https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-captain-who-could-not-be-killed-mlb5t6pc7
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-10-06/register/german-plea-for-an-armistice-0v2bcsv8b
OCTOBER 8, 1918
The captain who could not be killed
In the fighting of Friday and yesterday the adventures of the American Tanks are a thrilling story. Yesterday I visited the headquarters of a Tank unit — a wooden hut, furnished with but a few camp beds and chairs. The commander told how the Tanks preceded the infantry in the attack, how the enemy with anti-Tank rifles and mobile field guns had fired at point-blank range at the advancing monsters, and how the Tanks, shaking off the opposition as a dog shakes off water, had pressed onward, performing every feat that was asked of them.
There was one captain who led his Tanks on foot through the fog. Suddenly he missed his footing and, falling down a trench, discovered to his dismay that 12 Germans were waiting for him. He was promptly disarmed of his pistol and held as prisoner. But only a few moments had elapsed when the nose of a Tank peeped over the top of the trench. The Germans fled before the apparition and the captain, after recovering his pistol, climbed out of the trench and set forth to resume his command. On his way he was knocked over by a shell, and found lying unconscious on the battlefield. He recovered later, and finding that no bones were broken went off again to find his Tanks. This he eventually did, but a gas shell that burst near him penetrated his mask, and he was gassed. He had no intention of giving in, however, and, in spite of all entreaties, continued to lead his Tanks throughout the day, reporting to the headquarters where I was at 7 at night. “What did he say when he reported?” I asked the commander. “Blank, blank, I wouldn’t have given three cents for my life out there.”
This Tank unit has a mascot, a French boy named Leo Gerard, 14 years of age, from Lorraine. He was picked up in France, dressed in khaki, and has made himself quite the pet of the Tanks. He speaks American, is as brave as a lion, willing to go anywhere, even to the front in a Tank, and generally enjoys himself wandering around the lines making friends with all the officers and men. He told me he wants to go to America after the war to study at a university, and then become an officer in the American Army. He is in good hands, for the majority of the Tank officers are men from Harvard and Yale, and other famous universities of the United States.
OCTOBER 6, 1918
German plea for an armistice
On Friday night Germany, with the assent of her Allies, addressed through Switzerland a Note to President Wilson inviting the opening of peace negotiations and asking for the immediate conclusion of an armistice. The Note, only about 100 words in length, is the first public act on the part of Prince Max of Baden as Imperial Chancellor. In a speech before the Reichstag Prince Max announced the dispatch of this Note, and set forth the peace programme as agreed between Germany and her Allies.
According to a Berlin telegram, the text of the German Note, transmitted through the Swiss Government, is as follows (translated from the German): The German Government requests the President of the United States of America to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all belligerent States with this request, and invite them to send plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. It accepts the programme set forth by the President of the United States in his message to Congress of January 8, 1918, and in his later pronouncements, especially his speech of September 27, as a basis for peace negotiations. With a view to avoiding further bloodshed the German Government requests the immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in the air.
The Austro-Hungarian Minister at Stockholm was instructed by telegraph to request the Swedish Government to transmit the following telegram to President Wilson: The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which has always waged the war solely as a defensive war and has repeatedly announced its readiness to put an end to the bloodshed and to attain a just and honourable peace, approaches herewith the President of the United States of America with a proposal to conclude with him and his Allies an immediate armistice on land and sea and in the air, and immediately, therefore, to enter into negotiations for the conclusion of peace, for which the Fourteen Points of President Wilson’s Message to Congress of January 8, 1918, and the Four Points in his speech of February 12, 1918, should serve as a basis, whereby attention will be paid to the declarations by President Wilson on September 27.
OCTOBER 5, 1918
Towards a League of Nations
The collapse of Bulgaria, swifter than expected, has stimulated practical preparation for that future League of Nations which, in spite of doubters and scoffers, is coming more and more into the domain of practical politics. It is not to mere “defeatists”, but to the best minds in Allied countries, that a League of Nations in some form has long seemed an essential adjunct of the peace, while President Wilson, certainly no “defeatist”, has brought the ideal still nearer by declaring that the moment for its fulfilment will be when peace is made.
But how many people have a clear idea of what a “League of Nations” would mean in practice? To some it is merely a phrase, and a cant phrase at that. To others it is a pious aspiration of which the fulfilment is not to be found in a workaday world. To others, again, it is a “pacifist dodge,” or a means of “letting the Germans off lightly”.
If a League of Nations means anything, it means the political reorganization of the civilized world. A work so vast cannot be a hasty improvisation. The time for preparation is now. There is literally not a moment to be lost in facing the practical problem by which we may be confronted, both as an Empire and as a member of the great Alliance of free peoples, much sooner than most of us thought probable even a month ago.
The ideal itself is not new. What is new is the fixed determination among Allied peoples that henceforth war shall cease to be the means of settling disputes between civilized communities. Not one of them dreams for a moment of allowing this war, with all its gigantic sacrifice, to end in anything but conclusive victory: but a deep horror of war has entered into the souls of the millions of men who for more than four years have been engaged in teaching a predatory enemy that war does not and cannot pay. The extent of this horror supplies a motive power lacking hitherto. It has generated steam in the somewhat inert engine of human idealism. As Mr Lloyd George has repeatedly said, unless war be made to cease by the combined resolve of civilized peoples, then men now living may witness the final destruction of civilization.
A League of Nations, in short, is necessary to save civilization itself.
OCTOBER 4, 1918
Great British advance
The Germans are retiring along the La Bassée sector and along the whole front we are pushing forward into empty enemy positions. Early yesterday we learnt that the German front lines had been evacuated an hour and a half before dawn, the rear areas having, presumably, been cleared in advance. Contrary to their usual custom, they left no rearguards to cover the retirement. Trenches, snipers’ posts, and redoubts were all empty, and there was no opportunity to fight except at a few points where machine-guns disputed our advance. This forenoon our advance had reached some 3,400 yards east of La Bassée and we are in occupation of all the old German positions, held for so long, on the famous Aubers Ridge. Apparently the enemy has yielded the western slopes without a blow. Today the enemy seems to be blowing up churches and buildings everywhere, and burning stores. The last of the famous towers of Wingles has gone, and the landscape is dotted with columns of smoke.
Sensational as is this retirement from ground which has seen so much fighting, and where the Germans have so long held commanding positions, more thrilling and no less important is the new advance which we have made this morning in the St Quentin area, with the French also pushing on our right. So far as the British sector is concerned, it has given us an advance in the centre of some 4,000 yards, with seven villages and several thousand prisoners. The great obstacle was the notorious Beaurevoir Line, in which we had made a breach, but the main length of which, for a distance of some 6,000 yards, still ran parallel to our front. We overran the entire 6,000 yards in the first onset, the German defence being weak, and were out on the other side of Le Catelet and Gouy, and over the high ground beyond by 10 o’clock in the morning.
Apart from formal trenches of the Beaurevoir line, the whole ground was very much broken up, as all this country is, with old trench lines and belts of wire. It was at Wiancourt that the enemy resistance seems to have been stoutest, and hard fighting went on before the village was cleared, machine-gunners clinging to their positions to the last. On the whole, however, the Germans fought poorly, and the morale of the prisoners seems generally bad.
OCTOBER 3, 1918
Death trap for the enemy
The position today is that the Germans are still holding the last trench of the Hindenburg system before Beaurevoir and Ramicourt, and Australians and British are facing them. As usual, the Germans rested their defence mainly upon the tremendous fortifications built across the 3½ miles gap where the Canal gave them no protection, with a maze of deep trenches, broad bands of wire, and deep dugouts, though the tunnel provided means of resistance to attack. Some of us inspected it yesterday. The Canal runs through a huge cutting, with steep, scrubby banks, and enters the hill south of Bellicourt by an arched brick tunnel. Over the arch is the inscription, ‘’Napoleon, Emperor and King, opened the Canal of St Quentin, which unites the basins of the Seine and the Scheldt in 1802.”
Within the tunnel by the light of a candle could be seen a string of great wooden barges. The long holds contained rows of rough bunks, and occasional tables, on which are the remains of meals. Here and there on the towpath are narrow shafts running up to the trenches above.
The Canal was used as a great, unwholesome, underground barrack. There is one grim chamber near the southern entrance which is the most horrible place that any of us has ever entered. It was reached by a dark stone stair, winding up to a narrow brick chamber above the arch, where there are four great wagon wheels, apparently connected with the ancient machinery of Napoleonic days. It seemed perfectly safe, for the Germans had built a kitchen therein, with two coppers, and bunks for about 13 men. But the chamber was really only three or four feet from the surface. In the wall is a hole bored clean by a British shell, which penetrated and exploded inside. Thirteen Germans were lying there with the dust of the explosion over them. One had been thrown into the copper, one behind a wagon wheel, and the rest on the ground.
In the first afternoon some of us saw Australian infantry make a splendid attack towards the Cabaret Farm, rushing forward, obviously under heavy fire. Today there lie before a nest of trenches a string of brave men whom the machine-guns caught before the trench was reached. In the trench lie bayoneted a number of Germans, including the machine-gun crew.
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