On 8 August 1918, British, French, Australian and Canadian troops launched a surprise offensive directed against the Germans near the city of Amiens. The attack was a complete success and the Battle of Amiens marked the beginning of the end of the first world war. A Manchester Guardian reporter describes the German retreat.
British Army, Friday night (published 10 August 1918)
It is a great victory. The 2nd German Army has suffered a humiliating reverse, the extent of which, even yet, cannot be fully estimated, and much of its organisation which covered the open country before Amiens has been, for the moment at least, practically destroyed.
I do not think that war has ever yielded such extraordinary stories of rout and the confusion of trained soldiers. General von der Marwitz no longer has Amiens by the throat. It is doubtful whether he has any kind of grip on his own bewildered men.
There are signs to-day of an attempt to rally them and to make a determined stand west of the Somme, where the 11th Corps and the 51st (Bavarian) Corps have had to bear the brunt of this decisive defeat. Nothing even remotely resembling a deliberate counter-attack has, however, been attempted. The only resistance we have met on this side of the objectives we sought and obtained came from local bands of infantry hastily reassembled out of the mob by a few cool-headed subordinate officers.
German stubbornness overcome
Thus at Chipilly, on the north bank of the Somme, we lost the high ground taken yesterday morning, although I hear this afternoon that it has been regained. South of the Somme there was opposition at Le Quesnel, near the Roye road, where pockets of Germans held most of the village during the night but fell back this morning. Similarly, there were some purely local troubles in the centre which have been adjusted.
To-day we have advanced further. There must not be undue impatience at home if the progress does not meet with the hopes of the map-followers. This has been a “clean-out” enterprise, executed on very definite lines, and the men who directed it know what they are about. Do not look expectantly at Péronne and St. Quentin and demand a daily sensation. Without attempting to look into the future, there is plenty to occupy people at home in the story of what has happened. Thus far it is a most incomplete story – necessarily so. The outstanding feature, however, has been the complete success of the tanks, cavalry, and armoured cars, in delivering the first shock to the enemy, and the superb following stroke of the infantry of the British Isles, Canada, and Australia. Never have the Germans been more completely dazed.
Cavalry and tanks
I have heard from many quarters to-day accounts of the wonderful scene as viewed front the air. When the horsemen and their rivals in armour swept across the Santerre plateau, driving terror-stricken Germans in front of them, they did the most amazing things. The headquarters of the 11th German Corps in huts at Framerville was charged by tanks and the Corps Staff pursued down roads and across fields, one general escaping capture by running like a hare.
Tanks or armoured cars – I am not sure which – captured a German ambulance train with its staff of doctors and women nurses. Other trains were attacked and set on fire, and one containing part of a Saxon division was destroyed, 500 men and 30 officers who survived being taken prisoner.
The British flag was hoisted on the headquarters of the 11th Corps (commanded by General Kuhne) by noon, and the tanks carried their own flag to victory as well. Germans could be seen streaming east on all the roads, pressing across the Somme bridges. At Brie (a few miles south of Péronne) they burned depots, blew up dumps, and tried to bombard others. Despite the unorganised attempts at destruction, an enormous amount of stores and a large number of guns of all kinds had to be left to us, and the tank crew, who came back looking like sweeps, steadily added to the tale of success.
Horse transport was riddled with bullets, motor-lorry drivers shot, mounted officers ridden down, a Flying Corps officer killed in his seat and his motor-car captured –these are isolated incidents recalled at random and written against time.
The litter of flight
Never have I seen more striking evidence of the dismay and disorganisation of a surprised enemy than on the battlefield I visited this morning. The story of headlong flight before the tanks and armoured cars and the infantry advancing in their wake with dreadful deliberation is written plain on the plateau of Santerre, beyond our old front line.
From the forward machine-gun nests to the snug headquarters of the 11th German Corps at Framerville the fugitives left a trail of debris and booty dropped pell-mell. Deserted batteries confront you at the edge of ruined villages, and some of the fields are dotted with document strewn haphazard by fleeing staffs.
I passed through eight miles of reclaimed country and four villages which were held by the Germans until yesterday morning, and every yard of this journey revealed fresh proof of the consternation of the enemy and his inability to check the panic of his troops. My route lay through Villers-Brettonnoux, the little town which bore the brunt of the last German onslaught towards Amiens. The great high road which drives straight at Péronne was as firm and smooth as in the days we travelled it to the old British trenches at St. Quentin. Past the front line of 24 hours before and a field of ripened corn and rust-brown meadows which were an almost indistinguishable No Man’s Land, and through the thin line of shallow German trenches, I came, almost without realising it, into the new battlefield.
In the old German lines
Four months and a half of stationary warfare have altered the general aspect of the country very little. Already the cratered roads were pieced together again across the broken barrier and British traffic flowed steadily and swiftly eastward over the plain.
You have only to pause at the German trenches to realise the misery of life there under our guns. They are cramped and very narrow, without room for men to pass easily, having no shelters save tomb-like shelves carved in one side, where soldiers may huddle under strips of corrugated iron, one in each noisome hole. Here and there a German lay where he fell, and in the lairs they used as living-places were bits of mouldy bread, the poor rations they had prepared for breakfast when the tanks rolled up the wire.
Perhaps two miles beyond the old fire trenches a huddle of scarred brick ruins break the skyline. This village was uninhabitable when the German held it, save when he went into it rapidly at night. The cellars where the occupants tried to shelter from our fire are piles of rubbish interwoven with corpses. A swerve to the right, and you swing along a lower road to Bayonvillers, the outpost of the German gunners. Here you begin to realise the full extent of the rout. Six field-guns are drawn up at the edge of the field, uncamouflaged in any way and hardly sheltered under the roadside trees.
Gunners’ Deserted Quarters
The meadow itself is saucer-shaped, and there are other batteries planted along the rim with pretence at concealment, still ranged on targets within our former lines. On the other side of the road are the noisome refuges of the gun crews – mere “rabbit holes” scooped out of clay, perhaps three feet deep and five wide, roofed with a curved strip of corrugated iron. A tramp could dig as comfortable a hole with a broken spade.
A field dressing station lived in one such cave. The ground is covered with snow-white bandages, unrolled in wild haste and never used, and emergency splints and surgical appliances dropped by the dressers when they bolted.
Within the saucer-like field, sheltered only by uneven grassy banks, are a great German motor-lorry and its trailer. Lift up the tarpaulin cover of the trailer. There are marked maps and telephones and the machinery of a forward artillery headquarters. The lorry is piled high with bundles tied in sacking and boxes strewn hastily on the top of one another. You can see how the gunners made a wild effort to save their gear, then bolted when the tanks lifted their heads above the edge of the sunken meadow.
Prisoners
The prisoners varied, as usual, both in physique and attitude. I saw over 3,500 of them in one great corps cage this morning – the first sweepings from the tank and the armoured-car drive south of the Somme. There were old and young men, sullen men and contented boys, strangely dilapidated and shabby in their patched uniforms and down-at-heel boots. Some of them wore ill-fitting trousers of dirty brown sacking, evidence of shortage of cloth, and not a few were bareheaded or wearing only a bandana handkerchief knotted over their shaven skulls, for they had been snatched out of funk-holes or village billets without time to pick up their headgear, and one man came into captivity in carpet slippers.
Many were Wurtembergers, and these for the most part appeared to be quite fit and sturdy, but if you looked at them closely you could see the effects of long, systematic underfeeding.
This was apparent even in the officers, many of whom were thin-cheeked and haggard. I did not see a portly officer. You can imagine their appearance herded together behind a wire fence, typically neat and still sporting an air of bravado, silent and supercilious as they gazed out at the traffic of the crowded road. They were gloved, and some of them carried little sticks. I saw a dandy flick the dust from his polished boots with a spotless handkerchief, and then screw his monocle more firmly into his eye that he might better follow the descent of a returning aeroplane.
On the whole they looked as good a lot of officers as we have netted in the war, better far than many taken during the fighting a year ago. Bearded men of 50 were among them and subalterns of 18 as well. But the majority were of middle age, obviously seasoned by the hardships of the campaign. They were furious at being outwitted by this surprise attack; anger and disdain and hatred were written on their faces, and they sulked with great determination.
“Secreted” papers
One corps cage handled 4,600 prisoners in the first twenty-four hours – 1,600 more than during the battle of Vimy Ridge. (Vimy Ridge was taken by Canadians.) I hear they included two regimental commanders, one of whom was the unwilling principal in an amusing little scene. When surprised by the tanks he had not time to destroy the papers in his headquarters, so, making a bundle of the most important, he thrust them into his trousers. The strange alteration in his figure excited the curiosity of the examining officer at the cage, who requested him to remove the packet, which by this time had slipped down to one knee. The German refused, and when the officer politely but firmly insisted he remained obdurate. Thereupon two orderlies removed his trousers by force and extracted the papers amid curses and protests against this “inhuman and brutal” treatment.
Continue reading.
While unable to establish for certain who wrote the piece, it may well have been Henry Nevinson, the Manchester Guardian’s main war reporter.
Editorial: The new attack
9 August 1918
The officials in London who furnish daily guidance to press and public about the war appear to be issuing invitations to the division of the bear’s skin. It would be much more profitable if they restricted themselves entirely to explaining what is being done to a kill the bear, and – if they must go farther – how far he is as yet from being dead. It is no time to be cockahoop about the certainty of crushing victories when we are only just relieved from the shadow of a great anxiety. But we can well afford to be satisfied with the immediate success of yesterday’s advance in front of Amiens.
The front attacked lies between the two areas on the Avre and the Ancre where the Germans have just withdrawn to the east side of the rivers, and it is likely that the retirement in each case was due to the fear, if not the knowledge, that an attack was imminent. But if such was the case, it has not saved the Germans on the front attacked, where they have suffered a surprise (produced by the use of tanks and an extremely brief bombardment) and have lost many thousand prisoners and considerable ground. The extent and importance of the gain of ground by the Allies is not yet clear, but two things may be said. From the defensive point of view it gives much greater security to Amiens; from the offensive standpoint it already puts the Allies in a more favourable position to operate against the German line which runs through Montdidier across the Oise to the Aisne just north of Soissons. The advances which the Germans made earlier this year left them at several points in positions which might become extremely disagreeable and even dangerous if they failed to prevent the power of the attack passing to the Allies. It is passing to us now, and the Germans are beginning to pay the price.
