THE WESTERN FRONT

THE MIHIEL SALIENT AND MEUSE-ARGONNE OFFENSIVE:  SEP – NOV 1918  

GERMAN GOVERNMENT SEEKS ARMISTICE – VIA WILSON’S 14 POINTS

    As we have seen, following the failure of the Ludendorff Offensive (ending with the Friedensturm Operation in mid- July), the Allies went on the attack. Fully aware that they had a sizeable advantage in manpower and weaponry, General Foch launched a series of attacks along the entire length of the Western Front. Using a range of new tactics – based on the close coordination of all arms – these offensives proved highly successful. The turning point came at the end of September when assaults by the British, French and Americans eventually broke through the “impregnable” Hindenburg Line and opened the gateway to the open fields of Belgium and northern France.

     The final campaign of the Hundred Days Offensive was centred north of Verdun. It was conducted by the Americans, and supported by a French contingent and a large number of Allied tanks and aircraft. As noted earlier, there had clearly been an opportunity in the Spring and Summer of that year to launch an all-out attack upon the enemy-held territory further north of Verdun – an area of strategic value concerning the German lines of communication – but at that time Pétain knew only too well that that area was very strongly defended. Having promised that he would not throw away the lives of his men on large scale, costly offensives, he was prepared to wait for the arrival of large numbers of American troops. In September, that time had come. The American Expeditionary Force, commanded by General John Pershing and now a million strong, was eager to play its part.

     Asxwe have seen Pershing’s first assignment, the taking of the St. Mihiel Salient, south-east of Verdun (see map), began on the 12th September. A force of 660,000 took part (110,000 French), with the sizeable support of 250 light tanks, 3,000 guns and 1,400 aircraft. The conquest proved particularly swift and, in the circumstances, comparatively easy, and this tended to mislead the American command. In fact, the Allied forces advanced as the Germans pulled out! They had held the salient since 1914, but, outnumbered six to one, and obliged to defend on three fronts, they had chosen to withdraw to a shorter, more secure line. The Americans lost some 7,000 men and the Germans 17,000, but many of these were taken prisoner.

     Thexreduction of the St. Mihiel salient was completed by the 15th September – in four days – but the next Allied campaign, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, (mainly fought between the River Meuse and Argonne Forest), was to prove much more demanding. The transfer of 400,000 American troops plus war material to the new front, a mammoth task in itself, was efficiently organised, and by the 26th September the Allied armies (the French Fourth and the American First), again led by Pershing, were ready for action. The target was the city of Sedan, 35 miles distant and close to the junction of two railway lines that provided a vital link between the German forces east and west of the River Meuse. After a three hour bombardment from some 2,700 guns, including mustard and phogene shells, the attack was launched, one of the largest American offensives in U.S. military history (600,000 men, over 300 tanks, and 500 aircraft). But much of the battlefield here was not the open, softly undulating countryside of the St. Mihiel salient, nor was the enemy on the point of making an orderly retreat! The Argonne forest, in particular, was a terrain made for the purpose of defence, a rugged landscape, crossed by deep ridges and streams, and enclosed by forest and thick undergrowth. Over the years the Germans had defended this natural fortress with wreaths of barbed wire and well-constructed pillboxes, and machine gun nests and artillery units were posted on the overlooking heights. Inevitably, the American infantry, many with little if any battle experience, suffered heavy loses. Courage alone was not enough. One infantry division, the 35th, had to be withdrawn on account of the losses it sustained. The town of Montfaucon (underlined if on the map above), was taken within two days, but the Germans put up ferocious resistance across the entire line, and the Allies, hampered by hold-ups in supply, and lacking co-ordination between artillery and infantry, made little progress. There was concern in high places.

    On the 11th October, Marshal Foch ordered a pause in the fighting, and the following day Pershing appointed his senior general, Hunter Liggett, to command the First Army, and brought in experienced divisions and combat engineers. Liggett, a former president of the Army War College, was an experienced “thinking general”. Current battlefield tactics were reviewed, and a new, improved offensive turned the tide for the Allies. Byxthe end of the month Romagne, Grandpré, Cunel and Consenvoy Hights had been captured, and by the 3rd November the Meuse had been crossed at Dun and, in the north, Sedan was in sight. Appropriately, the city – the scene of the French defeat at the hands of the Germans (Prussians) in 1870 – was taken by the French Fourth Army on the 6th November, five days before the armistice. A full German retreat then began. By then the Allies had captured 20,000 prisoners, about 100 guns, and several thousand machine guns. The price paid by the American Expeditionary Force was some 120,000 casualties, including 26,000 killed.

    Incidentally, onxone occasion, some 540 American soldiers, cut off and surrounded in the Argonne Forest, were forced to take cover in a rugged area known as the Ravin de Chaulevaux. Stubbornly refusing to surrender, they became known in the press as “the Lost Battalion”. An attempt was made to drop food and ammunition by air, but this failed. Then artillery fire, called in to help them escape, missed the German positions and hit the beleaguered party instead! Fortunately, a carrier pigeon – though badly wounded – managed to reach base and call a halt to the firing. The men were rescued after five perilous days, but only 191 escaped unscathed, and 170 were killed or reported missing. The pigeon, appropriately called Cher Ami, was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and can be seen today at the Smithsonian Museum of Army History, Washington. Over 600 pigeons were employed by the U.S. Army during the First World War. ……

     …… It was in this offensive that the Americans introduced the British Army to the terms D-day and H-hour, and “commanders in the field” were actually required to show themselves “in the field” …. like Generals Rommel and Montgomery did during the North African Campaign of the Second World War. ……

     …… Itxwas just a week before the armistice was declared that Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, one of England’s leading war poets, was killed while leading his men across the Sambre-Oise Canal. This poem, composed in 1917, is among the best known of his works.

Acknowledgements

St. Mihiel Salient: historyofthegreatwar.com Meuse-Argonne Offensive: military.wiki American Attack: painting by American artist H.Charles McBarron Jr. nationalguard.mil. Cher Ami: en.wikipedia Mutiny: alphahistory.com

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GERMANxGOVERNMENT SEEKS ARMISTICE: 4th OCTOBER

     Towards the end of September, it had become clear that the Germans faced defeat on the Western Front. The Kaiser’s army, once a formidable force, was suffering heavy loses and was becoming weaker by the day. The troops were exhausted, and discipline was breaking down. General Ludendorff himself was deeply depressed by the situation and, accompanied by Hindenburg, met up with the Kaiser to urge him to end the war. Given the circumstances, the Emperor really had no alternative.

    On the 4th October, therefore, via the Swiss, Woodrow Wilson received a request from the German government, asking for discussions on a possible armistice, based on his Fourteen Points. It was hardly a surprising move. By going direct to the American President there was at least the possibility that the terms would be more lenient. Indeed, according to Wilson’s concept of the way ahead – as outlined in his plea for world peace – he saw each nation making a fresh start, unhindered by the rivalries of the past. No matter who won the conflict, it would be “peace without victory”. But the United States had now been at war with Germany for close on eighteen months and had suffered not only the deadly effects of the U-boat on its merchant shipping, but also the deadly effects of the German military on U.S troops fighting on the Western Front. These were changing times. Wilson himself might still see virtue in and, indeed, the need for such a visionary concept, but few if any of the American public were prepared to go along with it. Wisely, Wilson sidestepped the issue. On the 5th November, he informed the German government that armistice discussions could begin on the basis of his Fourteen Points, but that peace must be secured via Marshal Foch, the Allied Supreme Commander. Among other demands, he would require an immediate stop to U-boat attacks, and a German withdrawal from all occupied territories.

     Ludendorff came out strongly against these negotiations, conducted as they were by civilian members of the new “republican” government. They amounted, he argued, to “unconditional surrender” and “a stab in the back” for the German army. It had not been defeated. It had been betrayed by politicians back home. This led to his dismissal by the Kaiser, but his allegation did not go away, despite clear evidence that the army was in full retreat on the Western Front. Many Germans drew comfort from this “stab in the back” idea , and Adolf Hitler certainly made much of it during his quest for power in the 1920s and 1930s. And another suggestion going the rounds at this time – also used by Hitler – was that the Jews were responsible for the defeat of Germany.

    Discussions between Germany and the Allies began at the end of October, but it was at that very time, (October 28th), that mutiny broke out in the German High Seas Fleet, beginning at the port of Kiel. As we shall see, this triggered off Bolshevist-style uprisings in cities across Germany; the overthrow of the Imperial government; the abdication of the Kaiser; and the establishment of a provisional republican-form of government. It was amid this turmoil that on 11th November the Armistice was signed in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne, a gloomy setting in bleak harmony with Germany’s gloomy future.

What passing bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes,

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

MAO

ARM