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British soldiers advancing on the Flanders front. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot 1918 Edition
An aerial observer or pilot in flight helmet and overcoat reports to a German General and his staff at a division's combat headquarters on March 21, 1918, the first day of Operation Michael, Germany's spring offensive, the first of five German drives in 1918.
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).
"During the afternoon [of March 20, 1918], they either volunteered or drew lots for the various obviously suicidal tasks, and in due course as evening fell (it was raining softly again) some of them moved along the front trench to the saps, and out towards the isolated forward posts. Each man carried a Very pistol: when he fired his green flare he would be signalling his own death or defeat, and those behind could expect the enemy in ten minutes or less. As the last man reach the post, the sap trench was blocked with knife-rests and wire entanglements behind him; if there was an officer or senior NCO in the forward post, he usually occupied the rearmost position in order to block the retreat of any whose nerve, in the face of an inescapable destiny, should fail." ((1), more)
"The watch-hands moved round; we counted off the last few minutes. At last, it was five past five. The tempest was unleashed.A flaming curtain went up, followed by unprecedentedly brutal roaring. A wild thunder, capable of submerging even the loudest detonations in its rolling, made the earth shake. The gigantic roaring of the innumerable guns behind us was so atrocious that even the greatest of the battles we had experienced seemed like a tea party by comparison. What we hadn't dared hope for happened: the enemy artillery was silenced; a prodigious blow had laid it out. We felt too restless to stay in the dugout. Standing out on top, we gasped at the colossal wall of flame over the English lines, gradually obscuring itself behind crimson, surging clouds." ((2), more)
"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." ((3), 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." ((4), 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." ((5), more)
(1) Since the November, 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the December armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, an armistice that ultimately resulted in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918, the Entente Allies had been anticipating a great German offensive on the Western Front bolstered by troops recently redeployed from Russia. The order for the offensive, Operation Michael, was issued on March 12. On March 20th the attack was imminent.
1918, the Last Act by Barrie Pitt, page 73, copyright © 1962 by Barrie Pitt, publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., publication date: 1963
(2) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger describing the preliminary bombardment opening what he elsewhere refers to as German commander Erich Ludendorff's, and Germany's, 'mighty do-or-die offensive', Operation Michael. Jünger was leading his company forward to a reserve position on the night of March 19, 1918 when they were hit by a shell killing or wounding much of his company. Before the shell struck, Jünger had 150 men. The next day he was able to collect 63. On March 21st, German troops hit the British line, striking the Third and Fifth Armies. The Third held; the Fifth did not.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, pp. 228–229, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(3) 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
(4) 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
(5) 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
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