21.

The Loophole in General Rawlinson’s Orders

‘The only alternative was to do nothing and attempt nothing. That would have been the worst of bad generalship.’

Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash

ON 20 AUGUST, the French opened a large attack against the German Army in the south. The following day, the British Third Army, commanded by General Byng and now with elements of the American 33rd Division attached, launched a similarly major assault, opposite Albert north of the Somme and immediately above the British Fourth Army’s part of the line. In conjunction with Byng’s Third Army assault, General Monash had agreed that his 3rd Division’s 9th Brigade would advance the Fourth Army front line on the Third Army’s right flank to match the British gains and level out the front line.

This all went according to plan, but in the late afternoon of 21 August the Germans fiercely counterattacked the south of the now advanced British front line. The Germans drove back the Third Army’s British 47th Division, with which a young Bernard Law Montgomery, the future field-marshal, was a lieutenant-colonel and senior staff officer. This British retreat exposed the left flank of the Australian 33rd Battalion to the south of the 47th Division. The 33rd held its ground but was at risk of being surrounded until the 34th Battalion joined it, after which the two Australian units jointly repelled the German attack and restored the situation.

With German commanders and resources occupied by these two Allied offensives, and with an eye on the change of season, General Monash was keen to resume his major drive east from his Somme sector, so that, combined, the Germans would be confronted by multiple Allied offensives that could potentially advance all the way to the Hindenburg Line. The stated strategic objective for Monash’s own planned offensive was, ‘To make the line of the Somme useless to the enemy as a defensive line, and thereby render probable [the enemy’s] immediate enforced retreat to the Hindenburg Line.’²⁶⁰ But he had to strike now, while the weather held.

It had been no coincidence that the Roman legions had traditionally campaigned in Europe between March and October each year. After that, the autumn weather closed in, with rain, snow and ice making roads, rivers and mountain crossings impassable. Nothing much had changed in 1900 years. By 21 August 1918, said Monash, ‘The autumn was upon us; not more than another eight or nine weeks of campaigning weather could be relied upon.’²⁶¹

Monash was aware that many senior British commanders were satisfied that German offensive operations had been rebuffed. They were counselling waiting out the winter and going on the offensive in the spring of 1919, augmented by the many more American divisions scheduled to arrive in France by that time. The Australian general was not content to wait. To Monash, momentum was everything. Pausing was perilous – once you have your enemy off balance, pursue him, prevent him stopping to regain his balance, to catch his breath, to reinforce, and to make a stand.

Restrained by General Rawlinson from embarking on another major eastward thrust to deliver the German Army another powerful blow in the mould of 8 August, over 13–20 August Monash had his divisions force the Germans on the Somme back from one strongpoint, wood or ruined village after another and to keep snapping at their heels, all with the excuse of straightening the Australian front line. At the same time, he rotated his Australian units to give their men a break out of the line.

Frustrated by intransigence on the part of General Rawlinson at Fourth Army HQ, and using the feigned premise that a new major operation would deny the Somme to the German Army as a winter line of defence, Monash embarked on a plan to put his troops on the east bank of the twisting River Somme in an assault by two divisions, General Glasgow’s Australian 1st Division and the British 32nd, with strong tank support. On 21 August, Monash communicated this plan to his corps at a conference of his senior commanders including tank and flying corps officers, with the operation to be undertaken in two days’ time.

At dawn on 23 August, Monash launched this latest assault. In what became known as the Battle of Chuignes, Australian and British troops took all their objectives, seizing the Chuignes Valley against stubborn resistance and taking 3100 prisoners and two complete railway trains, one mounting a 15-inch gun that fired shells weighing almost a tonne over a range of thirty-two kilometres – the largest such weapon captured by any army during the war.

‘I was at this stage sorely perplexed by the uncertain attitude of the Fourth Army,’ Monash was to write. By ‘Fourth Army’ read ‘Rawlinson’. Said Monash, ‘I was all for pushing on enthusiastically, and received General Rawlinson’s approval to do so on August 24th.’ Elated, Monash told his staff to make the necessary plans. ‘But on the very next day he [Rawlinson] announced a diametrically opposite policy, which greatly embarrassed me.’ In a written communication received by Monash on the 25th, Rawlinson declared that the Fourth Army, inclusive of the Australian Corps, had done its fair share of the fighting and would now mark time and let other armies take a share of the burden.²⁶²

Monash was furious, and determined to circumvent Rawlinson’s decision. Monash’s legal training came to the fore as he cunningly used Rawlinson’s own words to justify his subsequent actions. ‘There was one saving clause in the [Fourth] Army attitude,’ Monash would write, ‘and this fortunately gave all the loophole necessary for the continued activity which I desired to pursue. It was this: “Touch must be kept with the enemy”.’ As far as Monash was concerned, ‘It was sufficient to justify an aggressive policy on my part.’ Monash would resume the advance east, and while the German Army continued to retreat in the face of Australian aggression, the Australians would continue to ‘keep touch’ with them, chasing them all the way to the Hindenburg Line.²⁶³

From the early hours of 27 August, vigorous Australian patrolling found that a number of enemy posts east of the new Australian front line had been abandoned by the Germans. This was just the excuse Monash was looking for; the Boche had played right into his hands. ‘I ordered an immediate general advance along my whole front. There followed a merry and exciting three days of pursuit, for the enemy was really on the run.’²⁶⁴ Despite heavy rain on days two and three, and stiff resistance from German machinegun teams, the progress was rapid, until 29 August, when the Australian Corps came to a bend in the Somme where the Germans had blown most of the bridges, effectively halting the Australians’ eastward advance.

Monash had been expecting this. To his mind, any German commander who failed to eliminate the bridges in the Australians’ path would have been incompetent. Ever since the taking of Chipilly Ridge, Monash had been thinking about a back-door solution to this potential problem – an attack from the north to take the opposite bank of the river at Péronne.

To find out what the hell Monash was up to, on the afternoon of Friday 30 August General Rawlinson paid a visit to Monash at his advance HQ, which was then located in a collection of houses in the Somme village of Glisy. Monash explained the Australian Corps’ gains of 27–29 August to Rawlinson, then calmly laid out how, the following day, he was going to launch an operation to take the Somme riverside town of Péronne north of the river, and a fortified hill on Péronne’s northern outskirts called Mont St Quentin. This hill was key to the operation. The rocky mount overlooked the area north, south and east of Péronne, and artillery located at the ancient fortress atop it commanded the Somme for kilometres around.

Monash’s plan was as clever as it was bold. While the British 32nd Division made it appear that it was striving to cross the river opposite Péronne, the Australian 3rd Division would take Bouchavesnes Ridge northeast of Clery, and the 2nd Division would swing up through the 3rd Division’s new positions then turn south to attack Mont St Quentin and Péronne from the north, with the 5th Division in support. As Monash was to admit, it was like a battle plan out of the playbook of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson.

Because the Australian Corps’ advance had outstripped much of its artillery and the 5th Tank Brigade had almost run out of serviceable tanks, Monash’s troops would be going against Mont St Quentin over open territory with limited artillery support and no tanks. And the final assault would be undertaken by just three understrength Australian battalions out of the thirty-five taking part in the operation. Worse, it was known that elite troops from one of the best and last German reserve divisions, the Second Prussian Guards, the equivalent of Britain’s Grenadier Guards, bolstered by German volunteers from a host of other units, occupied the trenches below Mont St Quentin. The proud Kaiser Alexander Regiment held the summit. The defenders had orders from General von der Marwitz to hold Mont St Quentin at all costs.

When Rawlinson heard Monash’s intention, he burst out laughing and openly mocked him. ‘And so you think you’re going to take Mont St Quentin with three battalions! What presumption! However, I don’t think I ought to stop you. So, go ahead, and try! And I wish you luck!’²⁶⁵

Rawlinson clearly thought Monash had bitten off more than he could chew this time, and probably expected him to come out of the exercise chastened and a little more acquiescent. Perhaps defeat at Mont St Quentin would leave Monash prepared to bow to his army commander’s wisdom in future and rein in his ambitions for the Australian Corps. Give a man enough rope, and he will hang himself, so the old saying goes.

Monash’s Australians took that rope, and, after bitter fighting that lasted until 3 September, took Bouchavesnes Ridge, Mont St Quentin, Péronne, and all the high ground overlooking that town. Quite early in the battle, stiff German resistance halted the advance of the 2nd Division’s 5th Brigade and caused Monash to throw in his lone reserve brigade, the 6th. ‘The only alternative was to do nothing and attempt nothing,’ Monash would later say. ‘That would have been the worst of bad generalship, and it was an occasion when risks must be taken.’²⁶⁶

The 6th Brigade finished what the 5th had begun, taking Mont St Quentin in bloody hand-to-hand fighting that left it strewn with German dead. Equally bitter fighting was experienced in Péronne. Three Victoria Crosses were awarded to Australians in the taking of Mont St Quentin, and four in the taking of Péronne. German commander General von der Marwitz, a vastly experienced Prussian cavalry officer and formerly adjutant to the Kaiser, was shocked and devastated by this defeat, especially when told that his defenders on the mount had outnumbered their Australian attackers three to one. The German commander had put the best men he had on Mont St Quentin, and considered both it and Péronne unassailable. He knew that he faced the Australians there, but despite a healthy respect for the Aussies and their commander Monash, like General Rawlinson the Boche general underestimated them both.

Monash had set out ‘to open a wide gate through which the remainder of the Fourth and Third Armies could pour’, after which they could turn north and south behind the German front line and roll it up. It had been tough going for a while, but the Australians had executed their general’s brilliant and scorned plan to perfection. Now, to prevent tens of thousands of its troops being overrun from the rear, the German Second Army east of the Somme was forced to evacuate trenches and towns, and began a disorganised retreat, fleeing ‘helter-skelter’, in Monash’s words, thirty kilometres over clogged roads to the protection of its Siegfried Line.²⁶⁷

General Rawlinson meanwhile lavished praise on the Australian 2nd Division, which took Mont St Quentin, telling Monash: ‘I am filled with admiration at the gallantry and surpassing daring of the 2nd Division in winning this important fortress, and I congratulate them with all my heart.’²⁶⁸ What his congratulatory message didn’t say was that, using the loophole in General Rawlinson’s orders, Monash, and his Australian Corps, had yet again shown how to bring the end of the war closer. On 31 August, the day after the storming of Mont St Quentin and Péronne, Paris newspaper Le Figaro ran the story of the assault under the headline ‘Australians in Péronne’. The French press was always quick to praise Australian troops for their successes, unlike the British press at that time.

On 11 September, Monash would write to his wife, ‘In connection with the present counter-offensive the London press started very badly, and, in fact, in several striking instances attributed successes achieved by the Australians to other [British] troops who had previously failed in the same tasks. I made very serious remonstrations about this to Perry Robinson of The Times, to Rawlinson, to Lawrence, and to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, telling them plainly that my own appeal to my troops was the prestige of the Australian arms, and that, unless the performances of the Australians were justly placarded, I would not hold myself responsible for the maintenance of their fighting spirit. I put it plainly that they are by nature and instinct sportsmen, and that they would refuse to go on playing any game in which their scores were not put up on the scoring board.’²⁶⁹

Monash’s complaints would result in the British press giving the Australians their due by the time he wrote to his wife, allowing him to focus on the next stage of his drive east. ‘Before the end of the first week of September,’ Monash was to say, ‘the Somme had ceased to hold our further interest. It had become a thing that was behind us, both in thought and in actuality. The enemy was once more on the move, and it became our business to press relentlessly at his heels.’ On all fronts now, the enemy was making a general retreat to the Hindenburg Line.²⁷⁰