100 Years Ago

SEPTEMBER 14, 1918

America’s first great blow

The United States First Army, under General Pershing, has obliterated in a day and a half the St Mihiel salient, which for four years has been thrust like a poisoned dagger into the French front. The blow was neat, quick, and complete. The American troops clipped off the salient with a single movement.

We rejoice that the first great enterprise undertaken by the United States forces on the Western front has had such swift and dramatic results. General von Ludendorff is audacious enough to declare that the evacuation of the salient “had been under consideration for years”, and that “was commenced a few days ago”. The obvious answer is that the German Higher Command must have been still in the stage of “consideration” when the American blow fell, for an early count of prisoners shows a total of 13,300. A further point is that the town of St Mihiel was very little damaged, which indicates that the enemy had no time to engage in their usual work of wanton destruction.

The American victory shortens the front by at least twenty miles, and brings the Allies five miles nearer to Metz. At Pagny they are practically touching the German frontier, which lies just across the Moselle. For the Allied nations, though, the deep interest of the American victory lies, not so much in its results, but in the fact that a great United States force has gone into battle acting separately and on its own account. The German General Staff has made many amazing blunders, but it never made a worse or more egregious error than when it believed that the United States, either from lack of ships or capacity to raise great armies, could not deliver the goods.

More was destroyed at St Mihiel than a German salient. General Pershing shattered at a blow the monstrous web of lies which has sustained the pretence that the United States would be of little or no account in the European field of war. He has shown in one brilliant day that the Americans are as quick and apt to learn the art of war as they have been to develop the pursuits of peace. Henceforward the American armies take their stand, fully arrayed, beside their war-worn Allies who have so long fought in the Old World the battle for that freedom which is the birthright of the New.

SEPTEMBER 13, 1918

Minutely planned attack

The First American Army, under the personal command of General Pershing, for the first time went into action today in the St Mihiel salient, between the Meuse and the Moselle. Never before has there been such a large concentration of American troops for one operation, and never have the Americans been in such complete control of their operations. Everything was planned minutely. The country is very difficult; high ridges and thick woods offer every concealment for enemy machine-guns, and the Germans have fortified a line of resistance which has everything in its favour.

At 1 o’clock this morning the artillery preparation began. The roar could be heard many miles away, and all night long it rose and fell. Towards 5 o’clock, the hour of the attack, the firing became more rapid, and its sullen tone mingled with the sound of rain. Dawn saw fleets of Tanks, manned by sturdy young Americans and French, moving out of their shelters to the attack. The American infantry followed in open order, ploughing their way through the mud, but little troubled by the feeble artillery resistance.

At 7 o’clock the Tanks had disappeared amid a smoke cloud. From Beaumont I could see below me the trenches from which the Americans had started, and the valley through which they were fighting. On my left was the black and forbidding height of Mont Sec. Black spurts of earth sprung from its sides as the American artillerymen battered it. Khaki figures were moving along the valley. Smoke occasionally blotted them from view, but they reappeared, walking with an easy stride. Meanwhile the air was rent with the torrent of shells passing overhead. American gunners were working with mechanical rhythm as they loaded and sent the shells to their destination. Light railways brought continual supplies.

LATER. The Germans have offered very little resistance to the advancing Americans. It is apparent that the enemy has withdrawn his main forces to a second line, which it is possible he will defend with tenacity. His artillery has been firing from behind the ridge which runs in front of the American line, but he is being pursued by the Tanks. The Americans are pressing forward in fine style, and slowly closing in the ends of the St Mihiel salient.

SEPTEMBER 12, 1918

Our amazing airmen

Very heavy rains fell again during the night. The moisture is enough to make operations on a large scale difficult in the low-lying areas and to impede traffic movement. It is doubtful whether the heavy weather is worse for us than for the enemy.

In the north the artillery duel continues about Hill 63 and Ploegsteert where, as usual lately, the enemy is using chiefly gas shells. On one part of our front, where New Zealanders are, the Germans appear to have produced a new example of frightfulness in the form of small shells, no bigger than oranges, which are flung in bursts over narrow areas, filling the area with gas and setting fire to vegetation. What the advantage is supposed to be over ordinary gas or incendiary shelling does not yet appear.

The break in the weather seriously interferes with the activities of the Royal Air Force, which is well entitled to a rest, for it has worked magnificently throughout the course of the battle. Besides an enormous amount of bombing and harrying with machine-gun fire from low-flying machines, there have been a number of thrilling exploits in air fighting. One of our pilots shot down four enemy observation balloons on a single trip. Another shot down one balloon and was then chased off by a patrol of enemy machines, while a new balloon rose in the destroyed one’s place. Our man ran away from the enemy, letting them get near enough to keep tempting them on, then suddenly rose above the clouds. Thus hidden, he went back on his tracks, dived out of the clouds immediately above the new balloon, and shot it down like the other. One of our balloons also was shot down, though not by an aeroplane, but by gunfire. The occupants knew their work at the moment was of great importance, and, instead of taking to the parachutes, they went on observing and reporting while the balloon sank, until getting near the ground, when both men climbed into the rigging and awaited the shock, neither being badly hurt.

The enemy is still occasionally keen to make use of the parachute for escape from an aeroplane. In one case lately one of our patrols fell in with four Fokkers and wiped out the whole party clean. From one of the four, as it fell, the airman was seen to be pulled out by a parachute and land apparently in safety.

SEPTEMBER 11, 1918

After the Hindenburg Line

Yesterday the weather broke. Last night was wild and stormy with driving rain, and this morning the wind is still high. There was a consequent lull in the operations.

From the level of St Quentin down to the Oise our line is nowhere more than three miles from the Siegfried position of the Hindenburg line, while south of the Oise it is for about 12 miles right up to it.

Behind the actual and chief line of defence the enemy have three other fortified positions in French and Belgian territory. The first starts about 10 miles east of St Quentin, on the Oise, and runs more or less parallel to the Hindenburg line and joins the present front on the Moselle 10 or 12 miles south of Metz. The next runs in front of Hirson, Mezières and Sedan, about the same distance farther back, and the last crosses the Sambre at Maubeuge, and the Meuse at Givet, 14 or 15 miles short of Charleroi and Mons. The cornerstone of the Hindenburg line and the two behind it is Metz, and the distance from the present front to the Maubeuge-Givet position is about 60 miles, or almost exactly the same as that from Chateau-Thierry to St Quentin, which the French advance, measured from south to north, has covered in the last seven weeks.

For the present the section of the Hindenburg line most interesting to the French is the arc of the circle bordering on the west side of the St Gobain massif from La Fère to Laffaux. Four or five miles east of the massif, Sugar Cone Hill, on which Laon is built, rises out of the plain with commanding views north and east. It is surrounded like an island by defensive positions of great strength. To the south it has the Chemin des Dames, the Ailette, and the Aisne and Oise Canal; to the west the massif, and to the north-west round La Fère the swampy and sometimes flooded valley of the Oise. The whole of this stretch of natural defences is stiffened by the fortifications of the Siegfried position, and in addition the town is protected on the north by the valley of the Serre and the first of the three extra-defensive systems, and on the east by the switch line joining it up with the Hindenburg line. If, therefore, the French continue to attack in this direction, it is obvious that they have before them an uncommonly stiff undertaking.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

Artificial limbs for the disabled

The speeches given at Birmingham yesterday by Mr Hodge, the Minister of Pensions, and by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, on the opening of the inter-Allied exhibition of appliances for the treatment and training of the disabled, gave evidence of eagerness to do the best for the disabled, and at the same time gave evidence of some haziness of purpose. We refer particularly to the scheme for the provision of artificial limbs. Mr Hodge announced that the Ministry had organized the British limb-makers, and that limbs were now being made to specification. The disabled man and his friends will promptly ask to what specification, and whether organizing is all that is necessary.

In Great Britain the art of making artificial limbs is in its infancy: all the world over it is faced with demands never made upon it before. It is too much to expect that even “organization” should provide every considerable town in the kingdom with a limb-maker possessing the knowledge, the plant, and the labour sufficient to meet the need.

Variation in type, variation in quality, mean unequal treatment for the disabled. The best artificial limb exacts patience and practice from the wearer. An inferior limb, or a limb that, originally excellent, has been clumsily repaired, justifies its recipient in throwing it away and relying, to his own and his country’s loss, on a stump or a “peg-leg”.

The number of those fitted with good artificial limbs runs into many thousands. The “waiting list” is enormous. Yet haste, which would supply the waiting men with inferior limbs, or compel those already well fitted to submit these delicately adjusted contrivances to repair by ignorant or careless hands, would only, in the end, increase the evil. And, since this question is an essential part of the training of the disabled to take their place in life, it is a matter of the highest moment to the nation, which, owing them an incalculable debt, looks to them for yet further service. 
● Flats for disabled officers
Following a visit which the Queen paid to St Marks Court, St John’s Road, the first block of flats for officers’ widows and disabled officers provided by the Housing Association for Officers’ Families, the King and Queen have each subscribed £100 to the funds of the association.

SEPTEMBER 8, 1918

Enemy’s changed prospects

The retreat of the German Armies on the British front to the line they occupied last winter goes on so rapidly that by the time this reaches you it may be practically complete. Below here, from the region of Havrincourt downwards, progress has been so fast that today our line is on the average something like 10,000 yards farther east than it was on Friday, and all the way to St Quentin we are on ground which we have not seen since March 22, after the first day of the German advance.

So the curtain falls on the great German offensive of 1918. Conditions have changed enormously since the enemy started from these same positions less than six months ago. In the winter and spring of 1917 he also fell back across all this country, but he did it then at his own time, fairly at his leisure, and after spending months in the work of evacuation and the destruction of all military works, all buildings, and the fruits of industry in the vacated country. Today he has gone hurriedly, as best he could. Again and again we have captured prisoners with the orders which bade them hold on to the positions to dates long subsequent to the time when they were in our hands. I have spoken before of the great quantities of ammunition and engineering stores and so forth which are falling into our hands, and this continues. We are getting huge amounts of stuff which the Germans had expected to use this winter, and everywhere are evidences of the haste and disorganization of the retreat.

Even more noticeable than the contrast between this present retreat and the former withdrawal is the change in the German prospects since he left the positions to which he now returns. In March last the whole German Army and people were flushed with confidence, and believed that the last act of the war was beginning. Neither Army nor people can have any possible illusions now. One cannot wonder at the discouragement which is voiced by prisoners and rings in every captured letter as the Germans find themselves back in the old positions, with all their glittering hopes in ruins and, in contrast to their growing weakness, the American Army, practically unused as yet, is now coming to its strength. It is a black and bitter winter that the Germans have before them.

SEPTEMBER 7, 1918

The allied advance

The general position is that on the left of our battlefront we are in advance of any positions that we reached last year, on the centre — where, however, the German retreat is now rapid — we have at the farthest some ten miles still to go before we are where we were on March 21, and on the right we are a few miles back from where we were, but have still to force the Aisne above Condé and to win the Chemin des Dames. On the balance we are almost as well forward as in the spring. Undoubtedly the most notable single contribution to this result in the last month has been that made by the left of the British line, first north of the Ancre, where it refought the Somme battle as it might have been fought two years ago (if there had been unity of command), and then south of the Scarpe, where it broke the famous switch line. But we must not exaggerate the effect of these victories. The old switch is behind us, but there is a new switch in the marshes of the Sensée. Here we have before us the old Hindenburg line, breakable, no doubt, but unbroken.

The problem of 1917 is still before us, simplified at some points, complicated at others. But victory is a moral, not a geographical, term. There are unmistakable signs of discouragement in the German Armies. We have retreated, and know that it does not necessarily mean breakdown. But we have never retreated, as the Germans have done this year, from the hope of ending the war outright.

This war will not be won by attrition, but the enemy’s losses are an indication of the probable state of his mind, which after all is what will settle the war. He is known to have disbanded more than a dozen divisions, and the strength of those still in the field has been reduced on the average by at least 20 per cent since March. That represents a loss of more than half a million men, and for the first time in the war the German people are without even a quack formula of victory. Well may M Clemenceau achieve eloquence, as he did in his burning speech to the Chamber yesterday. Yet the burden of his speech was the work that remains to be done. We are preparing victory and have not yet achieved it. For our French Allies, as for us, nothing is yet done so long as anything remains to be done.

SEPTEMBER 6, 1918

A lost patrol

The statement in the official communique two days ago that we had pushed into the western outskirts of Lens seems to have created misapprehension in England, where the “capture” of the city has been greeted as imminent, if not already accomplished. In fact, there has been no serious fighting around Lens since late last summer and, so long as we left it alone, the Germans have been compelled to garrison it. We have kept the place drenched with gas and continually under shell fire, and the enemy losses in holding the position must have been considerable. It has been far better to make the Germans stay there and suffer than to waste any strength in attacking it.

A few days ago our patrols began to feel their way forward into the city from the line which we have been occupying for over a year. Pushing carefully into the ruins, our patrols found no position on the southern and western edges of the town. On the north-west side, however, the enemy were in strength and the patrols were counter-attacked and compelled to withdraw.

From where I was today I could look up the broad main street which cuts through from east to west. It is strewn with bricks and beams and debris of wrecked buildings. In its collapse, the city seems to have shrunk into itself and become curiously small, a mere huddle of bricks and masonry. Lens is much worse than Arras, and, I think, than Albert, though not perhaps quite touching the awful level of Ypres and Bailleul. There is no city now to “capture”, but only a name and an area of tumbled masonry.

One curious and pathetic incident was told me of the patrol work when pushing into the outskirts. One of our patrols on the south side of the town fell in with a party of four men in khaki who, when hailed, said they were “friends”, but could give no password. It turned out that they were a patrol who had been in the ruins for two days, unable to find their way out, and without food. They had been given up as missing. There had been six originally, but one was shot by a German sniper and one fell in the canal, and was drowned, and only four very feeble men remained, wandering stealthily among the brick heaps.

So far as the weather is concerned, it has been a perfect September day.