Profile of the Spad XIII in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C. © John M. Shea
"On 27 July, we were relieved by a company of the 164th. We were utterly exhausted. The commander of the relieving company was badly wounded on the way out; a few days later, my bunker was hit, and his successor buried. We all sighed with relief when we finally turned our backs on Puisieux and the storm of steel of the finale.Their advances showed how much the enemy's strength was increasing, supplemented by drafts from every corner of the earth. We had fewer men to set against them, many were little more than boys, and we were short of equipment and training. It was all we could do to plug gaps with our bodies as the tide flooded in. There wasn't the wherewithal for great counter-attacks like Cambrai any more."
Excerpt from German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger's memoir Storm of Steel. Jünger was wounded on the third day of Germany's Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, in March, 1918. He returned to his regiment on June 4. The last German offensive of the war, the Champagne-Marne Offensive, ended on July 17. The counter-offensive that would end with Allied victory, began the next day. In the summer of 1918, 250,000 American soldiers were arriving on the Western Front each month, and being put into French and British Armies. French and British production of weapons including tanks and aircraft supplied the Allied armies, and far outpaced German production. The Battle of Cambrai was the first significant tank victory, a British victory, the gains of which were lost to German counter-attacks.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, pp. 272–273, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
1918-07-27, 1918, July, Puisieux, Spad XIII
