As the darkness faded in the early hours of 8 August 1918, some 104 years ago today, the soldiers of those vast armies of the Western Allies looked up from their shallow trenches east of the city of Amiens, cut across the Somme chalk. British formations to the North, then Australians, Canadians, and finally French troops, including men from their many Colonies, along the old Roman Road that ran to Montdidier. For some it was their fifth year of the war; among them were men who had landed on the beaches of Gallipoli, fought under the Devil’s Eye in Salonica or felt the heat of a Palestinian desert. This was a very different army; largely conscript, but still with many volunteers, especially among the Diggers, all of whom were there by choice. But different too in the way it plied its trade: this was a modern army, joined up, thinking not just on its feet but even before it entered the field. And in many ways, it was about to fight its first modern battle.
At Zero Hour thousands of men went Over The Top, in the British sectors more than 2,000 guns of all calibres supported them, and over 500 Tanks cranked their way forward supporting the infantry. Tanks made noise, lots of noise, and so it was easy to alert an enemy to their presence. But here in that receding darkness above the Amiens battlefield over 1,900 aircraft of all types filled the sky with their engine noise, drowning out the approaching tanks.
Held within their defences by Allied shellfire, and deep in their dugouts, the German soldiers had no idea of the fate that headed their way: a fully orchestrated army, with guns supporting infantry, infantry supporting tanks, aircraft covering ground forces and even dropping supplies: planning and scale beyond anything seen before, and all of it coming together in that one moment as the German line on the Somme buckled and broke. Tanks got behind the German lines, armoured cars with heavy machine guns raced around enemy back areas like desert raiders of a later war, positions were overrun quickly, and thousands of German soldiers were taken prisoner: the scale was beyond anything witnessed previously, and no wonder it was said to be ‘The Black Day of the German Army’.
Amiens marked the beginning of the end, the last Hundred Days of the war leading up to the Armistice on 11 November. But despite this incredible victory, the end still seemed a long way ahead and in the weeks that followed there would be tough battles, hard fighting, and unbelievable losses, especially among Australian and Canadian units, so often at the Tip of the Spear.
Each man who was here had their own story. In the late 80s I met a veteran and his family in a café on the Somme. Bert had stood that day at the Northern point of the great advance, on the Bouzincourt Ridge. In a field where the wind carried the heads of corn gently in the summer breeze, he pointed to a collection of farms that had been their objective, and with one eye glanced down to the golden figure of Mary, atop the Basilica in Albert beneath us. Here the new world of 1918 met the earlier battles of 1916.
“We knew the Somme had been bad, and we also knew we were back on that ground. But here we broke old Jerry, they didn’t break us.”
In Beacon Cemetery, we walked along the rows of graves, headstone after headstone bearing that August date, and some of them the cap badge of his old regiment. Bert paused at one and leaning on his stick, bent over and brushed the top of the grave, his hand which had touched so much during those fateful years caressed the white stone expressing more than he felt able to say. Was it one of his comrades? No, an Unknown British Soldier. He took a step back and the past seem to flicker across his eyes like a film in the dark.
“My God, we owe you so much.”
And he continued along that row, drifting away into a distant past, walking in his mind the road to wars ending. Bert had lived a long life, but he could never escape those years and had accepted that. And here, on a battlefield that had changed warfare forever, somehow he made peace with it all.
Well done Paul, and quite correct. In every respect the One Hundred Days created a pattern of successful ‘methodical’ warfighting that entirely outclassed the Germans and became the basis of success at El Alamein. It’s such a pity that the British Army forgot Amiens after 1919. It’s the subject of a book I’m writing now with Richard Dannatt: how an army can sell its birthright (high intensity warfighting learned the hard way) for a mess of potage (imperial policing)
I'd still say that the British Army of 1918 could operate in Normandy 1944 and still be one of the most effective units in county