Germans Renew Onslaught; Irish, Canadians Defy England.

Finally, the Americans!

Special to The Great War Project

(9 April) On this day a century ago, the Germans renew their offensive on the Western Front, ferociously.

“After a bombardment lasting four-and-a-half hours,” reports historian Martin Gilbert, “the battle of the Lys began. Fourteen German divisions attacked on a ten-mile front.”

“The British were driven back. So too was a Portuguese division, against which the Germans sent four divisions, taking 6000 Portuguese prisoners and creating a gap three-and-a-half miles wide in the British line.”

Reports Gilbert, “So fierce was the initial German artillery bombardment that one Portuguese battalion refused to go forward into its trenches.”

“Further havoc was caused when 2000 tons of mustard gas, phosgene, and other chemicals was discharged against the British forces, incapacitating 8,000 men. Many were blinded.”

“The British situation was so grave,” Gilbert writes, “that on April 9^th conscription was extended to Ireland, a measure hitherto avoided because it was so bitterly opposed by the Irish nationalists.”

The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats writes in protest, “I read in the newspaper yesterday that over 300,000 Irish soldiers have landed in France in a month, and it seems to me a strangely wanton thing that England, for the sake of 50,000 Irish soldiers, is prepared to hollow another trench between the countries [England and Ireland] and fill it with blood.”

“If conscription were imposed on Ireland,” Yeats writes, “women and children will stand in front of their men and receive the bullets, rather than let them be taken to the front.”

There is similar resistance to conscription in Canada. There, “the anti-war feeling that had led so many men to resist enlistment at the end of 1917 reemerges.”

Hundreds are ordered to report for enlistment in Quebec. Hundreds decline. By April, they are arrested, “whereupon,” reports Gilbert, “anti-conscription rioters ransacked and burned the building containing the military service registration office.”

“They then fired on troops who had been sent to disperse them.” According to a newspaper account, “The mob used rifles, revolvers, and bricks. The military found it necessary to use a machine gun before the mob was overcome. Four civilians were killed.”

Gilbert reports: “To calm the situation, the Canadian government ordered a suspension in the arrest of army deserters.”

Back on the battlefield, for six days the Allies struggle to defend successive lines of German soldiers.

On April 11^th, the British Supreme Commander, General Sir Douglas Haig issues a Special Order of the Day: “There is no course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man…With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end.”

And then this from British nurse Vera Britain, assigned to a hospital near the front. She is leaving her sleeping quarters, when she has to step off the road to let a large contingent of Allied soldiers pass.

“An unusual quality of bold vigor in their stride caused me to stare at them with puzzled interest,” she reports. “They look larger than ordinary men. Their tall, straight figures were in vivid contrast to the under-sized armies of pale recruits to which we were grown accustomed.”

Then she hears an excited cry from the nurses nearby:

“Look. Look. Here are the Americans!