulow, Von Marwitz, and Von Hutier, commanding from the north to south in the order named, it is estimated that at least 1,500,000 shells were fired by one single army—that opposed to General Gough's forces on the south, while the British 3rd army, under General Byng, to the north, was similarly assailed. Most of the shells contained gas and were designed to destroy the occupants of the trenches about to be stormed. Only the utmost individual valor and persistency of the thin British line, as it retired still fighting, prevented the desperate and over-confident foe from turning the gradual retreat into a decisive defeat. As it was, the Germans paid dearly for every yard of ground they gained, as their successive waves of troops swept over the zone of trenches and then engaged the groups of Allied forces in the open beyond.
All the German units were under orders to advance as far and as fast as possible, being provided with three days' rations and two days' water. After the first few days, the difficulty of bringing up supplies, with the expected objectives far from being gained, aided in slowing up and then halting their advance. Behind the German storm troops great numbers of reserves were assembled, to fill up the gaps torn in the ranks and restore the divisions to their normal strength as fast as they were depleted by the defense. The German tactics took no account of human life, but expended it in the most reckless manner, with appalling results throughout the drive. The Allies, on the other hand, sought at all times to conserve their forces by intrenching as fast as possible at every point during the period of their retirement. Their artillery was constantly in action, and aided greatly in checking the German. advance.
ALLIES CONTROL IN THE AIR
German aeroplanes played no great part in the advance, although they bombed the British and French rear nightly, and the air service of the Allies proved superior throughout the battle. For the first time in a great battle British and French airmen attacked the enemy infantry from low altitudes with their machine guns and bombs, and rendered invaluable assistance in damming the swelling tide of the Hun hordes. Having gained the mastery of the air, as they did prior to the British drive on the Somme in 1916, they retained it until the foe was halted. To a considerable extent they replaced the heavy guns of the Allies by their constant bombing and gun fire.
Between March 21 and March 31, the French and British pilots shot down more than 100 German planes, losing about one-third of that number in the air battles. After the first few clays there were practically no German machines in the air over the fighting front, as was the case on the Somme in 1916, but at the end of March the Hun planes began to reappear in mass formation patrols, sometimes consisting of as many as fifty planes in a group of patrols. Then followed a period of intense air fighting, of which a single day's record of the French may be cited as an example. On April 12, the Allied aviation report shows that French fighting scouts made 250 flights, fought 120 combats in the sky, shot down eight Germans and damaged 23 others, burned five enemy balloons, damaged five more, and bombarded German troops with 45 tons of explosives.
GERMANS FAIL IN THEIR OBJECT
The last part of the month of April was marked by a succession of minor attacks by the Germans along the entire front of the halted offensive, and by the development of counter-attacks by the Allies at various points where it was deemed necessary or advisable to strengthen their defensive positions, but up to May 1 the Germans were as far as ever from their main objectives in the west. Judged from the standpoint of their confident expectations, and the promises of success held out as an encouragement to their troops, the long-heralded and long-prepared spring offensive of 1918 was a failure. Their much-vaunted strength of numbers and of organization failed as completely to gain a decisive result as their initial drive on Paris in 1914. Though they threw into the fighting in March and April about 125 divisions, they failed to separate the French and British armies, which was a prime object of their strategy, and they sustained losses which, while not irreparable, must have greatly affected the morale of their men. "Remember Verdun!" said a famous French commander, commenting on the drive. "The Boche is making this tremendous effort and sustaining these losses to effect a complete rupture of our front, and if he does not do that he has failed."
BRITISH LOSSES MADE GOOD
On April 25 the British minister of munitions announced in the House of Commons that the losses of guns and ammunition sustained by Field Marshal Haig's forces in France and Flanders during the big German drive had been more than replaced. The losses were placed by Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill at nearly 1,000 guns, between 4,000 and 5,000 machine guns, and a quantity of ammunition "requiring from one to three weeks to manufacture." More than twice the number of guns lost or destroyed had been placed at the disposal of the British air and ground services, said the minister.
GERMANS START ANOTHER ATTACK
Another determined attack in the Somme region was begun by the Germans on April 24, after three weeks' further preparation. The enemy evidently had not abandoned hope of capturing Amiens, and, he again began hammering at the gateway to that city. The first onslaught was repulsed by the British, but on the following day, April 25, the enemy succeeded in gaining about a mile of ground. The combined British and French armies were covering the roads to Amiens, with reserves close at hand, and part of General Pershing's American forces were co-operating with the French. The utmost confidence prevailed that the united forces under General Foch, who was called by Marshal Joffre "the greatest strategist in Europe," would not only meet and defeat this renewed drive by the enemy, but that before long the tide of battle would turn strongly in favor of the Allies, whose reserve armies were held in leash by their supreme commander, awaiting the strategic hour to strike.
BOTTLING UP U-BOAT BASES
One of the most thrilling exploits of the war occurred on the night of April 22, 1918, when British naval forces performed an almost incredible feat, by entering the harbors of Ostend and Zeebrugge, German submarine bases, and practically bottling them up. French destroyers co-operated with the British in the daring undertaking.
At midnight, under cover of a remarkably developed smoke screen, furnished by the raiders themselves, five old British cruisers were run aground in the harbor channels, blown up, and abandoned by their crews. The ships were loaded with concrete. An old submarine, loaded with explosives, was also run under a bridge connecting the mole, or breakwater, at Zeebrugge with the shore, and there blown up, so as to prevent interruption of the raiders while they were doing their work alongside the mole.
Facing dangerous and unknown conditions of navigation, the harbor was rushed by British monitors and destroyers, under heavy fire from the shore batteries. A storming party of volunteers, sailors and marines, was landed under extreme difficulties from the cruiser Vindictive. This party boarded a German destroyer lying alongside the mole, defeated her crew, and sank the ship. The concrete-laden vessels were duly sunk with a view to blocking both harbors, and every gun on the mole at Zeebrugge was destroyed. The effects of the raid were not easily ascertainable. It was soon learned that the submarine base at Zeebrugge at least had been put out of business for a while. The gallantry and daring of the deed were generally recognized as fully in keeping with the best traditions of the British navy. The loss of life was quite heavy, but the British lost only one destroyer and two coastal motor boats, many of the raiders returning safely to the other side of the Channel. Even the men on the exploded submarine succeeded in escaping. The officer who planned the raid, however, was among the killed.
GERMAN ATTACK ON YPRES FAILS
On Monday, April 29, the German 4th army under General von Arnim, having gained possession of Mount Kemmel, a dominating position, began a general assault on the British hill positions on the Kemmel front, southwest of Ypres. The intention was to capture Ypres forthwith, by the overwhelming power of numbers, and the day's fighting was a crucial test of the holding power of the Allies in the Ypres salient. The result of the attack was a stunning defeat for the enemy, who was repulsed all along the line and suffered frightful losses.
In the words of a French general, "It was a great day for the Allies!" The repulse of the German attack was a real defeat, for it upset all the confident calculations of the enemy, who from the height of Mount Kemmel had seen, first Ypres, and then channel ports, within his grasp. It brought disappointment and disillusion to his troops, who had been urged on to their disastrous massed attacks by flamboyant promises of success. The effect was seen in a renewal of German peace propaganda, which all the Allies had learned by this time to disregard as unworthy of the slightest serious attention.
"Extraordinary nervousness and depression prevail in Germany, owing to the losses in the western offensive," said Reuter's correspondent at Amsterdam on April 29, quoting a German military writer, Capt. von Salzmann, who said: "Our losses have been enormous. The offensive in the west has arrived at a deadlock. The enemy is much stronger than our supreme command assumed. The region before Ypres is a great lake, and therefore impassable. The whole country between our Amiens front and Paris is mined and will be blown up should we attempt to pass."
The preliminary bombardment southwest of Ypres April 29 started in the early morning and took in the ten-mile front from Meteren, west of Bailleul, to Voormezeele, two miles south of Ypres. Infantry attacks in this area followed with great fury, and sanguinary fighting continued all day. The Germans at the outset advanced with fixed bayonets, but they came under such an intense machine-gun fire that most of them were never able to employ the steel. The French at Locre and the British at Voormezeele repulsed every attack, thrusting the enemy back whenever he gained a footing in advanced positions, and firmly holding every point around Ypres at the end of the day.
General von Arnim's losses were particularly staggering at Locre, where he used battalion after battalion in a vain attempt to hold the village, a key to Mount Rouge. The previous German capture of Mount Kemmel did the enemy little good, for the Allied artillery kept the crest of the hill so smothered with shell fire that it was impossible for the Huns to occupy it in force.
The attack, which was the fourth great battle of Ypres, was the biggest effort the Germans had made in the Flanders offensive, the enemy employing thirty fresh battalions of reserves, in addition to the large number of divisions in position at the beginning of the battle. The net result was a tremendous setback for the Germans, who paid an awful price. Next morning the battlefield in front of the defenders' positions was covered with the bodies of gray-uniformed men.
AMERICAN TROOPS IN ACTION
American units were in action in Picardy, east of Amiens, on April 28, having reinforced the British and French in that sector, to aid in keeping the foe from Amiens and Paris. Their baptism of fire in the direct line of the German offensive made their previous experiences pale into the insignificance of skirmishes. During the various engagements in which they participated in the last days of April and the first week of May they acquitted themselves with great credit.
After a preliminary bombardment of two hours, a heavy German attack was launched against the Americans in the afternoon of April 30 in the vicinity of Villers-Bretonneux, and was repulsed with heavy losses to the enemy, who left dead and wounded on the field, while the American losses were reported as "rather severe." There was hand-to-hand fighting all along the line, and the violent struggle lasted for a considerable time before the enemy was finally thrust back, leaving prisoners in the American hands. Their French comrades were full of praise for the marked bravery displayed throughout by the American troops, who were fighting at one of the most difficult points on the whole battle front.
U.S. TROOPS BUSHED TO PRANCE
As a result of the great German offensive movements and territorial gains in the spring of 1918, there was a tremendous increase in the military activities of the United States, particularly in rushing troops to Europe. After the selection of General Foch as generalissimo of the Allied forces, the American troops in the war zone were brigaded with the French and British all the way from the North Sea to Switzerland, and their numbers steadily increased.
In the United States the training of the new National Army, national guards, and officers in the numerous cantonments and training camps was intensified and hurried. As fast as the men were brought into condition they were shipped to France. At first much of the space on the transports was devoted to supplies and materials for the camps and depots in France, but as the situation became critical owing to successful enemy offensives, fewer supplies and more men were sent. Great Britain lent her ships and the number of transports was largely increased, so that each month of 1918 showed a greater movement of troops across the Atlantic.
The troop movement record for the spring and summer months of 1918 was a wonderful one, in view of the submarine menace. In April, 117, American troops were successfully transported; in May, 244,345; in June, 276,382, and in July 300,000, The month of August found more than 1,500,000 Americans in France, England and Italy. This immense number of men were carried over without the loss of a single eastbound American transport.
AN ARMY OF 5,000,000 PLANNED
On August 5, 1918, plans were announced for increasing the effective strength of the United States army to 5,000,000 forthwith, by an extension of the draft age limits and rapid intensive training. Official statements showed that the armed forces of the United States already amounted to a total of 3,074,572 men, including 2,570,780 in the army and 503,792 in the navy. The national army at this date contained 1,400,000 men, the regular army 525,741, the national guard 434,511 and the reserve corps 210,528. The regular navy had 219,158 men, the marine corps 58,463, the coast guard 6,605, and the reserve 219,566. On June of this year 744,865 men reaching the age of 21 since June 5, 1917, were registered for selective draft purposes.