Our Great Hearted Men

417 Pages·2019·21.663 MB·English

by  Peter Brune

Contents
List of Maps
Chapter 1 Michael
Chapter 2 Sharpening the tools
Chapter 3 An enormous intellect
Chapter 4 The physical audacity
Chapter 5 . . . so I drove over them
Chapter 6 . . . the finest fighting day I have yet had
Chapter 7 . . . the enemy’s inevitable reaction
Chapter 8 Our horses hated it and whimpered
Chapter 9 . . . an ignorant, wonderful lot of fools
Chapter 10 . . . a stunning achievement
Chapter 11 . . . some damn good men amongst them
Chapter 12 . . . one dead man to every 2 yards of trench
Chapter 13 The equal of any
Chapter 14 . . . great-hearted men
Photo Section
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Appendix I: Classification of BEF Field Artillery
Appendix II: Conference of 31st July, 1918
Appendix III: Letter, Bean to White, 28 June 1918
Abbreviations
Endnotes
Index
About the Author
Copyright
List of Maps
The Western Front, March 1918
Operation Michael
Hamel, 4 July 1918
Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918
Amiens, 9–11 August 1918
The Pursuit, 22–29 August 1918
Frontal Attack, 29 August 1918
Mont St Quentin, 31 August 1918
Mont St Quentin—Péronne, 1 September 1918
Mont St Quentin—Péronne, 1–5 September 1918
The Hindenburg Line
The Outpost Line Attack, 18 September 1918
The Hindenburg Line, 29 September 1918
The Australian Corps—Ground Captured
CHAPTER 1
Michael
L
ieutenant George Mitchell, 48th Battalion, Saturday 23 March 1918:
Order to prepare to move. I stand in the sun. A stout, old Frenchman
sows his field, broadcasting steadily up and down. All with us is
activity. What matter the personal shock of combat to him. I
anticipate it all. The roar of shells, the wounds, the stink of
explosives, and the eternal yabbering of machine guns. The farmer
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steadily goes on with his sowing. We go to the reaping.
By March 1918 Lieutenant George Mitchell and many veterans of the First
AIF had, during a succession of bloody and costly battles, confronted their
‘reaping’ for nearly three devastating years. Mitchell, and many like him,
had despaired of their chances of seeing home again. And yet as volunteers
they had a quiet, resigned acceptance of their fate:
England is England . . . I want something that I have not got . . . The
return to Australia is unreal, and, after all, do we really desire to go
back without the laurel crowning of Victory? Better death than final
defeat . . . You may never know what home is unless you pay the
price of the learning . . . Great battles that we fought through are
forgotten in the stormy host. Our pals went under. ‘And the old days
never will come again.’ . . . New battles came. We lived. Yet more
battles. We still live. And the future holds visions of more and more
strife . . . We will meet our fates with good grace, for it is written in
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the Book of Eternity.
As Mitchell left for the front on 23 March 1918, he was destined to face a
part of the final major German offensive of the war—and a near calamity.
He could not have contemplated that later, within a mere 100 days, the
Allies would turn a desperate defence of the British Expeditionary Force’s
(BEF) very survival on the Western Front into a comprehensive victory.
This is the story of arguably the First AIF’s finest hour—five elite
divisions together at last as a united corps, under its own experienced,
astute leadership and commanded by an Australian general whose
considerable appreciation of the science of war, coupled with studied
innovation, an understanding of logistics, and minute planning, would
prove brilliant.
***
At the onset of the winter of 1917–18, as both sides considered the future of
the Great War, one concept, embodied in one word, dominated their
thoughts—manpower.
Since late August 1916 General Erich Ludendorff had, as Field Marshal
Hindenburg’s Chief of Staff, exerted the prime influence upon the German
conduct of the war. Tall, red-faced, with cropped hair and a monocle, and
possessing a heavy physique, Ludendorff had a typical Prussian officer
appearance that belied his humble background: he had not risen through the
ranks by the accident of birth or the cultivation of influence, but by hard
work and merit.
On 11 November 1917 at a conference at Mons, Ludendorff had to
make a critical decision. Although Russia had been knocked out of the war
and German troops and equipment were being rapidly transferred to the
Western Front at a rate of some two divisions a week, that encouraging
news was counter-balanced by a number of grim realities: 1917 had seen
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the German Army suffer over 1 million killed; the strategy of unrestricted
submarine warfare had failed, and failed to such an extent that it had
brought the United States into the war; and the ongoing British blockade of
Germany had been far more effective, and had resulted in acute food and
fuel shortages that were undermining morale at home, and as a
consequence, political discontent and strikes were becoming more
prevalent.
Time was the key. Ludendorff understood that other than the injection
of divisions currently arriving from Russia to the Western Front, his only
other source of manpower would be those males reaching military age in
1918. Late in 1917 Ludendorff had possessed around 150 divisions against
the Allies’ 175. By March 1918, using his divisions arriving from the
Eastern Front, he anticipated that he could deploy 192 divisions to the
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Allies’ 173 on the Western Front. Any German offensive in 1918 would
therefore have to be delivered in the spring, before the American build-up
of troops would eventually overpower his army. This sudden and rapid
accumulation of German troops would facilitate one, and only one,
substantial offensive—there would be no second chances. Knowing that he
could now concentrate his force, and having determined the timing of the
offensive, Ludendorff was then faced with a key strategic and tactical
challenge.
He had always considered the British to be the ‘driving force of the
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Entente, and the offensive must therefore be directed against them’. Thus,
three plans to attack the BEF were examined: the first was against its
junction with the French near the German-occupied town of St Quentin
(codenamed Michael); the second was at Arras (codenamed Mars); and the
third envisaged an attack in the Ypres area to the north (codenamed
George). Despite differing opinions of some members of both his staff and
those commanders about to undertake the operation, Ludendorff chose
Michael, because he rightly believed that this was where the British front
was stretched, undermanned and therefore most vulnerable, and that the
ground on which that operation was to be fought might dry out quicker than
the other two options. His strategic aim was to break through the British
front, swing in a north-westerly direction and either destroy the BEF in
battle or force its evacuation to the Channel ports. He ordered plans for all
three alternatives to be made, so as to conceal his intention from the British,
but also to facilitate other options should the operation become stalled. If,
by Great War standards, Operation Michael was an ambitious strategic plan,
its tactical execution would fly in the face of all previous doctrine—of
either side.
Ludendorff’s choice of his three army commanders was astute. In the
north, General Otto von Below and his Seventeenth Army were tasked with
the capture of Bapaume; in the centre General von Marwitz’s Second Army
was to capture Péronne; and General von Hutier’s Eighteenth Army was to
penetrate the British line at St Quentin, capture the town of Ham, and then
provide flank protection as von Below and von Marwitz’s armies thrust
right (towards the north-west). All three had earnt Ludendorff’s trust: von
Below had served under him in 1914 and had—among other notable
successes—only a month before the conference at Mons, been the victor
against the Italians at Caporetto (October–November 1917); von Marwitz
had planned and executed the brilliant counter-attack against the British at
Cambrai; and von Hutier, after a most impressive Western Front record, had
further enhanced his reputation with the capture of Riga on the Eastern
Front (3 September 1917). Thus, all three German Army commanders
possessed not only sound long-term records, but highly impressive recent
ones.