https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-10-19/register/the-agony-of-lille-lrx8zgssf
OCTOBER 19, 1918
The agony of Lille
From Our Special Correspondent. My visit to Lille was as wonderful an experience as any man could hope to have in a lifetime. Two or three hours before, an officer of the Liverpool Regiment, with his men, had gone into the town and made an official call on the Mayor. A small party of French and Belgian correspondents also made their way in, but I was the only Englishman.
The streets for miles were a surging mass of people, chiefly women and children, who had been waiting since the Germans had gone in the darkness of the early morning. A rumour spread that I was “the English General”, though whether Sir Douglas Haig, General Birdwood, or General Haking I do not know. It was useless to deny it, for who could argue with a hundred thousand people mad with joy, and on me was poured all the gratitude for its deliverance of the population which has suffered so much through four years. It was necessary to walk some miles through the streets, battling every yard through cheering, laughing, sobbing women and children, and a few men. I was showered and heaped with flowers and draped with Tricolour flags and streamers. Fifty times I must have saved babies, thrust at me to be touched or kissed, from being trampled underfoot. The women struggled to touch or kiss some part of a hand or cheek or clothes. Men fought to grip one’s hand. For mile after mile the crowd continued — one mass of shouting, cheering, weeping humanity — and the cries, hailing one as “saviour” and “deliverer”, mingled with shouts of “Vive l’Angleterre!” and the refrain “Nous avons tant souffert, mon general, nous avons tant souffert,” are things no man could ever forget.
But for the help of some men who made a phalanx round me, I doubt if it would have been possible to reach the Mayor’s residence. Finally even this phalanx became powerless, and from the Mayoralty a bodyguard of gendarmes was provided to take me back to the canal, beyond which my car was waiting. The car was heaped with flowers, and the chauffeur told me he had been kissed by more people that afternoon than in all his life before. It was a truly wonderful experience, which brought home, as nothing else, what the German captivity and their deliverance have meant to the people of France.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-10-20/register/the-coast-retreat-6h3mvj3tp
OCTOBER 20, 1918
The coast retreat
“They are off!” was the exclamation all along the Dutch frontier last night as the tramp of the retreating German Army resounded like a muffled reverberation through the silence. It is impossible to express the sense of relief experienced on both sides of the frontier when it was realised that the evacuation had actually come to pass.
For four years Germany’s presence on the FIanders coast has been a perpetual nightmare. The peaceful folk who dwell in these regions have lived under a yoke of slavery without parallel in the history of modern Europe, daily witnesses of murder, butchery, forced labour, violence, and brutality. They have seen husbands torn from wives, children from parents, young girls subjected to nameless indignities. The deliverance has come in the end so unexpectedly as to be bewildering. The Germans had fortified the coast till they believed it to be impregnable. And all this has been silently forsaken in the dead of night.
It happened so simply as to come as an anticlimax. Watchers near the frontier town of Eede awaiting the great retreat had few incidents to beguile the tedium of their vigil. A German deserter afforded comic relief. He was cook to the frontier guard post. He carried a bag in his hand. A German officer of the guard approached the high fence shutting off the frontier to inquire as to the deserter who, fortunately for himself, had made good his escape. It was not the man himself who excited the officer’s solicitude, but the fact that he had made off with several cheeses, the food supply of the guard, but he saw it was impossible to recover either the man or the cheeses. When asked whether it was true that the English were at Eecloo, he replied: “No, thank God. It has not got so far as that.” By and by, however, a voice shouted in German from the other side of the frontier: “We are leaving at 3 o’clock tonight.”
Troops in full field order, with boxes and packages in hand, set out along the frontier road towards the east. They were followed later by the frontier guards. Despite the moonlight, nothing was visible of the departing hosts, but through the still air came the rumble of endless wheels and the measured footfall of seemingly interminable detachments of troops. These were the sounds of an army, and a great army, in retreat.
OCTOBER 22, 1918
The great march eastward
On the whole of the British front the eastward march goes on. During the last few days the evacuation of the Lille area and the Belgian coast has made it impossible to keep in touch with the fighting on other parts of the front, but since yesterday all our Armies resumed the advance. On some sectors they have travelled fast, with little opposition. Elsewhere the Germans have been fighting hard, and the resistance has been stubborn. Whether slowly or with readiness, however, everywhere the enemy is being forced back.
I have travelled by old familiar roads awaked from the long nightmare; every village street is a-flutter with flags. Along the roads groups of peasants shout and wave their hats and hands as you pass, and through each town and hamlet the car is borne on waves of cheering, and if you stop crowds press round to shake your hand and pour out thanks for their deliverance.
On all this Western front, as the tide of battle moved eastward, one has become familiar with the transition from the stricken battle-zone to the blessed unravaged country beyond. We have seen it on the Somme and around Cambrai, and along the awful Menin road from Ypres, and between Lens and Armentières on the way to Lille, but nowhere is it more striking than on this northern Belgian front.
One of the most interesting and appalling regions is that of the vast Houthulst Forest. I have traversed it from corner to corner, over roads that were unspeakable, and hardly anywhere in France or Belgium is there so forbidding a region of equal size so utterly devastated by war. Large areas of woodland are interspersed with wide, treeless glades. Part of the wooded areas have been swept by fire. In some the trees are still thick with autumn foliage, but mostly for mile after mile they are splintered masts as thin and shattered as those of Delville or Trônes Wood or Inverness Copse. Everywhere are gun emplacements, and many great howitzers still lie half-sunk in the mud where the Belgians rushed them. All along the roads by which the Germans fled shattered vehicles tilted into ditches tell of direct hits on the enemy transport as it struggled to get away. It is a wonderful, terrifying region, and seeing it increases one’s admiration for the Belgian Army.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-10-23/register/american-fight-for-every-yard-gmgljszjd
OCTOBER 23, 1918
American fight for every yard
Last night’s British bulletin stated that our troops were in the western suburbs of Valenciennes. We are thus only four or five miles from the positions held by the left of our line at the Battle of Mons, on that memorable Sunday in August, 1914, when the British Army first came into action in the war. Our left then rested on Condé, and our thin line ran along the canal which passes from that town to Mons and beyond. After four years and two months, our men are again almost in sight of Condé and the western edge of the Mons battlefield, and this time it is the Germans who are retreating. But the enemy are moving slowly and stubbornly, and the rearguard actions in which they are engaged are now more fiercely contested than was the case a few days ago.
The general assumption is that the enemy will soon fall back behind Ghent and will take up a line covering Antwerp and Brussels. Our Fifth Army is already joining issue with them on the line of the Scheldt both north and south of Tournai, and the entry into Valenciennes will probably quicken their retirement. The flow of news from the liberated cities of Belgium has rather diverted public interest from the very important operations, begun a week ago, by which our troops have carried the line of the Selle between Denain and Le Cateau, and to the south have reached the Sambre. The passage of the Selle has involved much hard and bitter fighting, in which American divisions, side by side with our own forces, have done splendid work. French forces on our right have also been very heavily engaged, and these brilliant attacks on the Selle have greatly contributed to bring about the sweep of the Allies through Belgium.
Another aspect of the present complex operations relates to the stern conflict which is being waged by the First United States Army between the Argonne hills and the Meuse. No forces on the Western front have a severer task than the Americans in this area. Our Special Correspondent with the American Army says it is clear that the German General Staff “have ordered this part of the line to be held at all costs”, and reinforcements are being continually thrown in. The Americans have had to fight desperately for every yard, but they are advancing slowly.
OCTOBER 24, 1918
Good day for the British
Again we have advanced on the front of the First, Third, and Fourth Armies from above Valenciennes to the south of Le Cateau. We have made good ground, and the number of prisoners will be considerable. All night long a heavy blanket of soddening mist lay over the battle area. The German artillery was active throughout the night, and threw large quantities of gas shells into various parts of our lines. Our advance began from soon after 1 till 3 o’clock, when the mist everywhere was extremely dense. We have pushed through St Waast la Haut, on the west side of Valenciennes, and on the north, where before noon we were east of Beuvrages. We are now going through the Forêt de Raismes to the eastward, where the Germans seem to be retiring without resistance, and the chief difficulty is still the waterlogged ground. Besides Thiant, where I told of stubborn enemy resistance, there also appears to have been hard fighting yesterday in Haspres, where some 700 civilians were still in the town, hiding in the ruins and cellars while the struggle at close quarters went on between the two Armies. Even worse has been the experience of the inhabitants of St Amand, which was occupied first by our cavalry. The place contained a large number of civilians, among whom Spanish influenza has been raging. It is estimated that there were over 1,500 serious cases. As soon as the Germans left the town, they began shelling and then gassing it. They knew perfectly well the conditions there, and the suffering of the poor invalids in the cellars was very great, and large numbers are stated to have died during the night. The problem of the civilians in the liberated districts is rather a serious one, but we are pushing up food and sending in nurses as near the front as practicable, and doing all that can be done for the poor people’s comfort.
In the region east of Le Cateau the country is very difficult by reason of hills, valleys, and the frequent small streams, each of which has been made a temporary delaying line by the Germans, and the streams and high ground beyond are thickly wired and defended by machine-guns. In spite of this, we have been moving fast. Before the day is over I anticipate that our advance, which has already reached some three or four miles, will be much larger.
OCTOBER 25, 1918
President Wilson’s last word
Once again President Wilson has made answer to the Germans. It is the right kind of answer, and should close the correspondence in which the enemy engaged him. It states that, in view of the “solemn and explicit” assurances received from the German Government, he feels that he cannot decline to take up the question of an armistice with the Governments associated with the Government of the United States. He has therefore transmitted the correspondence to those Governments, suggesting that if they are disposed “to effect peace” upon the terms and principles indicated, their military advisers and the military advisers of the United States be asked to submit the necessary terms of such an armistice as will fully protect the interests of the peoples involved. This must “ensure” to the Associated Governments “power to safeguard and enforce the details of the peace”, provided they hold such an armistice “possible from the military point of view”.
But the President feels bound again to say that the only armistice he would feel justified in submitting for consideration would be “one which should leave the United States and the Powers associated with her in a position to enforce any arrangements that may be entered into and to make a renewal of hostilities on the part of Germany impossible”. To this end “extraordinary safeguards” must be demanded, for reasons which he explains. They are that the principle of a Government responsible for the German people has not been fully worked out or given any character of permanency; that, whatever may be the prospective control of the German people over future wars, the present war has not been under their control, and it is with the present war that we are dealing, that the power of the military authorities and of the King of Prussia is unimpaired; and that “the determining initiative still remains with those who have been the masters of Germany”.
“The nations of the world,” adds the President, “do not and cannot trust the word of those who have hitherto been the masters of German policy.” Therefore, if the Government of the United States must deal with them now, or is likely to have to deal with them later, it must demand, “not peace negotiations, but surrender”.
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