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Living and dead soldiers on the Somme in March, 1918. Operation Michael, the German spring offensive 1918 began on March 21. Men and barbed wire line the horizon; dead soldiers lie in the foreground.
Map of the 1918 German offensives on the Western Front from The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Ferdinand Foch. © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Detail of a German postcard map of the Western Front, showing the northwestern end of the line and the Channel coast. German forces occupied Ostend, Belgian and Allied forces Nieuport. The Belgian Government was based in Furnes (Veurne).
Headstone of Able Seaman J. Wilkinson at Martinpuich Cemetery, Martinpuich, France. Wilkinson died March 25, 1918, age 24. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Panorama of the Western theater of war 1914/15 from Compiègne to Arras, with the North Sea coast in the distance.
"On the north the British Third Army maintained in general its positions, but it was quite otherwise with General Gough's Fifth Army. Along almost the whole of its front, it was swept away, its right in particular being thrown back west of Saint-Quentin up to the edge of the Crozat Canal.On the following day, the 22nd, this army, badly shaken, retreated towards the Somme. An extraordinary incident here took place—one only to be explained by the contagion which spread from the confused and shaken troops, driven in by the heavy attack on the front line. The Somme, running several miles in the rear, was captured by the enemy practically without a blow being struck." ((1), more)
"On the battlefield between the Scarpe and the Oise, within a period of three days from the 21st to the 23rd instant, the English Army suffered the greatest defeat in British history. The successes achieved in the great victory are such as have not been nearly approached by the Entente since the beginning of the battle of positions in the western theater. The English offensive near Arras in April, 1916, was made on a front 12 miles wide; the Anglo-French attack on the Somme in July, 1916, was made on double that width; the French attacked on the Aisne in 1917 on a width of 24 miles. The English big attack, prepared for months in Flanders, never exceeded a space of 18 miles, and the whole of the territorial gains of almost half a year's fighting only amounted to 36 square miles. In the three days' battle in the west, the Germans made a territorial gain of 700 square miles." ((2), more)
"As opposed to a single German battle, two distinct battles were being fought by the Allies: a British battle for the ports, and a French battle for Paris. These were carried on separately and farther and farther away from one another. The Allied commanders thus tended to emphasize the separation of their armies, the primary object of the German operations. And they risked rendering the separation absolute. Unless the Allied governments, upon whom rested most of the responsibility for what was happening, intervened quickly and energetically, we were marching towards certain defeat. It was their duty to clearly indicate that the interests of the Coalition came before everything else; the only way to do this was to create and place over their armies in the field an organ which would take in hand the safeguarding of the common interests and direct the united resources of both partners." ((3), more)
"The whole of the troops holding the British line south of the Somme were now greatly exhausted, and the absence of reserves behind them gave ground for considerable anxiety. As the result of a conference held by the Fifth Army Commander on the 25th of March, a mixed force including details, stragglers, schools personnel, tunneling companies, Army troops companies, field survey companies, and Canadian and American engineers, had been got together and organized by General Grant, the Chief Engineer to the Fifth Army. On the 26th of March these were posted by General Grant . . . [who] was directed to hand over command of his force to General Carey.Except for General Carey's force there were no reenforcements of any kind behind the divisions which had been fighting for the most part continuously since the opening of the battle." ((4), more)
"'General Foch is charged by the British and French governments with coördinating the action of the Allied armies on the western front. To this end he will come to an understanding with the commanders in chief, who are requested to furnish him with all necessary information.' . . . Instead of a British battle to cover the Channel ports and a French battle to cover Paris, we would fight an Anglo-French battle to cover Amiens, the connecting link between the two armies." ((5), more)
(1) German commander Erich Ludendorff launched Germany's great offensive, Operation Michael, on March 21, 1918, his troops striking the Third and Fifth British Armies. The Third held; the Fifth did not. Excerpt from French General Ferdinand Foch's Memoirs.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 255, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(2) Excerpt from German commander Erich Ludendorff's summary of his remarkable achievement in Operation Michael, begun March 21, 1918. 'The battle of positions' was trench warfare, the standstill that ended the battle of movement of 1914, with both sides dug in along a line from Switzerland to the North Sea. Ludendorff's comparisons are a British offensive in April, 1916, the Battle of the Somme, the Second Battle of the Aisne, and Passchendaele, the Third Battle of Ypres. Despite his success, Ludendorff would not achieve the breakthrough he sought.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 88, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) French General Ferdinand Foch on the need for a unified command and a general reserve that could take advantage of opportunities to seize the offensive, a position he advocated at a January 30—February 2, 1918 meeting of Allied prime ministers at Versailles and at a March 13 through 15 conference in London. Germany's Operation Michael threatened to separate the French and British, with British commander Douglas Haig retreating to the relative safety of the English Channel ports and evacuation, and French commander Henri Philippe Pétain pulling back to defend Paris.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 258, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(4) Excerpt from General Douglas Haig's July 1918 account of Operation Michael, the German Somme Offensive, and the first of five German drives in 1918 to end the war in victory. On March 21, German troops hit the British line, striking the Third and Fifth Armies. The Third Army held, but the Fifth did not, and the Third had to retreat to maintain contact. In the first three days, German commander Erich Ludendorff's forces drove the British from 700 square miles of territory that had been gained and held at great cost.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 69–70, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(5) The first paragraph is from the agreement signed by Lord Alfred Milner, a member of the British War Cabinet, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau on March 26, 1918, appointing General Ferdinand Foch commander over the French and British Armies on the Western Front to ensure the two did not separate and fall back to the national capital or the evacuation ports for transfer to Britain. The second paragraph is a summary of Foch's immediate plan, first sent to Clemenceau two days earlier. The 'commanders in chief' were British General Douglas Haig and French General Henri Philippe Pétain. Amiens was a critical communication center in northern France. Germany's Operation Michael, the Somme Offensive, was on the verge of breaking the Allied line and seizing Amiens.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 264, 265, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
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