Centennial of the End of the Great War

[Capt. Harlock]

29 August 1918

The fire from the German defenders in Bapaume had slackened considerably. The British guessed that the Germans, aware that the town was being slowly but steadily surrounded, had decided to pull out. Patrols entering the town early in the morning confirmed the situation. To Byng’s annoyance, the Germans had escaped to the village of Bancourt, 16 km (10 mi) south of Arras. Nor could they be immediately pursued, for they had left a number of booby traps which had to be disarmed before the roads through Bapaume could be used.

Using Bapaume as a place for people to live in would take even longer. The town had been heavily damaged, since it had changed hands four times during the war, and to top it off, one of the booby-traps the Germans had set was a time bomb in the Town Hall. The good news was that the timer had been miscalculated: the bomb went off just before the allied troops arrived.


The Allied advance was now over a wide front, hampering the German ability to stabilize their line. Further to the south, the town of Noyon was at last recaptured by the French who were supporting Byng’s right wing. It was now clear that, in this case at least, General Haig’s idea of changing his line of attack instead of Foch’s idea of continuing the push at Amiens had yielded better results. Foch gave effusive praise to the accomplishments of the British, though he did not admit to having been in error.

[Capt. Harlock]

31 August 1918

The next French town for the Allies to re-take was Peronne, but the approaches to it were under the guns of the German positions on Mont St-Quentin. To capture them, there were two Australian battalions which had been badly worn down in the previous days of fighting. They totaled about 600 men, less than half of their original complement. The Allies had one big advantage, however: superiority in artillery.

The Australians attacked at dawn, behind a well-placed barrage. This disrupted the German defenders, and the Australians discovered they could concentrate superior numbers at the specific points being assaulted. The Germans were kept off-balance as they were ejected from one position to the next, and soon began surrendering in goodly numbers. By 0800 Mont St-Quentin had been entirely secured, and the Australians discovered that the number of prisoners they had taken exceeded their own numbers.

[center](painting by Fred Leist, 1920)[/center]

Elsewhere, more villages were being re-captured. Riencourt was seized by the 10th Manchester Battalion in a night-time assault. In this case, however, the Germans mounted one of their numerous counter-attacks, trying to slow the Allied momentum. At dawn, units from three divisions (the 23rd Saxon and the 16th and 4th Bavarian Infantry) went forward. They had even managed to put four of their few surviving A7V tanks into the field, but this turned out to be more trouble than help. Driven back back British artillery, they attempted to return to German-held positions. There was no friendly reception there: since there were so few German tanks, the Germans manning the lines assumed the A7V’s were British tanks on the attack, and fired on them. Two tanks attempted to dodge by going forward again, only to be captured by the New Zealanders. By the end of the day, whatever ground the Germans had manage to take had been recovered by the Allied counter-counter-attack.




At Baku, the defenders were not doing well. The Armenian soldiers, essentially a militia, tended to retreat after a short time in combat. The Russians were worse; they preferred to attend political meetings than man the front lines. The British “Dunsterforce” was inflicting serious casualties on the Muslim attackers, but they had been too few to start with, and they were taking losses of their own, especially in officers. General Dunsterville sent angry messages to General Dukuchayev, who invited the British commander to his council of war. This turned into what was essentially another political meeting, with long-winded speeches. Dunsterville eventually walked out.


The Allied cargo vessels sunk for the month of August climbed modestly upward to a total of 283,800 tons. However, U-boat losses for the month were up to 9, and at least six of those were due to mines. (The reason for the sinking of U-107 was never determined.) The U-boats were now being lost at a rate at least as fast as they could be launched, and experienced crews lost faster than new ones were being trained.

[Capt. Harlock]

1 September 1918

The Islamic army of the Caucasus had made significant progress against the defenses of Baku. They had gained some of the heights around the city, and inflicted substantial losses on the pro-Allied coalition. However, they had paid a heavy price themselves. Ottoman commander Mursel Bey decided that a rest to re-fill his ranks and resupply his stocks of ammunition was necessary.

The breather was even more badly needed by the anti-Ottoman coalition. Having gotten nowhere meeting the Russian general, Lionel Dunsterville now tried a meeting with the “Centro-Caspian Dictatorship”, the group now in charge of the city. Dunsterville pointed out the poor performance of the militia over the last week of fighting, and implied that he would pull the British troops out if the situation did not improve. The dictators promised that matters would improve, and Dunsterville decided to keep his men in the front lines until the situation became clearly hopeless.



Thanks to the pause in the fighting, the dictators’ promise would not be put to the test for two weeks. In the meantime, a victory in a skirmish to the north cleared the way for reinforcements in the form of 600 Cossack cavalry to arrive.


In France, the Australians had mastered the key position of Mont St-Quentin, and now they attacked the town of Peronne. Fierce street fighting erupted, but momentum was against the Germans, and they Australians made progress hour by hour. At the end of the day the Germans still clung to a small area, but the majority of Peronne was in Allied hands.

[Capt. Harlock]

2 September 1918

In Murmansk, the Allied Expeditionary Force gained a bit more diversity: an Italian contingent landed to bolster the pro-Western troops.


British and Canadian troops, in an especially well-conducted assault, now attacked the German Drocourt-Quéant Line. Starting at 5:00 am, the Canadian 1st Division hit the line to the south-east, south of the Arras–Cambrai road. The Canadian 4th Division moved against the center, between Dury and the main road. The British 4th Division went to the left wing. It took hours, but eventually the line was breached over a front of 9.5 kilometers (6 miles). Though the Allies had help from both tanks and aircraft, they received the most support from from artillery: British guns fired a remarkable (and remarkably calculated) total of 943,857 shells over course of the day. In addition to an unknown number of Germans killed and wounded, the Allies managed to bag 6,000 prisoners.

The news probably caused more shock throughout Germany than any other single defeat of the Hundred Days Offensive. It was bad enough that Ludendorff's Spring Offensives had failed, and the Germans were being pushed back. But if such solid defensive lines could now be breached, how far might the Allies advance?

The German soldiers in the trenches already knew -- the war would be lost sooner or later. Reinforcements arriving from Germany were not being welcomed, but rather told that they were prolonging the inevitable. The German High Command also could see the proverbial writing on the wall. In hindsight, their best move would probably have been to pull all the way back to the borders of Germany and make a stand there. With Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine regained, the Allies would have been less motivated to accept the huge casualties of continued battle, and the German soldiery more motivated to defend the soil of their fatherland. A negotiated peace treaty would likely have been within reach; a clause strictly limiting future submarine warfare could well have appeased the Wilson administration.

But there would have been problems as well. Giving up the coal and iron mines they had captured would have had a serious impact on the German economy. Although the German Empire had been strengthened in the east by the fall of the Russian Empire and the new "client" states such as Finland and the Ukraine, many in Germany would conclude that the war had been for nothing, and there might have been a major political reaction. But the most immediate concern for the German High Command seems to have been the abandonment of large amounts of equipment and supplies. Armies in WWI required more stuff, and more of it, than for any previous conflict in history. To name just one point, they now had to have airfields reasonably close by, which in turn needed petrol (AKA gasoline), spare parts, tools, maintenance hangars, equipment for filling shell and bomb holes in runways, and so on and so on. Evacuating the immense amount of gear and supplies over a transport network already busy furnishing the needs of millions of men would take more time than the Allies would allow. Allied General-in-Chief Foch, studying the map at around this time, is reported to have remarked, "This man [the Germans] could still get escape if he did not mind leaving his luggage behind him." But the German High Command apparently could not bring themselves to leave their luggage. They decided to gamble on holding the Allies at the Hindenburg Line.

[Capt. Harlock]

3 September 1918

This date can be roughly considered the end of the Second Battle of the Somme and its subsidiary battles, Bapaume and Arras. The Germans had received their orders to pull back to the Hindenburg Line, abandoning all the gains of the Sring Offensive. British air patrols soon discovered the move, as did infantry probes which occupied a couple of towns and found no resistance. However, the, the east bank of the Canal du Nord was found to be still well-manned, with all bridges destroyed but one.


Généralissime (General-in-Chief) Ferdinand Foch had anticipated such a move, and he now outlined his plans to deal with it. Since previous advances had been stopped by the other side pouring in reserves to contain the assault, there would be simultaneous offensives along nearly the entire front, from Verdun all the way to the English Channel. Army Group Flanders, commanded by Belgian King Albert I, would be the left wing, and attack towards Ghent and Bruges, liberating Belgian soil. In the center, the British 1st and 3rd Armies would assault the Canal du Nord, and once across would seize the transport hub of Cambrai. The task of the British 4th Army and the French 1st Army would be to cross the Saint-Quentin Canal, and break the Hindenburg Line at that location. Lastly, on the right wing, the 1st United States Army and French 4th Army would advance between Reims and Verdun, which meant traversing the Argonne Forest.


Such a massive operation would take time to coordinate plans and lay in the immense stocks of supplies needed by the troops. In the meantime, it was a good idea to eliminate the triangular wedge that the Germans held at St. Mihiel. This would give the American troops, and especially the American staff and logistics organizations, some more valuable experience.


The U. S. Government joined the British, and recognised the Czecho-Slovaks as having a government.

[Capt. Harlock]

5 September 1918

The Allies had made optimistic guesses about how the poor situation of the Central Powers, but they knew they had underestimated their opponents before. After all, there were only three months of campaigning weather left in 1918, and there was still a good deal of France and all of Belgium to reconquer. Therefore, the emphasis was still on making long-range plans. The Allies feared and wanted to avoid the war running on into 1920, and so focused on a decisive effort in 1919. Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill now wrote to the government in London:


[font="Times New Roman"][center]TO THE WAR CABINET

MUNITIONS POLICY.[/center]

1. The extremely important paper written by the Chief of the Staff on the 25th July [not printed here] affirms the conviction that the German armies in the West could be decisively defeated in the summer of 1919, provided that we selected a climax, concentrated every available resource upon it, and subordinated intervening events to it. The method of mechanical attack was also set out by the General Staff, and our preparations to produce the necessary vehicles are at hand. . . No doubt it is right to exploit to the full the present favourable situation, and we need not exclude the possibility of results being achieved of a very far-reaching character. On the assumption however that these results are not decisive, and that the winter closes down with an unbroken German front in the West, we ought now to have reached definite conclusions as to the character of next year’s campaign. The questions involved affect directly every arrangement for munitions supply and man-power. All these questions can be settled harmoniously if they are related to some central design . . .

2. The policy of aiming at victory next year would appear to require inter alia the following measures:—

(a) The bringing over of the largest possible number of American troops.
(b) In order to encourage the above, we must do our very utmost to arm, equip, and clothe them in advance of their own war industries.
(c) All works of construction which cannot yield a war result during the period of climax in 1919 should be rigorously pruned.[/font]

Churchill knew he would face stiff resistance from both industry and government departments as to where manpower should go. The Navy jealously guarded its resources, the factories and coal mines wanted to keep as many workers as they could, and of course the Army was unrelenting in its demands for more men to fill the ranks. He was therefore laying the groundwork for his own plans. But in three weeks, the situation would change drastically.

[Capt. Harlock]

6 September 1918

In northern France, the Allies continued to move forward. There were no more of the gains of multiple miles in one day as had happened at the opening of the offensives, but day-to-day progress was still being made. On this date, French forces took the “communes”, or towns, of Chauny and Ham.

Ham had been the headquarters of the Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of volunteer American pilots who had joined the fight against Germany before the U. S. declaration of war. When the Germans overran it in 1917, they had retaliated by virtually destroying the place, including the five-century-old chateau.

[Capt. Harlock]

8 September 1918

Winston Churchill again showed up on the battlefield, providing eyewitness testimony for his push for a larger Tank Corps:

[font="Times New Roman"][center]To the Prime Minister,[/center]

[right]CHATEAU VERCHOCQ,[/right]

[ . . . ]

I spent yesterday [September 8] on the battle-front, and guided by General Lipsett of the 3rd Canadian Division, went over a large part of the ground taken by us beyond Monchy. I walked over the Drocourt-Quéant line and went on up to the extreme high watermark of our attack. I noticed several remarkable things. The Drocourt-Quéant trench was strongly held with Germans, and it was a very fine, strong, deep trench. In front of it was a belt of wire nearly 100 yards broad. This wire was practically uncut and had only little passages through it, all presumably swept by machine guns. Yet the troops walked over these terrific obstacles, without the wire being cut, with very little loss, killed many Germans, took thousands of prisoners and hundreds of machine guns. Three or four hundred yards behind these lines was a second line, almost as strong and more deceptive. Over this also they walked with apparently no difficulty and little loss. Behind that again, perhaps a mile farther on, were just a few little pits and holes into which German machine guns and riflemen threw themselves to stop the rout. Here our heaviest losses occurred. The troops had got beyond the support of the tanks, and the bare open ground gave no shelter. In one small space of about 300 yards wide nearly 400 Canadian dead had just been buried, and only a few score of Germans. The moral appears to be training and tanks, short advances on enormous fronts properly organized and repeated at very brief intervals, not losing too many men, not pushing hard where there is any serious opposition except after full preparations have been made. It is the power of being able to advance a reasonable distance day after day remorselessly, rather than making a very big advance in a single day, that we should seek to develop. This power can only be imparted by tanks and cross-country vehicles on the largest scale.
You would have been shocked to see the tragic spectacle of the ground where our attack for the time being withered away. It was just like a line of seaweed and jetsam which is left by a great wave as it recoils.[/font]


Though the “Spanish Flu” had been spreading around the world for months, it was not stopping. Instead, it now mutated into a more virulent and more contagious strain. Pneumonia and even hemorrhages into the lungs were now happening. On this date, the first cases of the deadlier version appeared at Camp Devens near Boston.

[skr1107]

I just watched the best show on Jutland. I think it was a Smithsonian show, I do not know. I never really knew that much about it, BOY, this was great. It explained two things I never knew (1) The British Vice Admiral was a lying POS, and (2) if British crews followed the correct safety/firing protocols, they would not have lost all those ships. The commanders stressed Rate of Fire over safety protocols. Again, I am not a history expert, so I loved it.

[Capt. Harlock]

11 September 1918

German General-in-Chief Ludendorff does not seem to have been aware that the wedge-shaped area at St. Mihiel would be the target of the next Allied attack. However, he had decided that it was now too exposed, and he had ordered a withdrawal back to a shorter and more defensible line. On this date, the German troops began their pull-out, loading their wagons and limbering up their cannons.

On the American side, General Pershing had laid out detailed plans and issued his orders. This appears to be the first time that “D-Day” and “H-Hour” were used by the U. S. military, though many of the troops were still using the older “Zero Hour”:

[font="Times New Roman"]We camped about ten miles back of the Front for about eight days, in dense woods It rained every day . . . we finally received orders to move to the Front. Although it was raining, we hiked all night, and the morning found in the front line waiting for Zero hour.

[center]– Private William Francis, 5th Marines[/center][/font]

Pershing had also been convinced of the value of tanks, and he had selected a promising 32-year-old Lieutenant Colonel named George S. Patton to command his 1st Provisional Tank Brigade for the assault. At this point, Patton may have had more courage than brains, for he decided to do his own scouting. He was spotted, but the Germans apparently did not care to start shooting while they were preparing their withdrawal. Some unknown German sentry warned Patton back with a whistle, and may thereby have, to some extent, altered the course of history.

[Capt. Harlock]

12 September 1918

In the United States, the trial of Eugene Debs came to its conclusion. Debs had called no witnesses for his defense, asking only that he be allowed to address the court. The request was granted, but his two-hour speech apparently was not enough: he was found guilty.

He would be sentenced to 10 years in prison, and shamefully, the Supreme Court would uphold the conviction. President Wilson never forgave Debs, but in 1921 President Warren G. Harding would commute his sentence to time served, and then invite him to the White House.


In the Caucasus near Baku, an ethnic Arab officer defected to the pro-Allied coalition. (the Arabs owed less loyalty to the Ottoman Empire than did the Turks.) He revealed that another assault on the city defenses would be launched the next day, however, he could not say where on the defensive lines the blow would fall.


In France, the village of Havrincourt was taken by the British Third Army. This might have seemed just another episode of back-and-forth advances and retreats: the village had been captured in 1914 during the opening weeks, recaptured in 1917 during the Battle of Cambrai, and re-re-captured by the German Spring Offensive. But there was a difference that the British commanders did not fail to notice. It had taken three divisions to ensure the victory, but they had defeated four German divisions, who additionally had the advantage of defending. The German will to fight was measurably eroding.


In the St. Mihiel sector, the combined American and French attack got underway. This time there was no subtlety; the Allies began with a tremendous three-hour artillery barrage. It is estimated that more ammunition was expended in those three hours than in the entire Civil War. In addition to the over 3,000 cannon, the Allies had 400 tanks and 1,500 airplanes. Interestingly, the air effort would turn out to be the largest air operation of WWI, involving American, British, French, Italian, and even Portuguese squadrons.

Though the German soldiers on the front lines now knew what was coming, the Allies had again achieved strategic surprise. Many of the German cannons had been limbered in readiness to move out, or were already on the move. There would be little artillery support. The infantry retreated from their positions, but because they were in a salient whose roads were already crowded with the traffic of equipment being pulled back, they often had no good escape route. Thousands of prisoners were captured by the Americans and their French supporters.

Under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel George Patton, the American-crewed Renault tanks went forward. Patton smoked a pipe during much of the action to bolster the confidence of the men (and his own). The confidence was not misplaced, however: though they were light tanks, the Renaults' armor was enough to stop bullets, and there was little cannon fire. In addition, a number of the defending troops were Austrians, and not as motivated or experienced. There were only two problems. First, when the tank column came to a bridge, the drivers stopped for fear that the bridge was mined. Patton walked across the bridge "expecting to be be blown to heaven at any moment", and established that it was safe. The second problem was not so quickly overcome: the Americans advanced so far that all but one of the tanks ran out of fuel. Further attacks would have to wait for the next day.

[jwolf]

...the Americans advanced so far that all but one of the tanks ran out of fuel.

Patton's army running out of fuel? Never! [:D]

[Capt. Harlock]

13 September 1918

It was an unlucky Friday the 13th for the Germans. The Allied attack on the St. Mihiel sector continued to be successful. Encouraged by the results, General Pershing ordered that the advance be continued beyond the objectives originally set for the day. The troops complied: in the afternoon, the “pincer” from the south met the column from the east, trapping the remaining Germans and Austro-hungarians who were still at the tip of the triangle they had held.


The advance went far enough that the “doughboys” outran their artillery support:

[font="Times New Roman"]Friday, Sept. 13th.

A Great Day for the Americans! Our infantry is still pushing 'em back. Many prisoners are going by. We were at guns all morning, but had to stay in camp all afternoon. We are out of range and await orders to move up. Steady stream of men and material going up constantly. Two of our boys sneaked off and went up to the old Hun trenches and brought back lots of Hun souvenirs -- razors, glasses, pictures, equipment, etc.

– Diary of Sgt. Edwin Gerth, 51st Artillery
[/font]

When Pershing learned of the link-up, he ordered a halt to further advances to the east. He had reluctantly agreed to Foch’s plan to switch his forces towards the north, and it was time to put that plan into action. The offensive in the Argonne forest was scheduled in two weeks, and that was scant time to turn an army of over half a million men with all its support in a new direction.

[Capt. Harlock]

14 September 1918

At Baku, before sunrise, the Islamic Army of the Caucasus re-started its assault on the city. They came close to seizing the heights of Wolf’s Gate, but a desperate counter-attack halted them – temporarily. The fighting continued throughout the day, with more and more of the local militia troops breaking and fleeing. Eventually it became clear that the defenders could not hold for much longer. The rules on treatment of prisoners of war were rarely observed in that part of the world, so General Dunsterville ordered the evacuation of his men on the ships that had brought his heavy equipment to Baku, and which he had wisely ordered to stay in the area.

Knowing that the Russians and Armenians would be angered, the loading onto the ships was kept secret for a few hours, as long as it could be. As the ships pulled away, a Russian guard ship actually opened fire, but the Russian gunners were even less effective against the British than they had been against the Turks and Azerbaijanis. All four ships managed to escape.

[Capt. Harlock]

15 September 1918

After the evacuation of Baku, a disgusted Lieutenant-Colonel John Warden, highly critical of his commander, recorded in his diary:

[font="Times New Roman"]Baku could have been held by good sound management & organization but Gen. Dunsterville was not capable of doing either & his staff was far worse … Mjr. Gen. Dunsterville should be made a full Gen. & knighted & kicked out as they do everyone who makes a mess of his job.
[/font]
This appears to be highly unfair to Dunsterville. The task of defending Baku was actually nearly impossible: the attackers were superior in equipment, supplies, training, and above all they enjoyed unity of command. It is well worth noting that Dunsterville controlled less than a tenth of the anti-Ottoman coalition soldiers. The Russians were essentially mercenaries receiving very little support from either the Red or the White armies, and the Armenians were not fighting for their own soil.

Whether Dunsterville did a good job or not, he was blamed for the fall of Baku, and actually treated somewhat worse than Colonel Warden’s suggestion. He would receive neither knighthood nor promotion, and appears to have languished in obscurity for the rest of his life. His Dunsterforce, however, had achieved one major strategic objective. In the limited time they had left until the end of the war. the Ottomans and their German advisers were unable to deliver any of the precious oil to the Central Powers; the first shipment appears to have gone only as far as Georgia. And meanwhile, the fuel-starved German air force was losing control of the skies to the Allies.

Although the city of Baku was now essentially defenseless, the Ottoman commanders decided not to send in their regular troops just yet. Instead, the less disciplined irregular forces, and in particular the soldiers known as Bashi-Bazouks, entered first. Everyone knew what that meant: for decades the Bashi-Bazouks had been a watchword for atrocity.

And the Muslims had a massacre of their own to avenge: with the weakening of law that followed the collapse of the Russian Empire, there had been a terrible pogrom known as the “March Days" in Baku. Roughly 10,000 people had been killed, the great majority of those being Muslims killed by ethnic Armenians.

Many of the Armenians in Baku crowded to the harbor in a desperate effort to escape, but virtually all of the ships had sailed with the evacuation of the Dunsterforce the evening before. And because Baku is located on a peninsula into the Caspian Sea, there was no other route open. Wholesale killing began, the last major massacre of WWI. The Bashi-Bazouks did not spare women or children, and it appears that a number of the regular troops of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus joined in, against the orders to stay out of the city for two days. The German advisers in the area protested the slaughter, and asked the Ottoman commanders to stop it. They were ignored.


At St Mihiel in France, the Americans completed their mopping-up operations. They had captured 15,000 Central Powers soldiers, and had killed 2,000 and wounded 5,500 more. The cost had been relatively low, but oddly, the Allies had lost 4,500 men killed and only 2,500 wounded. But it appears that the Americans became overconfident, and their next action would be against troops determined to hold rather than withdraw.


The Central Powers began definite moves towards peace. The German government, hoping to divide the Allies, made a formal peace offer to Belgium. The Austro-hungarian government sent a diplomatic note to President Wilson, proposing a peace conference.


In northern Greece, General Franchet d’Esperey had managed to bring his Allied Army of the Orient up to 31 divisions: 8 French, 6 Greek, 7 British, 6 Serbian, and 4 Italian. They were under-strength from sickness and thin in artillery, but d’Esperey had finally received permission for an offensive. There were 19 divisions opposing him: 17 Bulgarian and 2 Ottoman. This might have been enough for defense in the mountainous terrain, but the Bulgarians were tired of war by this time.


The Allies launched the attack in two places. The British were assigned the toughest task; an assault against a well-defended range of hills. They made very little progress on this date. Happily for the Allies, it was primarily a holding attack, meant to stop the Bulgarians from reinforcing the Dobro Pole Ridge, where the main thrust was made. Here the French and Serbians inched forward, gaining some key high ground. Far more important was the effect on the Bulgarian troops, many of whom broke and ran from the artillery barrages, infantry fire, and airplane attacks. When sundown brought a temporary lull in the fighting, almost half of the 12,000 Bulgarian troops opposing the French and Serbian attack were out of the fight. This included 3,000 captured and 2,689 killed. In addition, about a third of the Bulgarian artillery had been seized. In turn, the Allies had lost 1,700 French and 200 Serbian casualties, serious enough, but still leaving the units ready and willing to fight.

[Capt. Harlock]

16 September 1918

President Wilson lost no time in replying to Austria-Hungary’s suggestion of a peace conference. He had noted that the proposed conference would be “unofficial”, a mere exploration of possibilities that neither side would be committed to, and so he rejected the idea as a distraction.


The Germans made an aeroplane raid on Paris. It does not seem to have been any more effective than the previous bombings, and so it was decided that it would be the last. Germany needed to conserve the fuel and other resources for the fighters defending the front.


In Baku, the regular Ottoman troops entered the city for a formal victory parade. The worst part of the massacre of the Armenians came to an end, but thousands more would be forcibly deported from the city. The death toll of the “September Days” is estimated to have been about 10,000, though some estimates place it as three times that figure.


In the Balkans, d’Esperey’s Allied troops renewed the attack against the Bulgarians. A Serbian force, with Greek assistance, now managed to seize the Kozjak mountain range and the Golo Bilo peak. Another attack in the late morning by French and Greek units against Zborsko was not as successful, being repulsed by artillery and machine-gun fire. The Allies kept at it, however, even mounting a night attack against the Gradešnica fortified zone. By midnight, there was a gap in the Central Powers defensive line 25 km (16 mi) wide and 7 km (4.3 mi) deep.

[Capt. Harlock]

18 September 1918

After the British success at Havrincourt, British chief commander Douglas Haig decided to move to the Hindenburg Line while the 1918 campaigning season still had two months to run. To get there, his troops needed to take Epéhy. There were not enough serviceable tanks available for the assault, so it was decided to spring a surprise “creeping” barrage with 1,500 cannon. Additionally, there would be an attack by the French 1st Army on the British right.

The bombardment opened promptly at 0520, but the French attack did not materialize. The right flank did not advance as far as had been planned. The left flank also ran into trouble, for the Germans had built strong fortifications and fought with rather more determination than they had shown at Havrincourt. After heavy fighting, the 7th Norfolk, 9th Essex and 1st Cambridge managed to capture the village.

There was a success in the center, not suprisingly provided by General John Monash's Australian force. Two divisions, reduced to a total active strength of only 6,800 men, nonetheless managed to take 4,243 prisoners and 76 guns. They made forward progress of distance of about 4.8 km (3 mi), including all of the objectives assigned to them for the day. The one dark spot was the first WWI mutiny of Australian troops: 119 soldiers of the 1st Australian Battalion refused to advance to help a nearby British or “Imperial” unit.

Total casualties of the Battle of Epéhy are poorly recorded. The Australians lost about 1,260 men, but the additional British casualties, which must have been substantial, are not known. A head-count on the Allied side showed a total of 11,750 German soldiers had been taken prisoner, but figures for German killed and wounded also seem to be missing.


On the Dobro Pole front, the Allies continued their advance. Villages and crossroads fell to them one by one. At the day’s end, they had pushed a total of 15 km (9.3 mi) beyond their starting lines. Far more importantly, there was no longer any Bulgarian force left standing capable of stopping them:

[font="Times New Roman"]. . . the Bulgarian soldiers retreated, ceased to fight, and declared their intention of going to their homes to gather the harvest. These sturdy peasants were deaf to German expostulations. They were quite friendly to the small German forces which steadily advanced to sustain the front. The retreating battalions even spared the time to help the German cannon out of the ruts. But turn, or stand, or fight--all that was over for ever!

--Winston Churchill, “The World Crisis, Vol. 3”[/font]

Churchill had not told the whole story. At Lake Doiran, a British force backed up by smaller Greek and French units mounted an attack on the Bulgarian lines. This was not the first Allied attempt to break through at that location: they had tried and failed twice in 1917. This time, their preparations were thorough, including training of the assaulting units and a heavy bombardment including gas shells. However, the Bulgarians here were equally prepared. They had an excellent commander in General Vladimir Vozov (below), who had made sure the defensive fortifications were even stronger than they had been in the past, and that he had a good amount of artillery. Nor had gas masks been overlooked: the Bulgarian troops put them on and waited out the bombardment.

The initial infantry attacks took some of the forward trenches, but here there was no collapse of Bulgarian morale. Vozov ordered his artillery to bombard the captured trenches, whose exact coordinates his artillerymen knew. After the softening-up, the Bulgarian infantry counter-attacked, and recovered nearly all of the lost ground. The Allies took serious casualties, especially the XII Corps.

[Capt. Harlock]

19 September 1918

In northern Israel there is a plains dominated by a “tel”, or hill, formed by ruins being built on top of ruins on top of ruins. This ancient place, which may have been inhabited as early as 7000 BCE, is generally known as Megiddo, but is more famous by its Greek transliteration from the Hebrew har məgiddô: Armageddon.


[font="Trebuchet MS"][center]By AVRAM GRAICER - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... d=36308008[/center][/font]

Three battles have already been fought in this area, including history’s earliest reliably recorded battle (which happened between the Egyptians and the Canaanites in 1457 BCE). Nearly three and a half millennia later, on this date, it was the site of a decisive clash between the Ottomans and the British. The Ottoman troops were now commanded by Otto Liman von Sanders, who had replaced the more famous Erich von Falkenhayn after he had lost Jerusalem. But von Sanders was faring little better; though he had the Turkish Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth Armies, they totaled only about 35,000 men.

In most parts of the world, summer is considered the best campaigning season, while winter is the time for going into camp, resting, and re-supplying. It was the opposite in the Middle East, where the searing heat of June, July, and August made any movement of man and beast an invitation to heatstroke. British commander Edmund Allenby had used the time well, having been reinforced to 69,000 troops, plus at least 4,000 Arabs under Emir Faisal. And although cavalry was no longer useful on the Western Front with its trenches and barbed wire, here Allenby had built up a formidable mounted force. The British had also established not merely air superiority but supremacy, with only a handful of German aircraft taking to the air in the month of September.

The hot weather had now moderated. At 4:30 am, the British artillery opened up on the Ottoman lines. The Ottoman communications had been disrupted by remarkable night bombing attacks on their telephone exchanges, and even if they had not, Allenby gave them little time to react. After just twenty minutes of bombardment, British and Indian infantry launched their assault, and swiftly scored a breakthrough near the coast. Into this opening poured thousands of the cavalry of the Desert Mounted Corps. The Turks had no reserves to stop them, and while the fighting continued on the front lines, the cavalry advanced 65 km (40 miles) by the end of the day, cutting off the retreat of the majority of the Ottoman forces.

And they were retreating. The Ottoman Eighth Army in particular had been broken by the British left wing, and its men were streaming to the north as fast as they could go. Whatever chance they had of re-forming was spoiled by strafing attacks from Australian fighters. Nor could any German fighters interfere, for a steady relay of British patrol aircraft prevented anything from taking off from the Central Powers airfield at Jenin.


At Lake Doiran on the Salonika front, the Allies made another attempt to break the defensive lines. Two new brigades from the XII Corps went forward, along with supporting units including French Zouaves. The results were the same as before: they took some forward trenches, but then were driven out by accurate Bulgarian artillery bombardment plus infantry counter-attacks. The British had now had enough. Over the two days they and their allies had lost between 6,600 and 7,800 casualties, while probably inflicting less than 3,000 on the Bulgarians.

In one of the many grim ironies of the war, Bulgaria’s last significant battle was a victory. But it would do little good, for to the west, the Allies were advancing at will. There was nothing to stop them from reaching the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.

[Capt. Harlock]

20 September 1918

North and east of Megiddo, the British and Australian cavalry spread out and captured one key place after the other. The 4th Mounted Division seized Afulah and Beisan, major depot locations for the Ottomans. Part of the Australian Mounted Division took Jenin, putting a stop to any further Central Powers attempts to launch aircraft, and also bagging a number of Ottoman soldiers. A unit of the 5th Mounted Division even reached Nazareth, the location of the Turkish-German headquarters. By this time the Allied troopers were so spread out that there were not enough of them to immediately overrun the town, and so General Liman von Sanders managed to escape.

With the Ottoman Eighth Army essentially finished, commander Mustafa Kemal of the Seventh Army decided his force must retreat or be surrounded. After sundown, hoping to avoid detection by the Allies until they could reach a safer place, the Seventh Army pulled out and headed east, following the Nablus-Beisan road.

[Capt. Harlock]

21 September 1918

The Ottoman Seventh Army had not managed to reach the Jordan River, where it might link up with the Fourth Army. Now it was spotted by Allied aircraft, and waves of fighters and bombers were quickly dispatched to do as much damage as possible to the retreating Turks. The results were everything the Allies could have dreamed. The bulk of the Seventh Army was caught in a defile, unable to scatter, and the bombs and strafing attacks wreaked havoc. In an hour the Seventh Army lost nearly all of its equipment and all of its cohesion. Wreckage extended over nearly 10 kilometers (6 miles), and was later found to include 87 cannon, 55 trucks, and 837 wagons, pus numerous field-kitchens and other gear. The RAF lost 4 airmen. It was the first real victory scored by air power.

As for the Fourth Army, only now did refugees reach it and tell of the disastrous breakthrough that the Allies had achieved. Later in the day, orders were received from General von Sanders to retreat away from Amman.