Disillusion Among the Germans; Call a Halt in Their Offensive.
Meanwhile, Growing American Presence on the Western Front.
Special to The Great War Project.
(23 April) More and more American troops are arriving on the French battlefields during the final days of April, a century ago.
Among the major developments: the first tank-on-tank battle of the war, according to historian Martin Gilbert.
British tank brigade.
“A heavy British tank knocked out its first adversary,” reports Gilbert, “and the other Germans turned and fled. Seven British tanks then pushed forward into the German infantry positions.”
The Allies kill some four hundred German troops. Many more are taken prisoner, and the Allies regain much French territory.
But the British are vulnerable in the skies. A huge German air attack is underway. Nearly one-hundred German aircraft drop seven-hundred bombs on Allied positions.
Another German ground attack is underway on April 29th, according to historian Martin Gilbert. The Germans regain only a small portion of French territory they previously occupied. That night, the German command calls a halt in their attack.
Chaos among the dead on German lines, Lys.
According to Gilbert, “more than 30,000 German and 20,000 Allied soldiers had been killed within the three weeks” of Germany’s on-again off-again spring offensive.
The goal of the German assault has been to drive to the coast to cut off French ports from the sea. That goal has failed.
The German command was eager to defeat Russia and end the war on the Eastern Front. That it achieved earlier in 1918. Now, the Germans believed, they could move thousands of troops to the Western Front.
But there turned out to be an immense problem with the German troops who fought in the East. “Our victorious army on the Eastern Front,” observes one German general, “became rotten with Bolshevism.
We got to the point where we did not dare transfer certain of our eastern divisions to the West.”
And as for the Americans, there still is no clarity on how they will be deployed on the Western Front.
Even when the issue became where to station the growing number of American troops as they arrive at the front, commanding General Pershing is unable to convince the French command to use American forces effectively.
According to historian Thomas Fleming…
the French commander Marshall Foch, “goes behind Pershing’s back and reaches out to President Woodrow Wilson..
He argues that unless the President dispatches 600,000 soldiers to Europe over the next three months, unattached to any specific American divisions, to be used as replacement troops, the war is lost.
Reports Fleming, “Pershing fought the Frenchman with his only weapon – an immense stubbornness and rocklike faith in his vision of an independent American army.”
British gunners at battle of the River Lys, spring 1918.
This, the Battle of the river Lys, is a turning point, according to historian Martin Gilbert , “not only in German military fortunes, but in Germany’s battlefield morale. Many German soldiers were depressed and exhausted, seeing no further prospect of breeching the Allied line.”
It is now four years since the war broke out, sparked by the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
Gavrilo Princip, center, arrested.
“Who could now remember the causes and sequences, twists and turns, the charges and counter-charges, which had led to such a widespread and all-consuming war?”
On April 28th a century ago this week, Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian assassin of the Archduke died of tuberculosis in an Austrian prison hospital.
He was 22.
And on April 21, 1918, the legendary Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, is killed in combat while flying too low over Australian ground troops. To this day, the identity of his vanquishor remains somewhat uncertain.