Various

Battles in Picardy and Flanders Military Review of All Fronts from April 17 to May 18, 1918.

In order to obtain a view of the situation of the German offensive on April 17, which forms a background for the events to be related in this review, it is necessary to point out a few controlling facts and conditions—some long obvious, some recently revealed.

Ludendorff's major plan, based on the assumed shortness of vision on the part of the Allies, to separate the British from the French and, by isolating the former in the north and driving the latter toward their bases in the south, thereby reach the mouth of the Somme, had failed. It had failed, just as did the plan of Napoleon at Charleroi in 1815 to separate the English from the Prussians. It failed because the military genius of the British General Carey and the French General Fayolle on two separate occasions had closed up gaps in the line of the Allies, and because the vast masses of German troops were incapable, on account of their demoralization, of making the fractures permanent.

It is now evident that the demoralization of General Gough's 5th Army, which began on March 23, not only threatened his junction with Byng's 3d Army, by forming an eight-mile gap between the two—into which, as has already been related, Carey moved his hastily gathered nondescript detachment—but as the 5th Army retreated another gap, gradually lengthening to nearly thirty miles, was opened between its right wing and the 6th French Army. Here General Fayolle, who had just appeared on the field from Italy, did with organized divisions what Carey had done with his scratch volunteers further north.

DIAGRAM SHOWING 8-MILE GAP, MARCH 23, WHICH WAS FILLED BY CAREY'S "SCRATCH DIVISION," WHO HELD THE BREACH FOR SIX DAYS

From statements made before the Reichstag Main Committee, but more especially from letters and diaries found on captured German officers, it appears that both Carey and Fayolle stopped an armed mob, utterly incapable of taking advantage of the situation it had created as a disciplined force. Regiments thrown together, officers separated from their commands, detachments without control, all due to the impetuous rush forward, could not recover in time to prevent Carey and Fayolle from completing their work.

But Ludendorff's major plan, having failed in the first month of his offensive, could not be repeated in the second. Since April 30 there has been no French, British, Belgian, Portuguese, or American front in Flanders or Picardy—only the front of the Allies, with the troops of their several nations used wherever needed by the supreme commander, Foch.

During the first month of the offensive two angles had been developed by Ludendorff: The first, the great one, in the south, from a base of sixty miles with a forty-mile perpendicular and its vertex near the Somme; the second in the north, from a base of twenty miles with a fifteen-mile perpendicular and its vertex on the edge of the Forest of Nieppe. Between these two angles the original front of Lens, from Bailleul north to Givenchy, still held, fifteen miles in length. There had been voluntary or forced changes made by the Allies east of Ypres and east of Arras.

The corollary in Flanders, unless it could be demonstrated, would be as great a failure as the main proposition in Picardy. And the still possible successful issue of the latter depended absolutely, as we shall see, on a complete demonstration of the former. Both have been so far handicapped by the augmenting mobility of the Allies, their growing numbers, their centralized command, and their successful insistence to control the air.

Such was the situation in Flanders and Picardy which confronted Ludendorff at the dawn of the second month of the German offensive. The whole problem to be solved was just as apparent to the Allies as it was to him—to gain the barriers which threatened his angles of penetration, in order again to utilize his preponderant forces of men and guns on a broad front. To attempt to extend the vertices without broadening the sides would mean to court danger, even destruction, at their weakest points.

His frontal attacks upon Ypres and Arras, respectively from the Passchendaele Ridge and against the Vimy Ridge, having failed, it became necessary to attempt to flank the Allies by the occupation of their defensive ridges. This explains his successful assaults upon Mont Kemmel, 325 feet high, and his desire to envelop Mont Rouge, 423 feet high, and his persistent attacks along the La BassÉe Canal against the heights of BÉthune, 141 feet, all preceded by diversions between the Somme and Avre, with concentrations at Villers-Bretonneux, Hangard, and elsewhere.

On April 18 the French made a feint on both banks of the Avre River south of Hangard, drove in a mile, and picked up some prisoners; simultaneously the Germans, with a force of 137,000, made a heavy assault upon the allied front lying across the La BassÉe Canal, with a diversion on the Lys River near St. Venant.

Before the day was done they had switched their attack to the Kemmel sector. In all three places the Germans suffered repulse, with the loss of a few hundred prisoners. Four days later the British advanced their lines on the Lys, just as the French had on the Avre. Then on the 24th came the great enemy diversion at Villers-Bretonneux, nine miles southeast of Amiens. Here the Germans used tanks for the first time. The village, lost to the British on the first day, was recovered on the second, when just to the south the French and American troops were hotly contesting with the Germans the possession of Hangard. The sharp salient at this place made it difficult for the Allies to hold, while its retention, except as a site from which losses could be inflicted on the Germans, was unnecessary. Consequently it was evacuated, after the attacking detachment of the Prussian Guards had been annihilated.

BATTLE FOR MONT KEMMEL

Meanwhile the Germans had been preparing for a decisive assault against Mont Kemmel with ever-augmenting artillery fire and with the concentration of vast numbers of troops on the sidings of the railroad between the villages of Messines and Wytschaete. These troops numbered nine divisions, or about 120,000 men. From the 24th till the 27th they incessantly swung around Mont Kemmel in massed front and flank attacks, until the French and British were forced to give up the height, together with the village of the same name and the village of Dranoutre, retiring on La Clytte and Scherpenberg.

The occupation of Mont Kemmel, however, did not, as Ludendorff had anticipated, force the British out of the Ypres salient, for their voluntary retirement from part of the Passchendaele Ridge on April 17-19 had strengthened the salient, which could hold as long as the line of hills west of Kemmel held—Mont Rouge, Mont Diviagne, Mont des Cats, &c.

The Berlin publicity bureau advertised the fact that a direct thrust at Ypres had brought the Germans to within three miles of the town—an achievement of no particular military value—while it quite ignored the capture of Mont Kemmel, for the simple reason that its value was now discovered to repose in their ability to carry their occupation throughout the entire range.

This they have since been vainly, except for local advances, trying to do, often employing great forces of men in mass for two or three days at a time—striving vainly to broaden the salient in three places: between Dickebusch and Voormezeele, due south from Ypres; by an envelopment of Mont Rouge to the southwest; on the south by an advance in the direction of BÉthune.

VON ARNIM'S EFFORTS

In the northern part of the salient the attacks reached their climax on Monday, April 29, when General Sixt von Arnim's army was hurled in wave after wave between Voormezeele and Scherpenberg and on the latter and Mont Rouge, only to end in a repulse, which, on account of the number of men believed to have been lost by the enemy, may be considered a disastrous defeat. All this time a heavy bombardment had been going on in the BÉthune region in preparation for an infantry attack there; yet on account of the defeat further north, it could not be delivered.

Henceforth, until May 16, von Arnim was obviously placed on the defensive, whereas the Allies were locally on the offensive, either recovering lost strategic points or consolidating their lines. On May 5, between Locre and Dranoutre, the Franco-British forces advanced on a 1,000-yard front to the depth of 500 yards. On the 8th the Germans made a half-hearted attack on the sector south of Dickebusch Lake and entered British trenches, only to be repulsed with heavy loss. A similar attack the next day between La Clytte and Voormezeele not only met with a similar repulse, but was followed up by a strong British counterattack which won considerable ground. On the 12th the French captured Hill 44 on the north flank of Kemmel, between La Clytte and Vierstraat.

On May 13 renewed enemy artillery activity on the lines back of BÉthune seemed to presage that an infantry attack was intended there. Nothing of this nature ensued, however. On the 15th the Germans made a sudden attack against Hill 44 but were hurled back by the French. On the 16th-17th they maintained a concentrated fire north of Kemmel.

GERMAN ATTACKS ON THE LYS

All these operations on the German northern salient, which is gradually coming to be called the Lys salient, have shown no indication of being intended to pave the way for a renewal of the general offensive in Flanders. Their success might, and probably would, have forced the evacuation of Ypres and affected the Picardy salient with its vertex near Amiens, forcing the evacuation of Arras. But, as we have seen, the operations on the Lys salient, meeting with an overwhelming obstruction on April 29, did not achieve these results. Throughout the next three weeks the manoeuvres of the enemy in Picardy afforded excellent opportunities for counterattacks on the part of the Allies, whose object here has been to punish the enemy as much as possible and to consolidate every strategic position on a broad front in anticipation of a renewal of Germany's original scheme to isolate the allied armies north of the Somme by a dash to the mouth of that river via Amiens.

In these circumstances, the enemy on April 30 launched heavy attacks on the French lines in the region of Hangard and Noyon. These fell down, and on May 2 the French made distinct gains in Hangard Wood and near Mailly-Raineval. The next day the French advanced their lines between Hailles and Castel, south of the Avre, and captured Hill 82. On the 6th the British advanced their lines between the Somme and the Ancre, southwest of Morlancourt, and in the neighborhood of Locon and the Lawe River, taking prisoners in both places. On the 11th skirmishes southwest of Mailly-Raineval, between Hangard and Montdidier, developed into a pitched battle, in which the French at first lost ground and then recovered it. On May 14 the Germans, after an intense local bombardment, delivered a spirited attack on a mile front of the British southwest of Morlancourt, gaining a footing in their first trenches. Instantly some Australian troops counterattacked and completely re-established the British positions. On the 16th and 17th the enemy showed impressive and portentous artillery activity along the Avre and at Rollott, on the AbbÉville road, south of Montdidier, similar in character to that observed north of Kemmel, on the Lys salient.

There are now believed to be over half a million American rifles on the western front, either at definite places or available as reserves. On April 20 a battalion of Germans made a raid on our eight-mile sector south of the Woeuvre, and succeeded in reaching the front-line trenches and taking the village of Seicheprey. Our losses were between 200 and 300; 300 German dead were counted. A detachment of our army, principally artillery, holds a sector of five miles with the French infantry east of Montdidier, on the Picardy front, protecting the Beauvais-Amiens road. Here their fire is principally employed in breaking up German concentrations and transport in and around Montdidier.

THE ZEEBRUGGE RAID

The German submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend on the Belgian coast have been repeatedly bombed from the sea and shelled by British monitors with indifferent results. With the adding of super-U-boats to the German submarine fleet and the increased transatlantic traffic of the Allies the necessity for effectually sealing these bases has long been apparent. Theoretically the nature of the entrance to the harbors of both places, resembling the neck of a bottle, about 250 feet wide, made such a task easy by the sinking of block ships. Practically it was most difficult, on account of both sea obstructions and the shore batteries.

On the night of April 22-23 British naval forces, commanded by Vice Admiral Keyes, with the co-operation of French destroyers, and hidden by a newly devised smoke-screen, invented and here employed by Wing-Commander Brock, attempted to seal up the harbors. At Zeebrugge the enterprise was entirely successful. The Intrepid and Iphigenia were sunk well within and across the narrow channel, the Thetis at the entrance. All three were loaded with cement, which became solid concrete after contact with the water and can be removed only by submarine blasting. A detachment of troops was also landed on the mole from the Vindictive and engaged the crews of the German machine gun batteries stationed there. An old submarine was placed under the bridge of the mole and detonated. A German destroyer and some small craft were sunk. Before the blockships were placed a torpedo had been driven against the lock gates which lead from the channel into the inner harbors. The expedition retired with the loss of fifty officers and 538 men, of whom sixteen officers and 144 men had been killed.

At Ostend, the entrance to whose harbor is protected by no mole, the block ships Sirius and Brilliant were not effectively placed. Against this port the experiment was, therefore, repeated on the night of May 9-10. The Vindictive, with a cargo of concrete, was planted and sunk at the entrance to the channel, but not entirely blocking it.

ITALIAN RAID AT POLA

Another naval exploit of the month worthy of record was the sinking in the Austrian Harbor of Pola of a dreadnought of the Viribus Unitis class (20,000 tons) by Italian naval forces, in the morning of May 15. The achievement was similar to that performed by the Italians on the night of Dec. 9-10, when a destroyer sawed her way through the steel net protecting the Harbor of Trieste and torpedoed the predreadnoughts Wien and Monarch, (5,000 tons each,) sinking the former. The Harbor of Pola, however, is much more difficult to penetrate. It is three miles deep and entered by a two-mile channel, at certain places less than half a mile wide, and protected along its entire course by strong defenses. A mole covers its mouth, making the channel here less than 1,000 yards wide. Forts Cristo and Musil guard the entrance.

TEUTONIZING THE BLACK SEA

Save for the reports which have come to hand denoting the steady progress of the British forces in Palestine and Mesopotamia, little of importance has occurred in the Near East. Still the Teutonizing of the Black Sea goes steadily on. On May 2 it was announced that a German force had occupied the great Russian fortress of Sebastopol, famous for its protracted siege by the British and French in 1855, and until then considered impregnable. On May 12 part of the Russian Black Sea fleet was taken possession of by the Germans at that place, while the remainder escaped to Novorossysk. Among the captured vessels only the battleship Volga and the protected cruiser Pamiat Merkuria were in serviceable condition. At Odessa a new dreadnought and two protected cruisers had already been seized by the Germans as they lay in their slips.

In Macedonia the huge allied forces under the French General, Guillaumat, are still waiting on events. The Greek Army is still in process of reconstruction under the Venizelos Administration. The month, however, has not been barren of engagements on this battleline. On April 28 the Serbians beat back attempts of the Bulgars to capture fortified positions in the Vetrenik region; the French and British did the same in regard to German attacks aimed at points west of Makovo and south of Lake Doiran. So it has been all the month, the monotony only varied on April 27, when there was intense artillery fire by the allied guns in the neighborhood of Monastir, on the Cerna, and, in the Vetrenik region, a Serbian assault annihilated a Bulgar section.

IN THE NEAR EAST

There has been no serious attempt on the part of the Turks during the month to oppose the expansion of General Allenby's front beyond Jerusalem or the triumphant march of General Marshall up the Euphrates and the Tigris—on the latter river now sixty miles below Mosul, Marshall's obvious objective. The objective of Allenby is Aleppo, where there is said to be a single division of German troops in addition to the Turks, who have been forced north from Jerusalem. Allenby and Marshall are advancing along parallel lines with a desert space of about 400 miles between. The Turks and their ally still have possession of the caravan trail and the partly built and entirely surveyed Bagdad Railway, which intersect the prospective parallel paths of Allenby and Marshall, whose lines of communication already reach hundreds of miles to the rear. But while Allenby has a lateral sea communication with Syrian ports, no such advantage is enjoyed by Marshall, who must get all his supplies from the head of the Persian Gulf, 450 miles to the south. Whatever be the force at the disposition of the enemy, it is evident that he will continue to possess a predominating tactical and strategic advantage until he has been decisively defeated at both Aleppo and Mosul or a junction has been established between Allenby and Marshall, or both.

The former's line, which is a sixty-mile front, extending from Arsuf el Haram on the Mediterranean east to the Jordan, took Es-Salt with thirty-three German and 317 Turkish prisoners on May 1—twenty miles north of Jerusalem—which was first occupied by Allenby early in December.

Marshall's advance has been much more rapid. In the week of May 1 his cavalry, in pursuit of the fleeing Turks, advanced twenty miles and captured 1,000 prisoners. On May 7 he was 80 miles from Mosul; on May 10 he was within 60 miles. Allenby is 300 miles from Aleppo and 110 miles from Damascus.

ON THE ITALIAN FRONT

Without any large movements of troops taking place, several things have occurred since April 18 to invite attention to the Italian front, and much speculation by military men has been indulged in as to whether the resumption of the Teutonic offensive would be from the Piave or south from the Astico-Piave line lying across the Sette Comuni and the Brenta, or from the west of the Adige and the Lago di Garda, in an attempt to reach Brescia and the metallurgic centre of Italy.

And most of the things in question which have occurred have served to restore and augment the confidence of the Italians in their position. A new 2d Army has taken the place of the old, annihilated in the Capporetto campaign. All the lost guns have been replaced and new heavies added. Revolution is, at any moment, expected to break out in Austria-Hungary, while the Congress of Jugoslavs in Rome on April 9-11 has secured the adhesion to the Allies of the subjects of the Hapsburgs and enabled the Italian Government to make use of them as a fighting force. There are now believed to be no German divisions on the Italian front, where the entire enemy strength, not measurably increased since the snows have disappeared in the north, consists of 800 Austro-Hungarian battalions, or less than 1,000,000 men.

But what has promoted most satisfaction in the Italian Government and people was the decree issued by the Interallied Supreme Council of War at AbbÉville on May 3, giving General Foch authority to include the Italian front under his supreme command, that front thereby becoming the right wing of the allied battle line in Europe—now "one army, one front, and one supreme command."

That is the way Bonaparte fought his victorious battles in the days of the First Republic, alternately on the Rhine and the Adige. Moreau could not win without Bonaparte, nor Bonaparte without Moreau, while Carnot, in the centre, was the vehicle of transit.

Before the snows made manoeuvres impossible the Italians had closed two gates which threatened the plains of Veneto from the north—one at the junction of the front with the Piave, one at the angle of the Frenzela Torrent and the Brenta River.

Gunfire had been steadily augmenting on the front when, on May 10, they closed another, and on May 15 still another. The first of these was the capture of Monte Corno, which commanded the part up the Vallarsa, the second was a partial recovery of Monte Asolone, between the Brenta and the Piave, sufficient to cover the path up the Val San Lorenzo. Both mountains are really plateaus of about two square miles area each, whose irregular summits the enemy had strongly fortified in order to clear the valleys below. In both places subsequent Austrian counterattacks were broken up.

Meanwhile, Italian aircraft dominate from above. On May 14 the enemy lost eleven airplanes with no losses to the Italians and the British, who were assisting them.

Premier Lloyd George on German Autocracy

Premier Lloyd George wrote the following preface for a volume containing extracts from speeches he delivered during the war:

I have never believed that the war would be a short war, or that in some mysterious way, by negotiation or compromise, we would free Europe from the malignant military autocracy which is endeavoring to trample it into submission and moral death. I have always believed that the machine which has established its despotic control over the minds and the bodies of its victims and then organized and driven them to slaughter in order to extend that control over the rest of the world, would only be destroyed if the free peoples proved themselves strong and steadfast enough to defeat its attempt in arms. The events of the last few weeks must have made it plain to every thinking man that there is no longer room for compromise between the ideals for which we and our enemies stood. Democracy and autocracy have come to death grips. One or the other will fasten its hold on mankind. It is a clear realization of this issue which will be our strength in the trials to come. I have no doubt that freedom will triumph. But whether it will triumph soon or late, after a final supreme effort in the next few months or a long-drawn agony, depends on the vigor and self-sacrifice with which the children of liberty, and especially those behind the lines, dedicate themselves to the struggle. There is no time for ease or delay or debate. The call is imperative. The choice is clear. It is for each free citizen to do his part.