Battle of Amiens

The Battle of Amiens, which began on August 8th 1918, was the opening phase of the Allied offensive later known as the Hundred Days Offensive that ultimately led to the end of World War I. Under the overall command of British General Julian Byng Australian Forces under the command of General John Monash and four Canadian divisions under the command of Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur Currie spearheaded the attack. They advanced over eight miles on the first day, one of the greatest advances of the war. The battle is also notable for its effects on both both sides' morale and the large amount of surrendering German forces. This led Erich Ludendorff to describe the first day of the battle as "the black day of the German Army." Amiens was one of the first major battles involving armoured warfare and marked the end of trench warfare on the Western Front with fighting becoming mobile once again until the armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918.

Prelude

On March 21, 1918, Germany had launched Operation Michael, the first in a series of attacks planned to drive the Allies back along the length of the Western Front. Michael was intended to defeat the right wing of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), but lack of success before Arras ensured the ultimate failure of the offensive. A final effort was aimed at the town of Amiens, a vital railway junction, but the advance had been halted at Villers-Bretonneux by the Australians on April 4.Historical Atlas of World War I. Anthony Livesey, Henry Holt and Company: New York. 1994 Subsequent German offensives — Operation Georgette (April 9th–11th), Operation Blücher-Yorck (May 27), Operation Gneisenau (June 9) and Operation Marne-Rheims (July 15th—17th) — had made advances but failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough.The Defeat of Imperial Germany 1917-1918. Rod Paschall, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 1989Kaiserschlat 1918 – The Final German Offensive. Randal Gray, Grolier Educational: Danbury, Connecticut. 1997

When the Marne-Rheims offensive petered out the Allied supreme commander, French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, ordered a counter-offensive which became the Second Battle of the Marne. The Germans, recognising their untenable position, withdrew from the Marne to the north.

Foch now tried to move the Allies back onto offense and he agreed on a proposal by the commander of the BEF, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, to strike on the Somme, east of Amiens and southwest of the 1916 battlefield of the Battle of the Somme.

The Somme was chosen as a suitable site for the offensive for a number of reasons. As in 1916, it marked the boundary between the BEF and the French armies, in this case defined by the Amiens-Roye road, allowing the two armies to cooperate. Also the Picardy countryside provided a good surface for tanks, which was not the case in Flanders. Finally, the German defences, manned by the German Second Army of General Georg von der Marwitz, were relatively weak, having been subjected to continual raiding by the Australians in a process termed Peaceful Penetration.

The plan

Just before, the Australian General John Monash had won a devastating lightning attack in the Battle of Hamel. He used a number of novel tactics designed to protect the infantry, e.g. aerial support such as parachute drops of supplies, and tank cover such as creeping barrage. Hamel itself had a relatively small number of casualties, but the plan was to be scaled up considerably.

The initial attack would be made by the British Fourth Army, commanded by General Sir Henry Rawlinson, who had also been in command on July 1, 1916, the disastrous first day on the Somme when the British army suffered nearly 60,000 casualties.

The British went to great lengths to deceive the Germans as to their intentions and achieve surprise. On this occasion there would be no preliminary bombardment. The massed artillery would open fire at zero hour, at the same time as the infantry advanced. The movement and assembly of tanks was drowned out by low flying aircraft. The British had concentrated 324 Mark IV and Mark V battle tanks, 184 supply tanks and two battalions of light (14 ton) Medium Mark A "Whippet" tanks.The British Army in the Great War: Battle of Amiens

An elaborate deception was carried out to make the Germans believe the veteran Canadian Corps were elsewhere. A Canadian unit made itself obvious at Ypres and faked radio signals were used to suggest the corps was near Calais. The corps was secretly transported from Arras and was in position east of Amiens without the Germans being aware.

August 8th

The battle began in dense fog at 4:20 AM on August 8th, 1918. From north to south the attacking formations of the Fourth Army were the British III Corps (north of the Somme), the Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps. The French First Army would keep contact in the south before making its own attack later.

In the first phase seven divisions attacked, the British 18th (Eastern) and 58th (2/1st London) divisions, the Australian 2nd and 3rd divisions, and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Canadian divisions. These troops were to capture the first German position, advancing about 4000 yards, an objective they had reached by about 7:30 AM.

In the centre, the leading divisions had been followed up by supporting units who would move through to attack the second objective a further two miles distant. Australian units had reached their first objectives by 7:10 AM, and by 8:20 AM the Australian 4th and 5th and the Canadian 4th divisions moved off, passing through the initial hole torn in the German line. The fog was now dissipating and the troops were confronted with a spectacular view of tanks, cavalry and lines of advancing infantry. Many German gun positions had been overrun but surviving guns now engaged the tanks, knocking many of them out.

The third phase of the attack was to have been performed by infantry-carrying Mark V* tanks however the infantry were able to carry out this final step unaided. The Allies had penetrated well to the rear of the German defences and cavalry now continued the advance, one brigade in the Australian sector and two cavalry divisions in the Canadian sector. Allied forces harassed German postions throughout the advance, RAF and armored car fire kept retreating Germans from rallying. A gap 15 miles long was punched in the German line south of the Somme by the end of the day's advance. The Fourth Army had taken 13,000 prisoners while the French had taken a further 3,000. Total German losses were estimated to be 30,000 on 8 August while the Allies suffered about 6,500 killed, wounded and missing.Chronicles of World War One, Volume II: 1917-1921. Randal Gray, Facts on File: New York. 1991.

German Army Chief of Staff Paul von Hindenburg noted the Allies use of surprise and that Allied destruction of German lines of communication had hampered potential German counter-attacks by isolating command positions.Hidenburg on Amiens by Paul von Hindenburg from Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923. The German general Erich Ludendorff described the first day of Amiens as "the black day of the German Army", not because of the ground lost to the advancing Allies but because the morale of the German troops had sunk to the point where large numbers of troops began to capitulate.

Later fighting

The advance would continue to the 11th, but without the spectacular results of August 8th. This is possibly because the rapid gains of the infantry had outrun the supporting artilleryAustralians in France - The Battle of Amiens and the initial force of more than 500 tanks that played a large role in the initial Allied success was reduced to 6 tanks fit for battle within 4 days. On August 10th there were signs that the Germans were pulling out of the Michael salient. According to official reports the Allies had captured nearly 50,000 prisoners and 500 guns by August 27th.Battle of Amiens, 27 August 1918 by Philip Gibbs from Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923.

Results

Amiens was a turning point in the tempo of the war. The Germans had started the offensive before the war devolved into trench warfare with the Schlieffen Plan, the Race to the Sea slowed movement on the Western Front, and the German Spring Offensive earlier that year had once again given Germany the offensive edge on the Western Front. Armored support helped the Allies tear a hole through trench lines, weakening once impregnable trench positions. The British Third army with no armored support had almost no effect on the line while the Fourth with less than a thousand tanks broke deep into German territory, for example. Australian commander John Monash was knighted GCMG by King George V in the days following the battle. John Monash at the Australian Defense Force Academy by Ross Mallett on March 10, 2005. Retrieved July 15, 2006.

British war correspondent Philip Gibbs noted Amiens' effect on the war's tempo, saying "the enemy...is on the defensive" and "the initiative of attack is so completely in our hands that we are able to strike him at many different places." Gibbs also credits Amiens with a shift in troop morale, saying "the change has been greater in the minds of men than in the taking of territory. On our side the army seems to be buoyed up with the enormous hope of getting on with this business quickly" and that "there is a change also in the enemy's mind. They no longer have even a dim hope of victory on this western front. All they hope for now is to defend themselves long enough to gain peace by negotiation."

Prelude

The plan

August 8th

Later fighting

Results

References

Suggested Reading

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Prelude

The plan

August 8th

Later fighting

Results

References

Suggested Reading