Throughout the first four years of the war, with the exception of the heady days of the activation of the vaunted Schlieffen Plan, and the ultimately disastrous Spring Offensive of 1918, the Germans had generally fought a defensive war, choosing the most advantageous high ground with skill. Finally, General Erich von Ludendorff, running out of Plans, initiatives, ploys and fresh fighting men, and mourning 'The Blackest Day of the German Army' - 8th August 1918 - began to give serious thoughts about retiring behind his massive fortifications of the Hindenburg Line. Then, General John Joseph Pershing finally gave approval for the general involvement of all his troops - also under Foch - and these million troops, with millions more in the pipeline, became an important operational consideration for the future. Out of this coalescence of action came the Allies Amiens Offensive - August/September 1918. Firstly, came the Allied Conference at Doullens in March 1918, when the divided Allies finally decided to give the French Marshal Ferdinand Foch the authority to co-ordinate the activities of all the Allies on the Western Front: a single hand would hold the tiller of a dangerously floundering boat. The genesis of the Final One Hundred Days Campaign of 1918 goes back to three entirely separate events.
HUNDRED DAYS OFFENSIVE CRACKED
This article considers the final one hundred days in 1918 when the British and their Allies finally cracked the German defences, and began the rapid advance that crushed the German Army in the West. Even this optimism was quickly crushed when the Germans counter-attacked and, within a week, regained almost all the territory they had lost. The only occasion when hope welled sufficiently to allow the ringing of church bells across the British Isles, was the so-called victory at the Battle of Cambrai, in November 1917, when it was thought that the use of 476 massed tanks had finally resolved the bloody stalemate in the trenches. Throughout all but the very final days of the war on the Western Front, the outcome was in doubt to the British serving soldier and the civilian population alike. The highest number of casualties on a single day was 58,000, including 20,000 killed, on the first day of the First Battle of the Somme, on the 1st July 1916. For each of those days an average of 1,751 men were wounded and 436 died (the latter figure representing almost half a battalion, equivalent to around 600 battalions in total). The British involvement in war on the Western Front lasted for 1,294 days: from the 12th of August 1914 - when the first elements of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrived in France - until the 11th November 1918, when the Armistice took effect. An ‘Enthusiastic’ Response to War? British social responses to the outbreak of the First World War.Albert Perkins - Who Do We Think He Is?.The Unknowns Continue to Appear – the Work of the War Graves Adjudication Unit by Emma Worrall.Blessed be St Enodoc : The Great War Story of a Cornish Church and those buried there.The 'Dead Enigma': Hedd Wyn and Francis Ledwidge and the Welsh National Eisteddfod.Hang on a Minute! Near escapes by RFC/RAF Pilots during the First World War.Boy Soldiers of the Great War Revisited by Richard van Emden.Holtby of the Canadian Expeditionary Force
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