THE GERMAN SPRING OF 1918.
Was G.H.Q. at fault?--Where we could best afford to lose
ground--Refugees complicate the situation--Stark resolution of the
French--All the Pas-de-Calais to be wrecked if necessary--How our
railways broke down--Amiens does not fall.
To affirm that a great German attack was expected in the Spring of 1918,
and that the site of the attack was not altogether unexpected, seems to
imply a very serious criticism of G.H.Q. That being so, why did the
Germans succeed in breaking through and winning such an extent of
territory and coming within a narrow margin of gaining a decisive
advantage?
The question is natural, especially as one soldier in high command has
stated--or is reported to have stated--that he knew exactly the spot
where the Germans were going to attack. Some day there will be an
exhaustive inquiry into all the circumstances of the Spring of 1918.
Probably as a result it will be found that no serious blame can be
attached in any quarter, but that what happened was the result of a
series of events which were mostly unavoidable.
For the first time Germany could concentrate her whole strength on this
Front. Yet our strength was at the lowest point it had reached for many
months and, since we had just taken over a new sector of the line, our
defence was thinner on the average than it had ever been since 1915.
Further, we were definitely short of some essential defence material. If
we had strengthened the sector where the chief attack came we should
have had to weaken another sector. Then the Germans would have attacked
that sector. They chose, and chose naturally, the point where our line
was thinnest. If it can be shown that the sector where our line was
thinnest was the sector in which we could best afford to lose ground, it
will have to be admitted that, in the main, G.H.Q. had made the best
dispositions possible with the means at hand.
A glance at the map of France will show that pretty clearly. Put in a
phrase, the German plan was to push the British Army into the sea. In
the north our line was dangerously close to the sea. Our most northern
port, Dunkirk, was actually under shell-fire and in consequence could be
very little used. A very small gain of territory by the Germans in the
north would have brought Calais and Boulogne under shell-fire. Then our
existence as an Army north of the Somme would have become impossible. We
could not have kept an adequate force there in supplies. In the north
every yard of territory was of the greatest strategic value. As our line
ran south the French coast bulged out. We had more room to manoeuvre
there; loss of ground was not so vital. If the Germans had won on the
line Ypres-Armentières the same depth of territory that they won on the
line Arras-Péronne, we should have had to evacuate all France north of
the Somme.
In short we took the biggest risk of loss of ground where the loss was
least dangerous to the vital plan of the campaign. In the light of the
man-power available it was probably the best course that could have been
pursued. We knew we had to lose ground, probably a good deal of ground,
and decided to lose it where it mattered least. We had very good ideas
as to where.
For proof of this look up the representations as to civilian evacuations
which were made by G.H.Q. to the French authorities in February, 1918.
Those representations, by the way, were not given any attention at all
in some cases; at the best only perfunctory attention. The result was
that when the German attack came, civilian refugees added to our
difficulties and anxieties. If the prompt and complete evacuation of all
civilian refugees from threatened areas and from areas close behind the
front line, which were urgently needed for the accommodation of troops,
could have been effected, the Army's tasks would have been much
simplified. But that proved impracticable. Civilians were generally
unwilling to abandon their homes voluntarily. The French authorities
were reluctant to enforce evacuation. A civilian quitting his home
voluntarily was responsible for his own keep. A civilian forced to quit
became a charge on the French Civil Authorities. This naturally led to a
wish that civilians as far as possible should be compelled to quit their
homes by force of circumstances rather than by order of the authorities.
As far back as February, 1918, pressure was brought to bear on the
French Authorities to agree to defined measures to meet the emergency of
a withdrawal of part of our line, which was then foreseen as a
probability. But it was not found possible to secure prompt assent to
the steps which were necessary. There were all sorts of complications.
For one thing it was feared that to set up the machinery of evacuation
would spread dismay among the French civilians. Another obstacle was the
financial one which I have already mentioned. Yet another was that
created by the status of the miners in threatened areas. These were
mobilised men under French Military Command; their wives and children
were civilians. If their wives and children were evacuated the miners
would not stay.
Later, arrangements were agreed to between the British Force and the
French Authorities for the systematic evacuation, with their live stock
and supplies, of civilians in threatened areas. But the early
difficulties considerably hampered operations. I mention this not at all
by way of a tilt against the French Authorities, whose reluctance to
make provision for evacuations was natural enough, but to show that
G.H.Q. was not "caught napping," and to illustrate also the difficulties
which an Expeditionary Force operating in a friendly country has to
meet.
There are, of course, many advantages springing from the fact that the
country in which you are quartered is friendly. But I am not sure that
the disadvantages are not almost as great. In an enemy country you know
at any rate where you are; military safety, military convenience are the
supreme law; and the civilian population have only to be considered to
the degree that the laws of war and the dictates of humanity decide. In
a friendly country, where the old civil government remains in operation,
an Army is hampered at many points. There are various actions which
military convenience prompts but which cannot be taken without the
assent of the civilian authorities; and perhaps cannot be urged with the
weight of the full facts on those civil authorities. This evacuation
difficulty is an instance in point. If G.H.Q. had had its way the
Germans would have won far less material in their advance; and perhaps
their advance would have been stopped at an earlier stage if our
operations had not been hampered to some extent by the crowding of the
road with civilian refugees.
Still, on the big issues the French were splendid. What, for example,
could have been more heroic than the decision they came to a little
later: that, in case of the German advance continuing, the whole of the
Pas de Calais province was to be destroyed, the harbours of Dunkirk,
Calais and Boulogne wrecked, the dykes and locks destroyed so that the
country would have been generally inundated?
To some degree defensive inundations were actually carried into effect,
but with fresh water only. The responsibility in the main rested with
the British Army which was holding the threatened territory. The only
saving stipulation made by the French, who thus offered in the cause of
the alliance to give up for half a century the use of one of their
fairest provinces, was that before the sea was let in to devastate the
land, Marshal Foch should give the word. It was on April 12th, 1918,
that the Allied Commander-in-Chief gave orders for defensive inundations
to stop the Germans from getting to the Dunkirk-Calais region; and on
April 13th the Governor of Dunkirk began to put these into effect. There
were two schemes of inundation, one for a modified flooding with fresh
water of certain limited areas; the other for a general flooding, with
sea-water as well as fresh water, of all low-lying areas around Calais
and Dunkirk.
It is impossible to praise adequately the stark courage that agreed to
this step. It was courage after the antique model, and it showed that
France was willing to make any sacrifice rather than allow the wave of
German barbarism to sweep over civilisation. The effect of letting the
sea in on Pas de Calais and destroying the canal locks and the harbours
would have been to make this great province a desert for two
generations. The effect of allowing it to fall into German hands, with
all its canal and harbour facilities, would have been to give new life
to the submarine war, to make the bombardment and ultimately the
invasion of the English coast possible.
At one time it seemed almost certain that an evacuation of at least part
of Pas de Calais would have to be carried out; and arrangements were
made in detail: that in any area which was evacuated, either
deliberately or in consequence of direct enemy pressure, the most
thorough destruction should be carried out to deny to the enemy any
stores of material or facilities of transport. The method of every
destruction and the unit responsible for it were arranged in advance.
The main lines of a policy of destruction were laid down in the event
of:--
1. A withdrawal to the Calais--St. Omer defensive line;
2. A withdrawal to the line of the Somme;
3. An enemy advance along the line of the Somme, cutting off
Flanders and Pas de Calais from the South.
Provision was made for the using up or removal of all possible stores;
for the destruction of the remainder; for the destruction of all
railroads, water-ways, signalling systems, factories, etc. Where British
and French troops were operating together in a fighting zone, their
respective responsibilities were delimited. Arrangements were also made,
in case of withdrawal, to clear from certain water-ways all canal craft
which might serve the enemy as bridge material over inundations.
* * * * *
Certainly it was not "gay," as the French say, this preparation for
destroying the property of an Ally. But we took comfort from the fact
that after all the position was better than in 1914. Then a German
victory seemed possible. Now in 1918 the only question was what
sacrifices we should yet have to make before achieving victory. In 1914,
after 50 years of intensive preparation, the German had rushed upon an
unsuspecting Europe. He neglected nothing in preparing for victory. He
threw overboard every scruple in order to secure a rapid triumph,
violating the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg merely because by so
doing he gained a better field of deployment. His objective was Paris,
and, according to authoritative accounts, his plan on reaching Paris was
to divide it up into twelve quarters and burn down a quarter every day
that the French Army delayed to surrender. The terms of surrender were
to include the giving up of the French Fleet and the French ports for
use in an invasion of England.
The danger at that time was very real. Germany was the only country
adequately armed and organised. The British people had had to sacrifice
in great measure the Regular Army to stay the first German onset. France
was strained to a point which to any other country would have meant
exhaustion. We could recall the preparations that had to be made to meet
the imminent fear of an invasion of the British coast; the desperate
shifts and expedients which had to be adopted in the first stages of the
organisation of the New Armies; the peremptory demands for guns and
shells when there were no factories to make either in anything like the
quantity demanded. That was a time when it needed the highest of moral
courage to remain calm and confident.
The Spring of 1918 is not a pleasant thing to think about; but it is
hardly endurable, even now in safe retrospection, to think on the
position of Great Britain at home or in the field from October, 1914, to
September, 1915. It was that of an unsuspecting man before whose feet
suddenly a pit of destruction opens. He falls scrambling, struggling
down, and at last reaches a little ledge which gives a momentary safety.
But it is still a desperate task merely to hang on. Far up, remote
almost as a star, shines safety. Below are his friends of civilised
Europe, all worse situated than himself, some at the point of complete
destruction. From above a fierce storm of missiles rains on his head.
From below come piteous appeals for help. To hold on to his little
ledge, to help the friends below, to climb up and throttle the foe
above--he has all these to do and little time to think before he acts.
Hardly endurable, yet necessary to think over, so that the greatness of
the danger into which the world was plunged by German militarism can be
gauged.
In 1914 an occupation of the French Channel Ports with England almost
entirely unarmed might have been a very serious thing. The serious view
taken of it in Great Britain can be judged from the preparations which
were made to devastate a great area in the South and East of England so
as to give to the Germans only a desert as a foothold. In 1918 if the
Germans had got Pas de Calais they would not have got any ports with
it, and an invading force arriving in England would have met a force at
least equal to it in equipment and war experience.
So we waited in some confidence for another Marne to follow another
Mons, and smiled a little grimly at the change of tone in Germany. The
Kaiser, cock-a-whoop again, was declaring now for a "strong German
Peace." In one office, side by side with the "situation map" which
showed from day to day the depth of the German advance, there were stuck
up in derision extracts from the most vituperative of the German press.
Here is one from the _Deutsche Zeitung_:
"Away with all petty whining over an agreement and reconciliation
with the fetish of peace.... Away with the miserable whimpering of
those people who even now would prevent the righteous German hatred
of England and sound German vengeance. The cry of victory and
retaliation rages throughout Germany with renewed passion."
This from _Germania_:
"There can be no lasting peace and no long period of quiet in the
world until the presumptuous notion that the Anglo-Saxons are the
chosen people is victorious or defeated. We are determined to
force with the sword the peace which our adversaries did not see
fit to confide to our honest word. We Germans are an incomparably
strong nation."
These horrible threats remained on the notice-board until long after the
tide of battle turned and the German was in full retreat back to his
lair.
And we rather liked the story which the German press had to the effect
that a deputation of German business men had put before Hindenburg in
February the gloomy prospects of the country's food supplies,
concluding: "In May, Germany will be almost without food." Hindenburg
thereupon replied: "My reply is that I shall be in Paris on April 1st."
The date chosen seemed so appropriate!
Still, it would be foolish to say that we had no anxieties. Some of our
stoutest fellows were up at "advanced G.H.Q.," a temporary H.Q. near
Amiens, from which most of the really exciting work was done. At
Montreuil we had not the exhilarating feeling of being within the sound
of the guns, but had to face perhaps the hardest of the toil. It was
rare for an officer in some branches to leave his room before midnight,
and the usual hour for starting work was 8.30 a.m. Meals ceased for a
time to be convivial affairs. One rushed to the table, ate, and rushed
back to work.
The work was so overwhelming because of a combination of circumstances.
The character of the War had changed from stationary to moving over
almost all the British Front, calling for a return to the mobile system
of supply and for new classes of material. British reinforcements were
arriving from other Fronts, sometimes without their full supply train
and without the full equipment for our Front, and not familiar with its
system of working. There were large movements of French troops into
British Areas, and in some cases these French troops relied upon British
sources for some of their supplies and transport, and in all cases their
line of supply had to be dove-tailed in with ours. American troops were
moved into British Areas and relied upon British sources for many items
of equipment, transport and supplies. British Administration was thus
being called upon for supplies to British, French, American and
Portuguese troops, at the same time as our lines of supply had to be
re-organised and co-ordinated with the new French lines of supply.
Further difficulties were created by the necessary frequent changes of
railheads and the great movements on the roads of civilian refugees.
Territory threatened by the enemy had to be evacuated as far as possible
of civilians, and of civilian goods and stock likely to be of use to the
enemy in case of capture.
The extent of this accumulated difficulty from a transport point of
view can be gauged from the fact that a British Army needs on a day of
intense fighting 1,934 tons of supplies of all kinds _per mile of
front_.
* * * * *
The railways came as nearly as possible to a complete breakdown under
the strain. After the first Battle of the Somme, our military railway
system in France was thoroughly reorganised by civilian experts. It was
a reorganisation which followed, I believe, the best models of the great
railway companies of England, and it coped with the very heavy traffic
during the period of fixed or Trench War quite well. Unfortunately it
was not a system adapted for moving warfare.
A civilian railway expert would doubtless find many reasons for amused
criticism in a military railway system in the running. It would appear
to be rather haphazard, to be run a good deal on the principle of a
train getting there if it could, and to be very faulty in the matter of
time-tables and so on. Well, the German advance in its brutal practical
way simply riddled with holes that admirable railway reorganisation
which the civilian experts had conferred on the B.E.F., France.
Perhaps it was only to have been expected. Trench War in its railway
requirements was deceptively like peace. You had your railway termini,
and the requirements of a Division were fairly stable. You ran so many
trains a day and, except for an occasional rush on some sector when
fighting warmed up suddenly, there were no problems that differed
greatly from those say of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.
In moving war it is different. Then a railway system must be elastic
enough to stand such a series of shocks as would be conveyed to the L.B.
and S.C. manager if at 9 p.m. he were told: "It is Bank Holiday
to-morrow. Provide for carrying 100,000 extra passengers, about 10,000
horses and 4,000 carriages." Then at 10 p.m. he learned: "You can't
shunt any trains at Lewes; and you can only run trains through with
luck. It is under heavy shell-fire." Then every half-hour subsequently
he got a new order, diverting traffic from one point to another,
changing the destinations of his trains and so on.
The transport situation for the moment was saved by the Motor Transport.
But the Commander-in-Chief had to act promptly and set up a "jury-mast"
arrangement for railway control to tide over the crisis. In effect he
took the supreme control of the railways out of the hands of the
Transportation Directorate and put it under a "Board of Directors"
meeting daily, at which the Q.M.G. presided. A later development made
the Chief of General Staff Chairman of this Board. Then, when things
settled down, the system that had been set up by the civilian experts
was largely scrapped. Military Railways were again put under the control
of the Quartermaster-General. The "stupid soldiery" did rather well with
them, not only in the period of pause that came between the German
advance and our great counter-attack, but in the gigantic task of
following up our advance.
The task of pulling together the railways was not an easy one. The enemy
advance had caused a direct loss of some light railway systems, and on
the broad-gauge systems important engine depôts were lost, and our front
lateral line was brought at several points under the fire of the enemy's
artillery. Use of this front lateral line had thus become precarious.
The results of this were felt in every part of the railway system. Good
circulation is the essence of railway working; and a block at any point
has an effect similar to that of an aneurism on a human artery. Because
of the loss of engine depôts, and the hindrances to circulation on the
front lateral line, the back lateral line along the coast became
seriously congested. This congestion reduced the capacity of every
engine by an average of 15 per cent.
Further, our rear lateral line had two particularly vulnerable points,
one at Etaples, where it crossed the Canche, and the other at Abbéville,
where it crossed the Somme. Upon these points enemy aircraft made
frequent attacks, imposing delays, occasionally causing minor
destruction, always adding to the effects of the existing congestion.
An excellent piece of work reduced very considerably the effect of
one successful enemy air-raid. Half an hour after midnight, one night
in May, the Canche railway-bridge at Etaples was damaged. At once
an avoiding line--constructed for such an emergency--was put into
operation, and trains were running through at 2 a.m.
On one of the worst nights of the German advance, when we went up to the
situation-map without any enthusiasm, half afraid of what we should see,
young Captain Hannibal Napoleon deepened our gloom by declaring
oracularly:
"If we hold on to Amiens we shall be all right. If Amiens falls to the
Germans it is goodbye to Montreuil, and no more Paris leave for a few
years."
Hannibal Napoleon (that, of course, was not his name) was very junior
and very confident of his strategical genius. It was a favourite
amusement to "pull his leg" and draw from him an "appreciation" of the
situation, which he was always willing to give with the authority of a
Commander-in-Chief.
This oracle was displeasing, because on the appearance of things that
night we had not an earthly chance of holding Amiens. But the
unexpected happened. Not very many hours afterwards the news came
through that a successful stand was being made in front of Amiens; and
young Hannibal Napoleon was able to crow like a Gallic cock over his
profound strategical judgment.