Metal cross grave marker of Corporal Jakob Naumann who died on April 10, 1918, likely in Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive, launched the previous day. From the Laventie German Military Cemetery, Laventie, France. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Jakob NaumannGefreiter10.4.1918Jakob NaumannCorporalApril 10, 1918
"On the Western Front, the situation was worsening for the Allied forces. On April 10 [1918] the British were driven from Messines, which had been gained at such cost nine months earlier. Almost all the officers in charge of the British gas companies were themselves incapacitated by German gas shells. 'Inferno continues,' one of them, Donald Grantham, wrote in his diary that day. 'Hun is nearing Béthune. Everyone clearing out. Everything in a muddle. Everyone flying. Refugees on road terrible. Have left behind in cellar pounds worth of kit.'"
April 10 was the second day of German commander Erich Ludendorff's second great offensive of 1918, Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive. On the first day, after a two-day preliminary bombardment, the Germans demolished a half-strength Portuguese line. The offensive, a pared-down version of a previously rejected plan, was an attack on the Lys River along the Franco-Belgian border.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 414, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
1918-04-10, 1918, April, Jakob Naumann
