It was heralded, in fact, at 5 a.m. on the 21st by an intense bombardment in a thick mist which made it impossible for the British batteries to render effective aid to the battered first-line trenches. The onslaught was organized in two parts, the northern advance being directed against Byng's Third Army from the Sensee River to the Cambrai road, and the southern attack from the Flesquieres salient opposite Cambrai to St. Quentin. No fewer than 40 German divisions--nearly half a million men--specially trained for the new offensive, were launched against this southern half, and of these more than half were directed against the 16,500 yards of front held by Gough's Fifth Army nearest St. Quentin. All told, the German drive consisted of 64 divisions on the opening day of the offensive. To meet it the British had but 19 infantry divisions in line and 10 in reserve, with cavalry. From first to last the Germans employed in this attack some 78 divisions--exceeding in numbers the total fighting strength of the whole of the British armies in France. By the 9th of April, when the Germans, foiled in the opening move of their supreme offensive, had shifted the spear-head of their a.s.sault to Flanders, the total number of British divisions employed both in cavalry and infantry did not exceed 46.

Some part of the line was bound to give before the terrific impact of the infantry attack which followed the bombardment on 21st March. The plans made for repairing the breach in co-operation with the French broke down for a time because the British Fifth Army, attacked by a far greater force than had been antic.i.p.ated--23 German divisions having been ma.s.sed as secretly as possible in order to bring them into position at the critical hour--had been forced back sooner than was expected. There was no time either for the British reserves or the French reinforcements to repair the breach before the a.s.saulting divisions under von Hutier, who had established his reputation for this form of operation on the Eastern front, were through it and extending it in all directions.

There were, in point of fact, two serious breaches along the 42-mile front held by the Fifth Army. One, the less dangerous of the two, was south of the Oise, where the line was held more lightly than elsewhere, owing to the marshes, which had been relied on to make any considerable attack at this point unlikely. As ill luck would have it, a long spell of dry weather had made the ground easily pa.s.sable, and the Germans, well aware of the position, swept across it in overwhelming force, like a tidal wave. Heroic stands were made for the forward redoubts and battle positions, but the whole of the ground south of the St. Crozat Ca.n.a.l was so submerged in the flood that by nightfall there was nothing for it but to withdraw the divisions of the 3rd Corps, which had been defending it, to the line of the Somme Ca.n.a.l. Nevertheless, though the Germans made their greatest progress on the 21st at this point, it was not their most dangerous thrust, being nearest to French reinforcements.

The chief danger-point was farther north, on the Fifth Army's left, below the Flesquieres salient. By noon, with the fog still so thick that it was impossible to see 50 yards ahead, the Germans had advanced as far as Ronssoy, inside the second zone of the British defensive positions, together with Hargicourt and Villeret to the south. This opened a gate to the third line 3 miles wide, and before the day was over the enemy had pushed towards this as far as Templeux-le-Gerard. But for the stubborn defence of Epehy, to the north, and Le Verguier, to the south, the breach would have been perilously widened on the following day, but at both these points the German advance was temporarily checked. It could not be stayed long. Supplied with an overpowering weight of men to crush through anywhere, von Hutier was ready to pay the price exacted for every success by British artillery-fire at short range, and British machine-gun posts held to the last: and when St. Emilie and Hervilly finally fell on the 21st, Epehy and Le Verguier could only hold out long enough for the general line of defence to be withdrawn from them. The retreat thence, hard-pressed as it was, left the Fifth Army's centre with a sagging flank to the south, of which the on-coming Germans did not fail to take full advantage.

Thenceforward the tide swept on for days in ever-increasing volume, all the reinforcements that Sir Douglas Haig or Petain could send serving only to stop gaps here and there. Ham, Bapaume, and Peronne had fallen by the 24th, and about two-thirds of the territory wrested from the Germans in 1916 regained by them. Germany was announcing to all the world that the 'Kaiser's Battle', as the emperor himself had caused it to be named, had already been won. To drive the news home, the enemy, on 23rd March, began bombarding Paris with long-range guns capable of firing 70 miles. Nesle and Noyon were the next to go, and by 26th March--save at Albert, which held out until the following day--the Allies were back beyond the line from which they started in 1916.

Elsewhere the enemy's progress along the 60-mile battle front had been slow and costly. He had least success in the north against the British Third Army, partly because the positions held were stronger, partly because his heaviest and most persistent blows had been reserved for the Fifth Army.

Some isolated gaps were made on this front, but nothing beyond repair, and the ground lost was not vital. It is impossible in the s.p.a.ce at our command to follow all the complications of attack and counter-attack in the fateful days which followed, until, by 26th March, the Germans were within a dozen miles or so of Amiens, with the British Fifth Army still retiring before them in a state of disintegration. At this critical juncture, when the reserves had all been thrown in, General Gough adopted a suggestion made by General Grant, Chief Engineer of the Fifth Army, that a last line of defence--a forlorn hope to save Amiens--should be formed from stragglers, army school personnel, tunnelling companies, Canadian and American engineers, anyone, in short, who could be roped in. The command of this heterogeneous force, after being organized by General Grant and posted according to General Gough's instructions, was handed over to General Sandeman Carey. 'Carey's force', as it came to be called, aided by the 1st Cavalry Division, which was rushed across the Somme from the north at the same time, earned a special tribute from Mr. Lloyd George in the House of Commons for the magnificent fight which it put up in this last line of defence.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The German effort was becoming spent, though by broadening out the salient the enemy continued to press back the French as well as the British. The French Third Army, sent to the a.s.sistance of the British Fifth Army, played a lion's part in preventing him from extending his gains too dangerously in the south. On the 28th he concentrated his main energy against the stubborn British Third Army, which, conforming to the retreating line of the Fifth Army on its right, had fallen back to new battle positions, but in good order. Fresh shock-divisions were brought up to break this northern pivot of the British defence, and, after the usual full-dress bombardment, were launched as before in continual waves of a.s.sault. This time, however, there was no fog to handicap the British gunners, who were given the opportunity of a lifetime when they opened fire from hidden positions on serried ranks of German infantrymen, marching shoulder to shoulder at point-blank range.

Six times the advance was renewed, and as many times mowed down, and when a final attempt was made, after a second bombardment in the afternoon, it met with similar failure. The Germans had shot their bolt. Their appalling losses on the 28th told on all their subsequent efforts in this first and greatest of Ludendorff's offensives in 1918.

It was on the 28th that General Gough relinquished the command of the British Fifth Army, General Rawlinson (Fourth Army) succeeding to the task of extricating its shattered divisions. Two days earlier the long-needed decision had been made by which the command of the Allied armies pa.s.sed into the hands of General Foch as Generalissimo, who thenceforward, until the end of the war, held supreme control. Though several anxious days were to pa.s.s before the Allies could breathe freely again in the Amiens area, the position hourly improved as reinforcements, French and British, arrived on the scene. Counter-attacks recovered some of the ground on 30th March, and when the Germans resumed their advance towards Amiens on a more limited scale on 4th and 5th April, their losses were out of all proportion to their gains.

_Second Phase of Ludendorff's Offensive_

It is probable that the operations of 4th and 5th April were designed chiefly to pin the British armies to the southern area, while Ludendorff, finding his road barred to Amiens, prepared to strike a fresh blow in the north in a decisive bid for the Channel ports. Though well aware of a possible thrust in this direction, Sir Douglas Haig had been compelled to draw heavily on his Flanders front for reinforcements during the exhausting battle for Amiens, in which as many as 46 out of his total 58 divisions had been engaged. By the end of the first week in April the bulk of the British troops holding the Flanders line had pa.s.sed through the furnace of the southern battlefield and were sadly in need of rest and reinforcement. Had the ground been in its usual condition of slush and mire at this season of the year they could have been relied upon to hold up any advance, but a dry spring had prepared the path for a German advance, and as soon as this was seen to be imminent it was reluctantly decided voluntarily to evacuate the Pa.s.schendaele salient, won at such frightful cost in the closing months of the previous year. Steps were also taken to relieve the Portuguese troops[3] who, though not seriously engaged, had been too long in the trenches south of the salient. Before either of these plans could mature the Germans upset both by launching their great attack at 4 a.m. on 9th April.

As in the opening move against the Fifth Army on 21st March, the a.s.sault--launched by the army of General von Quast in the direction of Festubert-Armentieres against the northern portion of the front held by the British First Army (General Horne)--was favoured by an impenetrable early-morning fog. Through it came five columns of troops like the p.r.o.ngs of a fork, with an army corps as the central point to thrust into the weak spot where the Portuguese were sandwiched in between the British 40th and 55th Divisions. Bursting through the Portuguese sector, the attack spread swiftly to north and south--especially to the north, where the 40th Division, feeling the thrust which pierced the Portuguese line, was forced back on its right flank to the line of the Lys, 3 miles in its rear. The rest of the 40th, with reinforcements from the 34th Division, formed a new line between Fort Rompre and Bois Grenier, covering Erquinghem and Armentieres from the south, and held it the rest of the day. Had the southern pivot also given way when the Portuguese sector was broken the consequences would have been fatal to any hope of checking the German onrush. But the 55th Division never budged after its left flank, borne back by the first a.s.sault, succeeded in forming a defensive flank between Festubert and Le Touret, and the importance of its stout defence through the battle, as Sir Douglas Haig bore witness in his dispatches, could not be overestimated. This line was strengthened later in the day by the 21st Division, which, together with the 50th Division--both just relieved from the Somme fighting--had been hurried up as soon as the attack developed.

Next day the battle spread to the north, blazing up along the right of the British Second Army (General Plumer), the army of General Sixt von Armin attacking in another early-morning mist between Armentieres and Hollebeke.

The two German armies now acted in concert, and together pushed their advantage until the Lys was crossed in the south and the Messines Ridge carried in the north, with Laventie, Ploegsteert, and a dozen other historic landmarks in between. Outflanked on both sides, Armentieres had perforce to be evacuated. Messines was recaptured by the South Africans, but had to be abandoned when the enemy's advance in the south pushed almost as far as Neuve Eglise. On the 11th, when the enemy continued to extend his gains with seemingly endless reinforcements, and had crossed the Lawe, a tributary of the Lys, Sir Douglas Haig issued his famous Order of the Day to his troops, which, while it reflected the gravity of the situation, inspired them to fight it out:

"Every position must be held to the last man.... With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment."

The appeal, with its promise also of speedy reinforcements from the French army--"moving rapidly and in great force to our support"--heartened the battle-worn divisions when they sorely needed its encouragement. The pressure was still too great to prevent the Germans from taking Neuve Eglise on the 14th--after a struggle lasting two and a half days, from house to house--or Merris a day earlier, which brought them within 4 miles of Hazebrouck, where the 1st Australian Division, just detrained, kept them at bay; or Bailleul on the 15th. At midnight on the 15th the British line fell back to the defences between Meteren and Dranoutre, a move involving the simultaneous withdrawal from the Pa.s.schendaele Ridge.

These were the darkest hours of the last great battle for Ypres. There were already signs that the German advance, having again failed to break a way through by sheer weight and numbers, was slowing down, and the promised French reinforcements were close at hand. These took over the sector from Meteren to Wytschaete, where, on the 25th, before they had consolidated their positions, they were made to bear the brunt of a fresh German blow, delivered with 9 fresh divisions, from Bailleul to the Ypres-Comines Ca.n.a.l.

The French fought desperately to save Kemmel Hill, commanding Ypres some six miles away; but in five hours the Germans had captured both the village and the crest of the hill. With the Ypres salient now dominated both from Kemmel and Messines it became necessary still further to shorten the line round Ypres. This was accordingly redrawn on the night of 26th-27th April through Pilkem, Wieltje, Zillebeke Lake, and Voormezeele.

One more effort was made by the Germans to push right through before the end of the month--on the 29th, when, in a fresh attack in force on the Franco-British front, they succeeded in reaching as far as Locre, behind Kemmel. But the French, who were in no mood to repeat their experience at Kemmel, flung the enemy back with sanguinary losses. The heaviest casualties of the Germans that day, however, were against the British 21st, 49th, and 25th Divisions, whose artillery--like the gunners of the Third Army on 28th March--had the range of them as they advanced in ma.s.s formation, and blew them to pieces. Only one of the waves of German infantry succeeded in reaching the British positions, where bomb and bayonet completed its destruction. This marked the last serious attempt on Germany's part to seize the Channel ports.

Though Ludendorff had failed to reach his objectives either on the Amiens or Flanders front he still had a sufficient superiority of force to retain the initiative. With every incentive to compel a decision before the new American army, which was now arriving at the rate of something like 150,000 a month, could enter the field in full strength, Ludendorff had either to throw up the sponge or strike again at the earliest moment in one final effort to beat the Allies to their knees. Meantime the obvious policy on the Franco-British part was to maintain an active defence until their own and American reinforcements made a counter-offensive possible. In the minor operations which marked this period of waiting, the Australians added Villers-Bretonneux to their battle honours. Villers-Bretonneux, which lies on the edge of the ridge facing Amiens--only 8 miles away--had been rushed and captured by the Germans in a surprise attack in thick fog on 23rd April. Before daybreak the next morning the Australians had surrounded the German garrison, and the end of a fierce house-to-house conflict left the place in British hands again, together with nearly 1000 prisoners.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Germany's Last Bid for the Channel Ports: approximate positions of the Allies' line before and after Ludendorff's offensive in April, 1918]

_Third Phase of Ludendorff's Offensive_

Though every day added to the danger of delay, it was not until the end of May that the German army, its plans disorganized by its unexpectedly heavy commitments in the Amiens and Flanders battles, was launched on the third and final phase of Ludendorff's great offensive with a sudden attack on the Aisne front in the direction of Paris. It was along this front that the 9th British Corps (General Sir A. Hamilton-Gordon), consisting of the 8th, 21st, 25th, and 50th Divisions, and subsequently reinforced by the 19th Division, had been sent to the French armies under General Petain for much-needed rest after sharing to the full the honours and sacrifices of the earlier battles. By their side were crack French divisions which had also earned the rest which it was felt they could count upon along the main stretch of the Chemin-des-Dames. holding as it did some of the strongest natural defences along the whole battle front. The French had taken months in the previous year, and spent countless lives, to recapture these positions.

The very unlikelihood of choosing such a formidable sector decided Ludendorff to select it for his dramatic attack on 27th May, moving up his specially trained divisions of shock troops at the last moment--with all possible secrecy, accompanied by other surprises in the vast number of guns and aeroplanes brought into action, as well as the largest fleet of German tanks which the enemy had ever employed. Only on the very eve of the new advance did the French learn of the impending blow--too late to avert disaster. Outnumbered by 6 to 1 the Allies, British and French alike, were borne back by the onrush of picked troops as soon as the preliminary bombardment ceased. Helped as usual by a thick early-morning mist the armies of von Bohn, von Hutier, and von Below--all nominally under the German Crown Prince--had carried the whole of the Chemin-des-Dames ridge by nightfall, and were fighting on the Aisne. Within two days they were not only across the Aisne on an 18-mile front, but had swept on to the Vesle, and were even across that river west of Fismes--a depth of 12 miles from their starting-point.

Reserving his stoutest resistance for the flanks, Foch strove hard to save Soissons, but it fell again into the enemy's hands on the 29th, by which date Rheims, on the Allies' right, was also pressed so hard that its outlying positions were carried on the 30th, and only the devoted bravery of Berthelot's Fifth Army--with Gouraud guarding the Champagne front on its right--saved the battered city. The British and French divisions which had meantime been driven back from the Chemin-des-Dames to the Aisne, and from the Aisne to the Vesle--the Allies often fighting side by side in hopeless rear-guard actions against immensely superior numbers--were now holding a line between the Vesle and the Ardre while the Germans continued to plunge deeper and deeper into the big salient which they had formed towards the Marne. The shattered divisions of the British 9th Corps now formed part of Berthelot's Fifth French Army guarding Rheims, and subsequently played a large part in repelling the enemy's attack on the north-east side of that city. In the words of General Berthelot himself: "They have enabled us to establish a barrier against which the hostile waves have beaten themselves in vain. This none of the French who witnessed it will ever forget."

By 31st May the German advance in the centre had spread as far as the Marne at Chateau-Thierry, extending thence along a 10-mile front to Dormans. It was at Chateau-Thierry on this day that the Americans began to play their part in the battle, linking up with a French colonial division on the south bank of the river and preventing the enemy from crossing. New French units were also coming into line, blocking the Germans' path south of Soissons on the road to Villers-Cotterets, as well as at Chateau-Thierry. Foiled in both these directions, Ludendorff turned to the Ailette front in order to get more elbow-room, and flattened out the French front between Soissons and Noyon. Again unable to make much further headway against the fierce French counter-attacks, he carried the battle still farther to his right, attacking between Noyon and Montdidier on 9th June in the hope of linking up the new Marne salient with the one already formed at Amiens, and so advancing on one immense front. The new 'drive' was again entrusted to von Hutier, whose 25 divisions, employing the same shock tactics as before, swept forward at first to a depth of some 5 miles in the centre; but, held on the wings, were fiercely counter-attacked on the 11th on their exposed right flank and robbed of most of their gains.

On the following day the German War Minister declared that "Foch's so-called Army of Reserve exists no more"; the truth being that Foch, with time and an ever-flowing stream of reinforcements on his side, was gradually becoming master of the situation, and could afford to wait until Ludendorff gave him the opportunity he wanted. Ludendorff, on the other hand, with the pick of his troops 'pocketed' in the great Marne salient, was forced to make another forward move or withdraw them. He made one more attempt on Rheims, three divisions being ordered on 18th June to take it at all costs; but the whole attack was an expensive failure. For the rest of the month, when the weather broke, and during the first half of July, Ludendorff left most of the fighting to the Allies while he prepared for one last herculean effort to burst through their line. On 28th June Foch felt his way towards his counter-stroke by a preliminary advance between Villers-Cotterets and the Aisne, when he won back over a mile of useful territory and took over 1000 prisoners. On 4th July further minor victories were recorded along both the French and British fronts, the British success being at Hamel, where American units celebrated Independence Day by helping the Australians to recover that fiercely-contested stronghold, with 1500 prisoners.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The First and Last Advances on Paris: map showing approximately (by the shaded area) the limit of the German gains in the final phase of Ludendorff's offensive in 1918, and (by the dotted line) the limit reached in the 1914 advance]

On 15th July Ludendorff launched his final effort on a 50-mile front on each side of Rheims. This time the Allies were warned of its direction in time. On the left, where immediate success was vital to the whole plan, the attack was flung into disorder at the very beginning by a deluge of sh.e.l.ls from Gouraud's guns before even the German bombardment started; and when, this over, the attacking divisions of von Einem and von Mudra advanced, they found that Gouraud's army, save for volunteer garrisons in concrete forts, had returned undamaged to its main battle positions, to reach which they had to face a concentrated fire that tore their ranks to pieces. Some 50,000 German troops were admitted to have fallen that day before Gouraud's army. With the failure of the advance in Champagne the German attack on the right, where Italian as well as British and American troops were now fighting side by side with the French, was unavailing, though the line south-west of Rheims was pressed back some 3 or 4 miles, and eight divisions under von Bohn succeeded by 17th July in crossing the Marne at a number of points between Fossoy and Dormans.

_Foch's Counter-stroke_

They were only allowed to remain south of the Marne long enough for Foch to convert these river crossings into a death-trap. For Foch had now decided that the moment had come when the Germans, exhausted by their advance, were least in a condition to resist a counter-stroke aimed at their flank. The flank which Foch selected for attack was that on the western side of the salient created, from its most northerly point on the Aisne near Soissons, to its southern extremity, Chateau-Thierry on the Marne, where the symptoms of the exhaustion of the German momentum had been furnished by the ability of American and other contingents to resist further advance. In the earlier half of July a ceaseless stream of men and guns had flowed up from the French side to take cover in the forest of Villers-Cotterets on their flank, in preparation for the blow to come; and by 18th July two French armies were a.s.sembled along the 27-mile flank, that of General Mangin aligned between the Aisne and the Ourcq, which bisected the salient, and that of General Degoutte from the Ourcq to the Marne. Mangin's army contained some of the finest French shock divisions as well as two famous British ones, the 34th and the 15th, and a number of keen American troops.

Degoutte's army had the more awkward task, judged by the country over which it had to travel, but Foch's plan here, as elsewhere, was to put his best fighting material where it would pierce farthest, and hold the enemy elsewhere. By the same token the army of General Berthelot, with two other supporting British divisions, was entrusted with the task on the other side of the salient, from Rheims to epernay, not of thrusting at the Germans but of holding them hard.

Mangin's army was ordered to strike with all its force. It was equipped with new and speedier 'whippet' tanks, and its immediate onset was masked by the accident of a July thunderstorm on the eve of the fighting. On the morning of 18th July it went forward with nothing but a barrage, but with the effect of a thunderbolt, and its average advance on that day was 5 miles, with Fontenoy and the plateau of Pernay on the Aisne firmly secured.

Degoutte's army went forward for 2 miles over difficult country. A blow of immense significance had been struck along the whole length of the salient's vulnerable side. Next day Mangin's movement continued; he tightened his hold on the Aisne and swung his right wing farther along the Ourcq so as to bring the whole line of the one good north-and-south road in the salient under the fire of his guns, and thus to hamper the German movements terribly. That alone would have forced the enemy to begin a retreat from the Marne, while it might yet be possible. Meanwhile Degoutte was advancing also, and was forcing the Germans away from the neighbourhood of Chateau-Thierry. The German commander, von Bohn, was not slow to recognize the implications of the situation into which Foch had forced him, and gave orders to recross the Marne. He was in time, but his retreating troops were roughly handled at the crossings, and despite all his attempts to hold up the attack on his western flank by counter-attack, the pressure of Mangin and Degoutte, added to that of de Mitry's army, which was now following him back over the Marne, became every hour more dangerous. By 20th July not only was the Marne itself in process of being abandoned by von Bohn but Chateau-Thierry had fallen. Degoutte's army was 3 miles north of it. De Mitry's divisions had secured ample crossings for future movement and Berthelot's mixed forces of French, British, and Italians had begun a disconcerting attack on the eastern side of the salient. In three days the Germans lost 20,000 prisoners, and, what was more significant, 450 guns.

The first _riposte_ of the French Generalissimo had been delivered. It was to be followed in unending succession by others.

The German Commander-in-Chief had to gain time. It was no easy thing to withdraw his 600,000 men crowded between the Aisne and the Marne, but he was obliged to support them lest the salient should collapse too suddenly.

He aimed a counter-stroke at Gouraud's army east of Rheims, but the blow spent itself in the air, and Foch replied by setting in motion the army of General Debeney, where it stood opposite to that of General von Hutier, between Montdidier and Noyon. But he had not yet gathered the full fruits of the strength of his positional a.s.sault between the Aisne and the Marne, and did not in the least allow pressure here to relax. Mangin seized Oulchy-le-Chateau on the Ourcq (25th July); and on 26th July Gouraud, on the other side of Rheims, recovered the ground he had ceded under the German pressure. By Sunday (28th July) the Allied attack in the Aisne-Marne salient had swept convergingly on to the line of the Ourcq, and with that achievement the most important episode in the opening of Foch's campaign was consummated. Soissons fell to Mangin on 1st and 2nd Aug., a signal that the work was done, and Foch was now free to prosecute his larger plan of delivering successive blows at points where they would disperse and use up the German reinforcements most effectively.

_The Allies' Victorious Offensive, 1918_

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Freeing of Amiens: Map ill.u.s.trating the recapture of the city's outer defence line on the opening day of the Battle of Amiens, 8th Aug., 1918.]

Marshal Foch, after consultation with the British Commander-in-Chief, had desired the commanders of all armies, British and French, to prepare plans of action and to be ready to put them into operation at short notice. He now more particularly addressed inquiry to Sir Douglas Haig as to his willingness to undertake a continuous offensive towards the German centre.

Sir Douglas Haig a.s.sented to Marshal Foch's representations as to the superior advantages to be gained from an attack there, and, while continuing a show of preparation in the Ypres area, where Ludendorff, on an estimate of the psychology of the British commander, would expect the counter-attack to come, and was already taking steps to reduce its effectiveness by masked withdrawals, transferred forces steadily to Rawlinson's Fourth Army on the Somme. This army, and the First French Army under Debeney on the right, both directed by Haig, were set in motion on 8th Aug. on a 16-mile front from Morlancourt to Moreuil. The thrust was successful beyond expectation. The British Fourth Army, on the right wing, went through the German divisions of von Marwitz (Second Army) like paper, regaining the old outer-line defences of Amiens; and Debeney's men crushing the resistance of von Hutier's Eighteenth German Army, and reaching Fresnoy and Plessier, where they linked up with General Humbert's Third French Army on the road to Roye. The captures of the day amounted to 17,000 prisoners and 500 guns, an unmistakeable symptom that the German power of resistance was shaking.

On 9th Aug. Rawlinson pushed on still farther; on 10th Aug. General Humbert prolonged Debeney's still attacking line and took Montdidier, and a number of villages. These three armies continued to eat into the enemy's positions and to pin a number of German divisions down till 20th Aug., while Mangin's army at Soissons moved _en echelon_ to take up contact with Humbert's right. Meanwhile Ludendorff, fully aware now that the initiative had pa.s.sed out of his hands, and that the best course that lay open before him was a 'strategic retirement', began to effect one stage of it in the Ypres and Lys district under the direction of General Sixt von Armin, whose withdrawal was followed vigilantly by the British forces; and another stage in the German salient on the Ancre, where General von Below's Seventeenth Army was stationed. Von Below withdrew on the Bapaume line from Serre, Beaumont-Hamel, and Bucquoy to the shelter of the sector of the Hindenburg line behind it (13th, 14th, and 15th Aug.).

But whereas in 1917 Ludendorff had disconcerted both British and French Commanders-in-Chief by a sudden withdrawal on the Bapaume-Peronne line of the Somme, he was not now allowed to withdraw without injury. Haig's battle of Bapaume (21st Aug. and following days) was designed in two stages, the first of which brought up Byng's Third Army to a position in which it was aligned with Rawlinson's Fourth Army, and the second of which saw the Third and Fourth Army attack von Below in combination. The combined pressure of these two armies was continuously successful, though the Germans fell back stubbornly in many places. By 30th Aug. Bapaume was once again in British hands, and the line of attack was threatening the strongholds of the Hindenburg line, while its extension ran through Heudecourt and Fremiecourt to Clery. Peronne fell to the Australian Corps by a most gallant feat of arms on 1st Sept. A more strategically significant victory was gained on the same day when the capture of Bullecourt, followed by that of Riencourt and Cagnicourt, opened up the first crevice in the ramifications of the Hindenburg defences known as the Drocourt-Queant switch line. The battle of Bapaume drove thirty-five German divisions from the old Somme battlefield, and captured 34,000 men and 27 guns.

The crevice in the Drocourt-Queant defences was still further widened on 1st Sept., when six British divisions of Horne's First Army, including two Canadian, attacked behind tanks a 5-mile front occupied by eleven German divisions and captured Dury Ridge and Queant, together with 16,000 men and 200 guns. So far, therefore, from Ludendorff's strategic retreat being conducted 'according to plan', it cost the Germans, between 21st Aug. and 9th Sept., some 53,000 men and 470 guns; the French had been able to occupy Ham and Chauny, while the British were going forward; and General Sixt von Armin was forced cautiously to retire from the Ypres salient.

During these operations by the British armies Foch had never relaxed pressure with the three armies of Debeney, Humbert, and Mangin, while still threatening an advance beyond the Vesle in the deflating Aisne salient, west of Rheims, and preparing new blows elsewhere. At the beginning of September the position of the French armies of the centre, won by continuous fighting, was as follows: Debeney had crossed the Somme, taken Ham, and was threatening St. Quentin; Humbert was close to Tergnier and was pointing towards La Fere: Mangin was back in Coucy-le-Chateau and held the railway thence to Soissons; Degoutte was spreading from Soissons along the Aisne. These threats left General Ludendorff no choice but to shorten his line where he could do so with least risk. He decided on the Vesle front, where General de Mitry, with French and Americans, had been engaging his Seventh and Ninth Armies, and began to retire thence on 4th and 5th Sept.

on a 19-mile front. The Americans occupied the Aisne thereupon from Conde to Viel-Arcy, and on 7th Sept. General Mangin crowned his long campaign at the Chemin-des-Dames by taking the ruined Fort de Conde. A week later Allemant and Laffaux Mill fell, and once again the French troops came in sight of Laon. Humbert and Debeney, both pushing forward, embarra.s.sed Ludendorff in his intention of moving divisions to meet a new British movement known thereafter as the battle of Epehy.

This battle was the preliminary movement in that great attack on the Hindenburg line which, more than any other single action, was the decisive 'blow at the heart' of the German defensive plan. The British advance, viewed as one movement, was made towards Cambrai, which was the northern bastion of the German defensive lines, as La Fere and Laon were the twin southern pillars. On 2nd Sept. the Third Army began a local attack on a 5-mile front which captured Havrincourt and Trescault, while on the extreme right of the Fourth Army the 9th Army Corps and the Australian Corps began a movement which by 17th Sept. placed them in Maissemy, where the Fifth Army in March had been pierced. These preliminary positions having been secured, the Third and Fourth Armies set in motion their important combined attack (18th Sept.) on a 17-mile front from Gouzeaucourt, through Havrincourt to Holnon Wood, where Debeney's First Army lent a.s.sistance. The hardest fighting was at Epehy, which gives its name to the battle, on the left centre, but by nightfall the German defences had been pierced on a 3-mile front, 12,000 prisoners had been taken, and the British forces brought within striking distance of the main Hindenburg lines.

During the weeks in September while the plans for the battle of Epehy were ripening, Foch had struck hard at another point in the German line, which had appeared invulnerable while the Germans were strong, but was now a menace to Ludendorff's own plans for retirement because it absorbed divisions which he badly needed elsewhere, namely the long-standing salient of St. Mihiel. It was held by seven German and two Austro-Hungarian divisions in September, and Ludendorff had been withdrawing its heavy artillery; but before his plans for withdrawal could be consummated, Foch sent in General Pershing with his young American divisions, aided by two French divisions, at the salient's apex. The Americans attacked on the two faces of the salient, west and south, the strongest thrust being made by two corps of seven divisions apiece on the southern face. The attack began on 12th Sept., and in thirty hours the salient had disappeared; while in spite of the haste with which the Germans had left it--the firmest resistance was offered by the two Austro-Hungarian divisions on the western face--10,000 prisoners and 450 guns were left behind. This victory, as symptomatic as others of German disorder, freed the Verdun-Commercy railway, and completed the attenuation of Ludendorff's reserves. The 207 German divisions which Ludendorff had commanded at the period of the greatest German strength had fallen to 185, and only 21 reserve divisions remained.

The second stage of Foch's plan now had been reached. The German armies had again been brought back to the line which they had chosen in 1914, after their first rush had recoiled. It was less threatening by the loss of the St. Mihiel salient, but it had been enormously strengthened by four years of engineering. North of the defence line was the railway which, running through Brussels, Mons, Maubeuge, Mezieres, Sedan, and Metz, was the chief artery of German communications, and Foch's plan was to cut this artery on either side of the great curve which the German line made when, after coming north to south from the coast, it turned west to east at La Fere.

The right half of the thrust was to be made by Gouraud's army at Rheims and the Americans on the Argonne, where they were being steadily acc.u.mulated.

The more deadly attack was to be made by the First, Third, and Fourth British, and the First French Armies, which should break through Cambrai and St. Quentin towards Maubeuge.

Complementary operations were designed for the armies of Humbert and Mangin at the nose of the curve, and it was expected that, under this comprehensive pressure, Ludendorff would be compelled to withdraw divisions from the coastal sector, where an attack by the British Second Army (Plumer) and the Belgian Army might then be successful against a weakened front. A portion of Degoutte's army was sent northward in readiness for such a blow, and to the Fifth British Army (now commanded by Birdwood) was a.s.signed a task at Lille and Lens similar to that of Humbert and Mangin at St. Gobain.

There was a pause of nearly a week, in which the Germans awaited, and the Allies prepared the new move; and then, on 27th Sept., Haig's armies struck what Foch declared to be the blow from which there was no recovery. The battle of Epehy had given the requisite positions for the attack on that section of the Hindenburg defences which the Germans named the Siegfried line. The plan was to send forward the First (Horne) and Third (Byng) British Armies to clear the way on a line from Sauchy-Lestree to Gouzeaucourt, seizing the crossings of the Ca.n.a.l du Nord, and so preparing the way for an attack by the Fourth Army. The dangerous movement was accomplished (27th Sept.): the crossings seized, the ca.n.a.l held, and Cambrai threatened. On 29th Sept. the Fourth Army took up the combat, and in a tremendous action along a front of 20 miles, supported by attacks from the other British armies and the First French Army, got across the vital defences of the St. Quentin Ca.n.a.l in the Siegfried zone. The next day the fighting spread furiously along the front of all four armies: the breach was widened; a portion of the Scheldt Ca.n.a.l taken; and by 3rd Oct. the Fourth Army had pierced the Siegfried line vitally. By 9th Oct. the German defences were no longer defences, and in this decisive encounter they had lost 36,000 prisoners and 380 guns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Liberation of the Belgian Coast, 1918: map showing approximately the Allies' line on 28th Sept.--represented by the solid line--and on 25th Oct.--represented by the broken line]