Part 9 (2/2)

Byng's addition to the pressure the Germans had to bear from north of the Scarpe to south of the Oise imposed upon them a retreat as extensive as that of March and April 1917; but now they could not make it at their leisure. On the 27th they had to abandon the line south of the Somme on which they had stood since the 15th, when they recovered stability after Rawlinson's offensive. Roye was relinquished that day and Chaulnes and Nesle on the 28th. Noyon followed on the 29th, partly in sympathy with the northern withdrawal and partly owing to Humbert's pressure on the north-western bank of the Oise, but also because it had been outflanked to the south by Mangin's advance between the Oise and the Aisne. Beginning on the 17th with an attack on a ten-mile front between Tracy-le-Val and Vingre he had steadily pushed on until by the 23rd his left flank held the Oise as far as its junction with the Ailette and his front faced the latter ca.n.a.lized river as far as Guny. By the 29th he was across the Ailette and threatening to turn the whole German position south of the Somme at Chauny. Bapaume fell on the same day as Noyon, and it soon became clear that the Somme would not protect the Germans any more than it had done the British in March. For on the 31st the Australians stormed Mount St. Quentin the bulwark of Peronne, and Peronne itself fell into their hands on 1 September. Simultaneously Byng's army pressed forward from Bapaume to the Ca.n.a.l du Nord which runs north from Peronne.

But this after all was ground we had held for a year in 1917-18, and the Hindenburg lines might serve the Germans as well in 1918-19. More significant of the coming debacle was the success of Horne's First Army, which now intervened and extended the line of Byng's attack. Already Canadian and British troops, by the capture of Vis-en-Artois on the 27th, Boiry on the 28th, and Haucourt on the 30th, had seized ground which the Germans had held since 1914; and on 2 September in one of the outstanding actions of the campaign Canadian and British troops broke the Drocourt-Queant line on a front of six miles between etaing and Cagnicourt. On that day the British army fired 943,857 sh.e.l.ls. No single engagement caused greater depression in Germany, but the impression was somewhat fallacious; for behind this sector of the Hindenburg lines were waterways which were even worse obstacles to our tanks, and although the Canadians pressed on to L'ecluse, ecourt, and Rumancourt, they were hemmed in on their left by the Sensee and in front by the Ca.n.a.l du Nord, which protected Douai to the north and Cambrai to the east. The advance here was checked for some weeks, but it went steadily on along other fronts. The salient on the Lys was melting away: Bailleul fell on 30 August, Mount Kemmel on the 31st, and Ploegstreet wood on 4 September. Lens was evacuated on the 3rd. South-west of Cambrai the British were approaching their old lines, and east of the Somme the Germans were retreating to St. Quentin. On the 6th the French took Ham and Chauny, and on the 9th they were once more across the Crozat ca.n.a.l. Mangin was pus.h.i.+ng his way towards the St. Gobain ma.s.sif, and French and American troops were driving the Germans back from the Vesle across the Aisne. It looked as though winter might come with the line of battle much where it was before the German offensive began in March.

But the latter half of September gave a novel aspect to affairs. A great deal, no doubt, was due to Foch and the unity of command; but that unity did not extend to the East nor account for the debacle of Bulgaria and Turkey. It was, however, partly responsible for the extension of our offensive in France beyond the limits of the year before and for the timing of the American attack in the Woevre. In the hour of his Allies' need President Wilson had consented to the brigading of American with French and British troops, and to the employment of American divisions as supports for French and British generals. But with the American Army growing equal in size to the French and the British and acquiring an independent skill in war, there could be no hesitation about an American command on an equal footing with the armies of Haig and Petain; and to the Americans under General Pers.h.i.+ng had been allotted the right wing of the Allied front, the British forming the left and the French the centre. Some critics talked of Pers.h.i.+ng's armies being used as the spear-head of an invasion of Germany through Lorraine; but this would have been an eccentric operation, and there were obvious reasons for restoring Lorraine, if possible, to France undevastated by war. North rather than east was the natural direction for an American advance, and in either case an indispensable preliminary was to eliminate that strange wedge at St. Mihiel which the Germans had held since September 1914. The task would also be a useful apprentices.h.i.+p for an independent American command. The attack was made on both sides of the salient on 12 September, but the princ.i.p.al drive was from the south on a twelve miles' front between Bouconville and Regnieville. Part of the defending force was Austrian, but the whole salient collapsed under the blow; 15,000 prisoners and 200 guns were captured, and a new front was formed on a straight line from Fresnes to Pont-a-Mousson. The strategic purpose was to free the American flank and communications in view of a bigger offensive northwards, and on the 15th Austria and Germany began their overtures for peace, to which President Wilson at once returned an unsympathetic reply.

Antic.i.p.ations as well as achievements counselled that diplomatic move, and Austria in particular had reason to fear developments on other fronts than the French. The Balkans had been quiescent during the summer, although the Greeks had on 30 May given an earnest of a better future by a victory at Skra di Legen, west of the Vardar, in which they captured 1500 Bulgarian and German prisoners, and on 18 June the fall of the pro-German Radoslavoff Ministry indicated that Ferdinand wished to present a less Teutonic appearance to the world. Italy, too, in pursuance of her a.s.sumed protectorate over Albania, thought in July that the time had come to a.s.sert herself, and with the a.s.sistance of some French troops began an advance towards Elbasan. The Austrians were taken by surprise, Berat was captured, and the country overrun as far as the s.e.m.e.ni and beyond the Devoli. The effort was not apparently serious; in August the Austrians returned to the attack, recaptured Berat, and drove the Italians back to their starting-point in a retreat boldly described in an Italian official p.r.o.nouncement as of no military importance. It helped to discourage Italy from taking an active part in the coming offensive against Bulgaria, but political motives were the princ.i.p.al reason for quiescence. Italy had a tenderness for Bulgaria arising out of her antipathy to Jugo-Slavs and Greeks, and while proclaiming that Austria must be totally destroyed, she exclaimed against the wickedness and folly of imposing on Bulgaria a second Peace of Brest-Litovsk (see Map, p. 151).

The success of the Balkan campaign did not, however, suffer much from the lack of Italian push. Franchet d'Esperey was commander-in-chief, and he was ably seconded by the Serbian Marshal Mis.h.i.+tch. The Serbian Army was the spear-head of the attack, and it had with it an equally eager and effective force of Jugo-Slavs; with them cooperated the French on the west of the Vardar, while east of it were the Greeks and the British with the arduous and somewhat thankless task of facing the impregnable Demir Kapu defile and Belas.h.i.+tza range. The offensive began on 15 September, and the main attack was on the Dobropolie ridge in the angle between the Tcherna and Vardar rivers. On the first day the Bulgarian line was broken on a front of sixteen miles, an advance was made of five, and 4000 prisoners and 30 guns were taken. On the morrow the front widened to twenty-two miles, and the advance increased to twelve; and within a week the Serbians had cleared the angle between the rivers and crossed the Tcherna on their left and the Vardar above Demir Kapu on their right. This cut the main Bulgarian communications with Prilep on the west and Doiran on the east, and compelled a general retreat along a hundred miles of front. On the 23rd the French occupied Prilep; on the 25th the Serbians captured Veles and Ishtip and pressed on towards Uskub, while their cavalry were at Kotchana almost on the Bulgarian frontier. The British, whose first attacks had been checked, had actually crossed the border at Kosturino on the road between Doiran and Strumnitza. Bulgaria had put her whole trust in the strength of her front, and with it she collapsed. An armistice was requested on the 25th, and Franchet d'Esperey's terms were accepted on the 30th. It was the most dramatic overthrow in the war, and within a fortnight the whole situation in the Balkans was transformed. The Serbians were bitterly disappointed at having to stay their avenging hands when almost at the gates of Sofia; but the elimination of Bulgaria made the recovery of their country a triumphal procession varied by the occasional defeat of Austrian rearguards. On 12 October they and their allies occupied Nish, and a week later they had reached the Danube. Nor was Serbia alone concerned. Austria had relied upon the Bulgarian buckler, and when it crumpled her entire hold not only on the Balkans but over her own Jugo-Slav subjects in Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Carinthia was relaxed. A general uprising of Jugo-Slavs in favour of union under the Serbian crown more than doubled the size of that kingdom which Austria had begun the war to crush.

Nor did this exhaust the effects of Bulgaria's capitulation. The terms of the armistice included the Allied occupation of Bulgarian railways, and this brought their military front up to the borders of Rumania on the north and of Turkey on the south. Presently Marghiloman's Ministry, which the Germans had imposed at Bukarest, fell, and Rumania prepared to resume her part in the war. Bulgaria, too, was willing to revive her quarrel with Turkey. The famous corridor had disappeared, and Turkey was an isolated unit. It was no wonder that the ”Easterners” looked up again, and the Prime Minister's henchmen in the press began to tell stories about his single-handed and far-sighted champions.h.i.+p of an Eastern campaign as the solution of the problem of the war. But the collapse of the Balkan front was ultimately due to the collapse of its German foundation. Berlin journalists talked of the German troops which would soon bring back Bulgaria to her senses and to the Teutonic fold. But they were mortgaged to the Western front, and instead of a German expedition to a.s.sist her under Mackensen, Turkey was faced with ruin at the hands of Allenby.

His blow had followed swiftly on that of Franchet d'Esperey, and four days after the Balkan campaign had opened, British forces began the battle which was to prove the most perfect operation of the war. Preparations had been in progress during the summer, and little had been done to modify the British line running a dozen or fifteen miles north of Jericho, Jerusalem, and Jaffa to the sea. A Turkish counter-attack on 13 July had even met with some initial success; but the Turks had been unable to maintain their strength, the Germans could not a.s.sist them, the Arabs were perpetually hara.s.sing them along the Hedjaz railway, and what reserves they had were sent on a wild goose chase for the recovery of Turkish dominion in Caucasia and Persia and along the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian. The pursuit was rendered attractive by Russian impotence and anarchy: Armenia was regained and subjected to a final and more extensive ma.s.sacre than ever; Northern Persia was overrun, and even the long and adventurous arms which the British Empire stretched out in August from Mesopotamia and India to the southern and eastern sh.o.r.es of the Caspian failed to save Baku from the combined efforts of Turkish troops and Bolshevik treachery on 14 September. But Allenby, the luckiest of British generals, brought down these airy Turkish castles with a single blow. He had been largely reinforced from India, which mobilized during the war nearly a million men and bore the chief burden of the Palestine and Mesopotamian campaigns; he had got a magnificent force of cavalry, and with it the terrain and open fighting wherein to exhibit a model of that traditional strategy from which the glory on European battlefields had departed for ever.

On 19 September his infantry drove the Turks from a sixteen-mile line between Rafat and the sea back a dozen miles to the railway junction at Tul Keram, while his cavalry burst through to the right towards the gap south-east of Mount Carmel and the plain of Esdraelon. It was a rare ride: on the morrow they were forty miles north and north-east at El Afuleh, Nazareth, and Beisan; and then wheeling south-east they cut off the retreat of nearly the whole of the Turkish forces. On the 22nd Allenby reported that 25,000 prisoners and 200 guns had been taken and counted, and that the Seventh and Eighth Turkish armies had virtually ceased to exist. The Fourth was pursued across the Jordan, and mostly mopped up between its pursuers and the Arabs to the east. On the 25th we were round the Lake of Galilee, and the number of prisoners had risen to 45,000 and of captured guns to nearly 300. There was nothing left to stop our advance, which was joined by some French battalions, while the Arabs kept pace on the other side of the Jordan. On the 28th we effected a junction with them at Deraa, and Damascus fell on the 30th. On 6 October cavalry, advancing between Mts. Lebanon and Hermon, seized Zahleh and Rayak between Damascus and Beyrut, which the French occupied on the 7th, while the British took Sidon. On the 9th we were at Baalbek, on the 13th at Tripolis, and on the 15th at Homs. On the 26th Aleppo fell, and on the 28th we reached Muslimieh, that junction on the Baghdad railway on which longing eyes had been cast as the nodal point in the conflict of German and other ambitions in the East.

Allenby played the leading part in Turkey's destruction, partly because Marshall's attention in Mesopotamia had been distracted towards the Caspian. But in October he resumed his interrupted march up the Tigris: on the 25th his troops captured Kirkuk and forced the pa.s.sage of the Lesser Zab; and on the 28th they took Kalat Shergat, and after a six days' battle forced the Turkish army on the Tigris to surrender. Turkey had taken a lot more beating than Bulgaria, but the end was the same. On 30 October an armistice was signed, which permitted the Allies to occupy the forts on the Dardanelles and Bosporus and make free use of the Straits. Marshall entered Mosul, and presently British s.h.i.+ps commanded the Black Sea and British troops were holding a line across Caucasia to the Caspian and connecting with the chain of forces established between Krasnovodsk and India. An end was thus put to Germany's dreams of a Teutonic-Turco-Turanian avenue into the heart of Asia, but the search for an eastern front in Russia against the Central Empires was elusive. For the Bolsheviks, in spite of the murder of Count Mirbach the German amba.s.sador at Moscow on 6 July, grew ever more friendly to the Prussians, and the Entente had to go to Vladivostock for a basis of operations, and rely largely upon the romantic achievements of the Czecho-Slovak prisoners who had enlisted in the Russian armies and refused to lay down their arms at the Peace of Brest-Litovsk. At first the Bolsheviks promised them a pa.s.sage via Siberia to the Western front, but then, like Pharaoh hardened their hearts and refused to let the infant nation go. Thereupon the Czecho-Slovaks set up for themselves, seized the Siberian railway from the Bolsheviks, and after much hards.h.i.+p and fighting established contact with the motley Entente forces advancing from Vladivostock. With their a.s.sistance an anti-Bolshevik government, of which Admiral Koltchak afterwards made himself master, was set up in Siberia, while Entente forces, mostly British, were sent to Archangel and the Murmansk coast to prevent the Germans establis.h.i.+ng their authority there as they had done in the Baltic provinces ”liberated” by the Peace of Brest-Litovsk.

The Conquest Of Syria

But this Eastern front, which as late as August was regarded in high but civilian quarters as indispensable to the Allied success, failed to pierce the protection which the Bolsheviks gave to Germany or to penetrate farther west than the Urals; and Germany had after all to be beaten by professional strategists on the Western front. There was little fault to be found with their progress, and while Bulgaria, Turkey, and Austria were collapsing in the East, the Germans were being steadily driven towards disaster on a widening field of battle in the West. Simultaneously with Pers.h.i.+ng's destruction of the St. Mihiel salient the British were thrusting the Germans back to the Hindenburg lines between Cambrai and St. Quentin, and Mangin was pus.h.i.+ng forward towards the forest of St. Gobain. The Germans attempted to stand at epehy, but on 18-19 September they were driven back with the loss of 11,750 prisoners and 100 guns; and from the 27th to the 30th was fought the first phase of the battle for Cambrai and St. Quentin, in which the British First, Third, and Fourth armies took 26,500 prisoners and 340 guns apart from the gains of the French. The object was to complete the breach of the Hindenburg lines on the strength of which public opinion in Germany was stayed; and it was a critical operation. The lines themselves were reinforced by the Ca.n.a.l du Nord protecting Cambrai and the Scheldt-St. Quentin ca.n.a.l between Cambrai and St. Quentin.

The southern sector in front of the Fourth Army was the more strongly fortified, and an intense bombardment began on the night of 26-27 September which continued till the 29th. This tended to divert attention from the First and Third armies, which on the 27th forced the Ca.n.a.l du Nord south of Moeuvres and then spread fanwise along the eastern bank. By the end of the day they were more than half-way from the Ca.n.a.l du Nord to Cambrai, and on the 28th the advance was continued across the Scheldt ca.n.a.l at Marcoing and broadened from Palluel on the north to Gouzeaucourt on the south. On the 29th the Fourth Army began its attack on the ca.n.a.l to the north of St. Quentin. It was well supported by several American divisions, and the great episode of the day was the capture of Bellenglise by troops who crossed the ca.n.a.l equipped with life-belts, mats, and rafts. East of Bellenglise, Lehaucourt and Magny were also stormed, and north of it Nauroy and Bellicourt. Meanwhile the Third Army captured Masnieres and penetrated into the western outskirts of Cambrai while the Canadians threatened to outflank it on the north. On the 30th the Germans had to withdraw their centre at Villers Guislain and Gonnelieu, while the Fourth Army extended its gains southwards by the capture of Thorigny; and, thus menaced, the Germans had to abandon St. Quentin to the French on 1 October. On that day, too, New Zealanders and British troops took Crevecoeur and Rumilly south of Cambrai, and the Canadians Blecourt to the north of it. The Hindenburg line, apart from its tottering supports, had gone at the moment when Bulgaria was capitulating; and on the same 30 September Count Hertling and all his Secretaries of State resigned.

The British victory, while the critical movement on the Western front, was but one of the four operations which Foch had concerted with Haig in the middle of September. The other three were a Belgian attack at Ypres, an American advance on the Meuse, and a French offensive in close connexion with it in Champagne and the Argonne. The Belgian attack was an agreeable surprise, and nothing did more to illumine the change from 1917 than the contrast between its rapid success and the painful crawl of Gough's campaign. The cause was that which also accounted for the Germans' failure elsewhere; they had not the forces to sustain their vast and crumbling front, and they attempted to hold the line in Belgium with no more than five divisions. The attack began on 28 September on a twenty-three mile front, and in one day 50 per cent more ground was covered than had been gained in three months the year before. The whole of Houthulst forest, which then had hardly been touched, was taken at a stroke; and on the 29th Dixmude fell and the Belgians were across the Roulers-Menin road. As a consequence of this and of Haig's advance the Germans had to evacuate the rest of the Lys salient and draw back their front towards Lille and Douai. Armentieres was recovered on 3 October, La Ba.s.see and the Aubers ridge were abandoned without a struggle, and the Germans surrendered the remaining section of the Drocourt-Queant line, withdrawing to the Douai, Haute Deule, and Sensee ca.n.a.ls which protected Lille and Douai.

The French and Americans had a sterner task in the Argonne and on the Meuse, for here was the pivot of the Germans' whole position in the conquered territory. A possible retirement to the Meuse had been contemplated in 1917, and in September 1918 the Germans would have been glad to surrender everything west of it in return for safety on that line; hence their withdrawals and feeble resistance in Flanders. But the Meuse from Verdun to Mezieres was an indispensable flank for any German front in Belgium; it had now become more to the Germans than even that, for it was the only s.h.i.+eld behind which their armies could escape disaster and get back to Germany at all. Whatever else might have to go, this flank must hold; if it gave, the Germans would have to capitulate or suffer the wholesale destruction of their forces. Hence the stubbornness of the defence the Americans encountered; the terrain gave it every advantage with which art could supplement nature; and a singular and serious breakdown of their commissariat added to the difficulties under which American troops fought with intrepid skill.

The attack was launched on 26 September. The American front ran for seventeen miles from Forges on the Meuse, eight miles north of Verdun, to the centre of the Argonne, whence the French extended it to Auberive on the Suippe. Pers.h.i.+ng's First Army advanced an average depth of seven miles and captured Varennes, Montfaucon,-for long the Crown Prince's headquarters,-Nantillois, and Dannevoux. Gouraud's progress was less rapid but better sustained. His greatest advance was only three miles, but it extended along a wider front and developed during the following days, while the Americans were held up by defective organization. Somme-Py and Manre were taken on the 28th, while on Gouraud's left Berthelot began to move from Reims, and farther west Mangin pursued the Germans across the Aisne. Progress along the whole French front continued in October; Gouraud's right pressed on to a level with, and then in advance of, the American left towards Challerange and Grandpre; his centre advanced towards Machault, and on his left Berthelot took Loivre, Brimont, and forced the pa.s.sages of the Suippe at Bertricourt and Bazancourt, and of the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac. The Moronvillers ma.s.sif was thus outflanked, and by the middle of the month the Germans were evacuating the whole of their ground south of the Aisne. This retreat, coupled with the French advance east of St. Quentin, endangered the great apex of the German front in the St. Gobain forest, and by the 10th its abandonment was begun. On the 11th the Chemin des Dames was relinquished, on the 13th the French were in La Fere and Laon, and the Germans were retreating to the line of the Serre.

Nevertheless, the advance of the right wing of the Allied front had not quite come up to expectations. The prolonged maintenance of the German bastion in the Argonne and on the Meuse enabled their centre to withdraw more or less at its leisure and thus avoid the colossal Sedan with which it was threatened; and, the French centre having been cast for a part subsidiary to those of the two wings, the brunt of the fighting fell upon the British, whose advance was not so fatal as similar progress would have been on the other wing. They were greatly a.s.sisted by American divisions serving with the Third and Fourth armies, by the Belgians and French on their left, and by the French on their right; but the check to the American advance enabled the Germans-unfortunately for them, as it turned out-to transfer reinforcements from the Meuse to Cambrai and Valenciennes.

Cambrai did not therefore fall until another series of actions had been fought in the first nine days of October. The Scheldt ca.n.a.l to the north of it had proved a formidable obstacle, and Haig determined to press the attack from the south, where the Fourth Army had prepared the way on 29 September by destroying the Hindenburg line at Bellicourt and Bellenglise. On 3 October Rawlinson attacked again between Le Catelet and Sequehart and captured those villages, Gouy, Ramicourt, and the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme line. On the 4th and 5th further progress was made by the taking of Beaurevoir and Montbrehain, while north of Le Catelet the Germans were driven from their positions east of the ca.n.a.l, which were occupied by the Third Army. On the 8th the final phase in the battle for Cambrai began. The chief fighting was on the line secured on the 3rd. An American division captured Brancourt and Premont, and British divisions Serain, Villers-Outreaux, and Malincourt north-east of Le Catelet. New Zealanders south of Cambrai look Lesdain and Esnes, and three British divisions Serainvillers, Forenville, and Niergnies, penetrating the southern outskirts of Cambrai, while to the north of it Canadians captured Ramillies, crossed the ca.n.a.l at Point d'Aire and entered the city on that side. During the night the whole of it fell into our hands; the Germans were driven back in disorder to within two miles of Le Cateau; and Bohain was reached ten miles east of Bellicourt and a similar distance south-west of Le Cateau. By the 10th the advance had been carried to the line of the Selle river, on which the Germans made another stand, while farther south the French pus.h.i.+ng east of St. Quentin, cleared the Oise-Sambre ca.n.a.l as far north as Bernot. On the 10th Le Cateau fell, and by the 13th the British had gained the west bank of the Selle as far north as Haspres.

A great wedge had thus been thrust into the German line, leaving p.r.o.nounced salients to the north of it round Lille and Douai, and to the south-east of it between the Oise and the Aisne. It was the policy of the Entente to eschew the destruction which fighting in cities involved, and it was particularly desirable to compel the Germans to retreat from Lille and its industrial neighbourhood by threats of encirclement rather than by frontal attack. To complete the process begun on the south, the advance in the north was now resumed; and on 14 October Belgian forces with a French army under Degoutte and the British Second Army under Plumer attacked the whole front in Flanders between Dixmude and the Lys at Comines. Their success was even more striking than it had been on 28 September; the Belgians and French carried Courtemarck, Roulers, and Iseghem, while the British pushed along the north bank of the Lys until on the 16th they held it as far as Harlebeke, farther east than Ostend and even than Bruges. On the 15th the Belgians captured Thourout and the British Menin, crossing the Lys at various points and taking Comines on the 16th. The effect of this advance was to precipitate a comprehensive German retreat both north and south. The coveted Belgian coast had at last to be abandoned: Ostend fell on the 17th, Zeebrugge and Bruges on the 19th, and by the 21st the Germans were twenty miles from the sea, striving to stand on the Lys ca.n.a.l in front of Ghent. To the south the withdrawal was no less complete: both Lille and Douai were entered on the 17th; Tourcoing and Roubaix soon followed; and by the 21st our Second and Fifth armies had advanced to the Scheldt on a front of twenty miles, forming nearly a straight line with the First, Third, and Fourth on the Selle.

There the battle had been renewed on the 17th, as soon as our advancing lines of communication had been sufficiently repaired to bear the s

<script>