LIFTING THE LID.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1919, Page 11

LIFTING THE LID.

SECRETS OF THE GREAT WAR, THE WORLD'S MOST CRITICAL MOMENTS. INSIDE jSTORY OF THE LAST RETREAT. At last it is possible to draw aside a part of the veil of mystery which hid so much of the great war, and give the publia some idea of its hidden secrets. The need for keeping important information from Germany until the final victory made it necessary to keep people in the dark concerning much that was of the greatest interest. Few writers are so well qualified as Mr Philip Gibbs for this task. He was behind the scenes throughout the war. Living constantly among the officers and men Who won the great victory, always on the spot at the most important sectors of the line and at the most critical moments, thanks to special facilities accorded him by General Headquarters, he has had the secrets of the war at his finger-tips.

Hitherto he has been unable to tell all that he knew, for the reasons given above, But there is no longer any need to censor his vivid pen, and he may now tell the public what they have wanted to know for so long of the greatest drama in the history of the world.

Now that victory is ours, We may look back with steady eyes at bad times when it was bard to know the truth and still keep faith and courage. For the British armies in France and Belgium, and'for those who counted upon their strength, the darkest days of all begar in March of last year, when the Gernans launched their offensive against the British lines and drove us back in hard retreat over a great stretch of country which our men had gained by enormous sacrifice of life through years of fighting. I saw the soenes of that retreat, and I confess now that when I saw our men coming back over the old Somme battlefields, when I saw remnants of our fine divisions so exhausted that they could hardly stand, and so weak in numbers that they had no chance of resisting the enemy's onslaught outside towns like Albert and Amiens, which had been ours since the early days of the war, I was haunted by the thought that, perhaps, after all our enormous efforts and losses, victory might not be oursEngland did not know what toUch-and-go it was on the edge of irreparable disaster. What Were the causes of the greatest disaster that has ever befallen British arms? The answer to that question is not easy, because it involves many factors and events in the past history of the war It is linked up with the battles of Flanders, fought between July and December of 1917, followed by the adventure in the Cambrai salient, which began with a brilliant victory and ended witii an unfortunate reverse at the close of the year. • The battles of Flanders had been designed to capture the ridges rouna X pres and gain the Belgian coast at Oatend and Zdebrugge at a time when a great part of the German army should be engaged by an important and continuous series of battles by the French in the Champagne district under the supreme command of General Nivelle. By the greatest bad luck, partly owing to the success of Hindenburg's new system of "elastic defence," the French attack did not make progress, and came to a dead halt, after heavy losses.

800,000 CASUALTIES. The British battles of Flanders began late, aqd British troops, instead of encountering an enemy who should have been heavily engaged at the same timo opposite the French lines, had to attack the strongest German divisions which could be replaced on the orders of the German General Staff by fresh divisions ■from other parts of the line whenever they were shattered by the Br'.'ttg& assault. For nearly five months this happened, cur troops attacking and capturing the ridges in the foulest conditions of rain and mud, and although we inflicted enormous losses upon the finest troops of the German army—l bbw their dead in heaps about the '.'pill-boxes" (or concrete blockhouses) on the way to J>aß»efaendaele—our own casualties reached terrible figures, and we failed to gain the Belgian coast. Lord Northcliffe's estimate was 800,000 casualties to the British armies in 1917, and 75 per cent, of those- were on the western front. The'adventure in the Cambrai salient m November of that year, when our surprise attack with tanks broke the Hindenburg line, and when our gallant troops after all that fighting in Flanders took 90,000 prisoners and much ground, cost us numbers of valuable lives'a week lat«r owing to the counter surprise by General von Marwite, when out men had to fight desperate rearguard actions. So at the end of 1917, after all these bloody battles, the British armies were terribly weakened in numbers, the gaps in their ranks not being replaced in many divisions by new drafts, and their strength was still further decreased by the loss of three of their finest divisions who were rushed off io Italy to turn the tide of the Italian disaster which had then happened. It was at that time, when the British crimes on the Western front were weakest, that Sir Douglas Haig was called upon to take over a longer line of front south of St. Quentin, and it was at that time, in the beginning of last year, that the Germans transferred many of their divisions from Russia to France and Belgium, with the menace of an overwhelming attack upon the British and French lines (writes Philip Gibbs in Lloyd's). The pressure upon Sir Douglas Haig to take over a longer front was insistent. He knew the weakness of his strength with that German menace growing against him, but to satisfy France he yielded to the demand, and our troops "side-slipped" and took over the line of battle north and south of St. Quentin down to La Fere on the Oise. Meanwhile the German menace was creeping nearer to us, and increasing in its frightful possibilities. In January, there Were 183 German divisions on the Western front, about equal to the Allied strength. By the beginning of March there were 207 German divisions. Out intelligence officers did wonderful work at this time, and no German unit moved without their knowledge within a week or two of its departure- By espionage in German territory, by aerial reconnaissances, and information obtained from prisoners, they learnt nvery detail of the German decision to concentrate their full military weight in a last effort to smash their way to victory. During the weeks preceding the German onslaught,, on March 21, I was about the lines from Arras to the south of St. Quentin, against which the #remy's assault was delivered, and had

the opportunity of talking to many generals and officers about the probability of a huge Germato offensive. Out of 13 of these generals, commanding divisions upon which the attack would fall if it came, there were only two who believed in its likelihood. The others said: "It's all bluff," or "G-H.Q. has the wind up." Some of them standing as we talked in sight of the German lines, where there seemed to be utter solitude, and "nothing doing," except the usual harassing lire from isolated batteries, were dogmatic in explaining to me why the Germans would not risk their remaining man power in such a gamble, which was bound to fail. ... A few days later the tide of the German army had rolled ever the positions which these generals had held. AWAITING THE OFFENSIVE. A week or so before the opening of the German offensive, I had an interview with General Gough, commanding the Fifth Army, on the right of our line, through which the enemy afterwards broke. He was not one of those who disbelieved in the impending attack, and he was very frank in facing its possibilities. He showed me maps of his Fifth I Army front, pointed out how he had adopted a system of defence by a series of machine-gun redoubts in advance of the main battle positions, and how behind that main battle liuo were'three other lines upon which our men could fall back if hard pressed. Then he said: "If the enemy attacks in great srength we shall have to give ground, and the public must be prepared for this. But the giving up of ground will not matter very much so long as we fall back to other good positions and keep our line intact It -will be in no Bense of the word a disaster. After all, our naturttl line of defence is the River Somme. If we had to lose that the situation would pi rtainly be serious, but not even then a great disaster. ... It would be a disaster only if we lost our hold on Amiens."

MYSTERY BEHIND GERMAN LINES. I am bound to say that these words made me feel rather cold. The mere possibility of losing the Somme crossings so far behind our front at that time was an awful thought, and the mention of Amiens, 40 miles back from the line, sent a shiver through one's body. . , , We waited with a dreadful apprehension for' the rolling up of the curtain which hid the mystery behind the German lines, and we did not have long to wait. The French on our right were as fully aware of the monstrous concentration behind the enemy's front aa our own Intelligence officers, but they were convinced that at least half this weight would fall against themselves in the opening stage of the battle. It was a miscalculationThe full weight of the German blow was hurled against the British lines on a 43-mile front, between Bullccourt, north cf Bapaume, and La Fere, south of St. Quentin. That ground was held on the north by the Third British Army under General Sir Julian Bpg, and by the Fifth Army on the south under General Sir Hubert Gough; and 48 British divisions were attacked in the course of thin offensive by 114 German divisions of picked and specially trained storm troops. AGAINST OVERWHELMING ODDS. They were overwhelming odds, and the luck of war was on their side at the beg'nning of the battles. Our new system of defence on the Firth Army front by which our front line was held by a series of machine-gun redoubts in advance of the main battle positions played into the hands of the Germans' new method of attack, owing to the foggy weather in which the offensive opened. The enemy's new form of assault, which they had first tried against the Italians with startling success, was by What is now known as "infiltration." That is to say, while they were attacking frontally under the cover of storms of high explosives and gas shells, and feeling for weaknesses in their enemy's line, they widened any gap they might make, and dribbled through machine-gunners of high skill and courage, with orders to penetrate as deeply as they could, and with the assurance that they would be followed and supported by a continuous chain of men also relying exclusively on machine-gun fire.

So it happened that, although the greater part of our Third Army front held on to their trenches against the German frontal attacks, which they mat with a withering fire, causing immense slaughter in the enemy's ranks, they found themselves under deadly machinepun fire from their left and right flanks by bodies of men who were driving wedges between them in ever-increasing numbers, which threatened to cut in behind them, and bar any way of escape. On our Fifth Army front our system of redoubts, and the fog which enveloped them, so that our machine-gunners could not see twenty paces ahead, made this method of attack easy. The British troops fought with enormous heroism, and the German dead lay in heaps before their lines, but this new method of attack surprised and confused them, and divisional staffs were amazed when they received reports of the enemy ;l'.aviug broken through to places behind lour battle lines, or, as happened several times, gained their first knowledge of this danger by hearing the ' rattle of German machine-gun lire outside their huts.

The garrisons of the forward redoubts had been quickly overwhelmed, but many cf them fought to the death, as we know now. GENERAL RETREAT ORDERED, By the end of that first day many British divisions had been forced to give ground and fall bdek to prevent themselves being cut off. In the north the enemy had forced a wedge between the flth and 51st divisions on the Third Army front, and was driving towards Bapaume. On the right of our line tlie Germans had broken through in several places betwee the 30th and 3«h (Ulster) divisions and between the 14th and 58th (London) divisions near St. Quentin, and were advancing on to Ham towards the crossiug of the Somnie. A general retreat was decided, with orders to hold the line of the Somme at all costs. It was a difficult and tragic situation for genreals and staffs as well as for battalion officers and men. AH our well-ordered machinery Df war was suddenly thrown into disorder like a watch which had lost its mainspring. 'lhe headquarters of armies, corps, and divisions were on the move like nomads who pitched their camps at night and retreated hurriedly at dawn because of o horde of barbarians was bearing down upon them. By this time the worst had happened. In spite of the help of French cavalry and the French 50th Division, which had come to our aid at Guiscard, wo could not stem the German tide, which «*s now in full spate across our old battlefields, and our 19th Corps with the flfith and 24th Divisions, with the SOt.h, 18th and Bth supporting them, were, after fearful losses in rearguard actions, unable to hold the crossings of the Somme, and the enemy passed over the bridges

of St. Christ and Brie, which had not been blown up in time. ... And as General Gough had said, "If we lost the line of the Somme the situation will bo serious." The way was open to Amiens, and the only force that barred the way was a, miscellaneous crowd of stragglers, collected under a brigadier named Carey, from all those divisions which had lost most of their men in a lighting retreat, supplemented by clerks, orderlies, and signallers from headquarters, and a gallant section of Canadian armored cars. Jt was "Caroy's force" which saved Amiens in the days of greatest peril until" the Australasians came down from Flanders to strengthen our line and the French rushed up to defend its southern approaches. I saw many scenes of that retreat from St. Quentin to Amiens, and from Bapaume to Albert and the Ancre, and was in the midst of its turmoil and tragedy. They were terrible days, when all that we had gained seemed lost. But even then the courage of our men and tho heroic sacrifice of the rearguards, who fought to the death so that the German onslaught should be checked, made one feel that England could not be defeated, whatever happened. It would be absurd to pretend that oiir men retreated always in good order, and that none of them were panicky when there were gaps in our line and Germans on each side of them. Funic there was here and there among certain bodies of men, who fell back too soon from positions they might have held for longer time. Contradictory orders were issued, mistakes were made by generals and staff officers, the crossings of the Somme were lost too easily—though, God knows, mauy men diea to hold them—and, if there had bean more forethought in digging trench systems and switch lines behind our battle positions the Germans, with all their weight of men, might never have driven us back so far. "MY MEN ARE GLORIOUS." The British array was a human machine, and as such had its weaknesses. Eut these English, Scottish, and Irißh troops fought for the most part with high, grim courage, often in isolated groups, and gelling their own lives dearly, unless surrounded and captured. "My. men are glorious," said a general of Yorkshire troops; "but so tired that being attacked is the only thing that keepß them awake," The Germans themselves paid a tribute to the Scottish troops of the 51st Division. In a message sent over in <i small balloon they wrote:' "Good old Fifty-first! Still sicking it! Cheery-O." All our troops kept "sticking it," few exceptions, and for many days and nights fell back fighting against overwhelming numbers, weary, dazed, spent, for lack of sleep or rest. During those eight weeks of the German offensive against the British lines the losses of the British armies were more than 60 per cent, of their fighting strength. But those great gaps torn in their vankß were filled up by drafts of 300,000 boys whom Lloyd George hail "held up his sleeve," as we say, as England's last reserves. They were but lads, mostly untrained, but, mixed with the older men, thoy showed wonderful spirit, and it was they who in a great degree only a few months later, fighting alongside Canadians and Australasians, who had been spared the sufferings of the retreat, while American troops were fighting and winning the desperate struggle in the Argonne, helped to inflict the last blows which broke the body and spirit of the German army.