22.

The Aussies and Yanks Go Against the Hindenburg Line Together

‘Feed your troops on victory.’

Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash

AS THE GERMAN Army retreated and the Australian Corps continued its pursuit, General Monash had departed the luxury of Chateau Bertangles in mid-August and moved his headquarters further and further east to keep up with his advancing troops. Firstly to Glisy, then to a wrecked chateau at Mericourt, and then on 8 September to an uncomfortable camp of small wooden huts on a rise near Assevillers. There, he received a constant flow of curious celebrity visitors wanting to learn more about the Australian victories, from Winston Churchill to Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to leading Australian artist Arthur Streeton. Field-Marshal Haig also dropped in regularly, and former Australian Corps commander General Birdwood, now commanding the British Fifth Army, came to congratulate Monash.

There at the Australian Corps’ Assevillers HQ on 13 Sep tember, General Rawlinson conferred with his three corps commanders, Generals Monash, Butler (British III Corps) and Braithwaite (British IX Corps), and a plan was discussed for a joint assault, while the weather still allowed, on the Hindenburg Outpost Line, which was the first of four lines of defences that made up the kilometres-deep Siegfried Line.

By this stage, the British 32nd Division had been transferred to the Fifth Army after doing good work with the Australian Corps. This left Monash with just his five Australian divisions. For the assault on the Hindenburg Outpost Line, he would employ his 1st and 4th Divisions. Company Sergeant-Major Ned Searle of the 4th Division’s 15th Battalion had survived all the battles of July, August and September, and was looking forward to ‘having a go at the Inderbugs Line’.²⁷¹ As was General Monash.

Concerned that, as a result of attrition, only eight serviceable tanks remained for the Australian Corps’ assault, Monash assigned his 3rd and 5th Division machinegun battalions to the 1st and 4th Divisions, doubling his machinegun resources. He also ordered the manufacture of as many dummy tanks as possible by his engineers and pioneers, which created great competition in the fake tanks’ design and construction. At dawn on 18 September, as the Australians advanced behind a massive creeping barrage and in drenching rain, the Germans saw the best of these dummy tanks, made of wood and hessian, sitting in the gloom. Unable to differentiate between real and fake tanks at a distance, German observers would massively overestimate the number of armoured vehicles coming for them, and German morale in the trenches plummeted.

The 1st Division overran the trenches and emplacements of its assigned portion of the Hindenburg Outpost Line before nightfall on 18 September, by which time the 4th Division was within 500 metres of the Outpost Line but had halted in the face of murderous enemy fire. Pausing to catch its breath, the 4th Division resumed its attack in darkness at 11.00 pm, and that night it, too, took all its assigned objectives and reached the blue line.

On their flanks, the Australians were again let down by poor performance from the British troops involved in the assault, who were meant to advance at the same rate and to the same blue line as the Australian Corps. On the Australians’ left, British III Corps failed to take any part of the Outpost Line, and was bogged down, leaving the Australians’ northern flank dangerously exposed. On the Australians’ right, British IX Corps had only reached the day’s first red-line objective, with the blue-line final objective still well ahead of it.

The Australians took close to 5000 prisoners that day, a number of whom surrendered without a fight. One of the captives was a German battalion commander, and General Monash, who spoke fluent German and always interrogated senior prisoners personally, asked the German colonel why his men had given up without any show of resistance.

‘Well, you see,’ said the oberst, ‘they are dreadfully afraid of the Australians. So they are of the tanks. But when they saw both of them coming at them together, they thought it was high time to throw up their hands.’²⁷²

Having achieved their objectives, the Australian 1st and 4th Divisions were relieved and withdrawn, being taken by bus and train to a riverside location to the southwest, between Amiens and Abbeville, for recreation and recuperation. General Monash’s plan was to let these two divisions rest over the winter, so that they could come back fresh, reinvigorated and reinforced for a final campaign in 1919. No one knew at the time that the war had less than two months left to run, so it would eventuate that the combat services of these two veteran Aussie divisions would no longer be required. Nonetheless, one last great effort lay ahead for General Monash’s Australian divisions still in the line.

On 18 September, even while the battle for the Hindenburg Outpost Line was still being fought on the Australian-British front, Monash spoke with General Rawlinson and explained that, of necessity, he would be resting the 1st and 4th Divisions once they had achieved their objectives that day, replacing them in the line with two of his remaining three Aussie divisions.

‘I will thus be left with insufficient resources to maintain an immediate pressure upon the enemy,’ he told Rawlinson.

In response, Rawlinson had a suggestion. ‘There is a possibility,’ he said, ‘of obtaining, very shortly, the services of the II American Corps’ two divisions.’ This was the same II Corps that had until recently included the 33rd Division, whose men had proven such good comrades-in-arms to the Australians. Rawlinson, who clearly had previously discussed with Field-Marshal Haig the idea of giving Monash the American 27th and 30th Divisions, now asked, ‘Monash, would you be prepared to accept the responsibility of taking this force under your command for the continuance of the operations?’

Monash seized on the suggestion. He would later say: ‘I had no reason to hesitate. My experience of the quality of the American troops, both at the Battle of Hamel and on the Chipilly spur, had been eminently satisfactory. It was true that this new American corps had no previous battle service, but measures were possible to supply them with any technical guidance which they might lack.’²⁷³ In other words, he felt he could whip the Americans into shape for the operation.

The number of troops involved was also attractive to Monash. American divisions at that time contained close to twice as many men as Australian and English divisions at full strength. Bringing these two American divisions under Monash’s command would add tens of thousands of fresh combat and support troops to the Australian Corps for the Hindenburg Line campaign. The Australian divisions had been heavily reduced by the campaigns of 1918; following their latest battle, the victorious but battered 1st and 4th were well under strength. So, unsurprisingly, Monash promptly accepted Rawlinson’s offer.

‘Submit a proposal,’ Rawlinson then instructed him, ‘for a joint operation to take place towards the end of the month by these two American and the remaining three Australian divisions, with the object of completing the task of breaking through the Hindenburg defences.’²⁷⁴

Monash wrote and submitted his proposal that same day.

The main Hindenburg Line defences in front of the Australian Corps were built around a north-south Napoleonic canal system, called the Canal de St Quentin, which merged with the Canal de l’Escaut to the north. This canal created a formidable physical barrier which the Germans had built into their Hindenburg Line defences. Monash felt that a direct assault on the canal itself would prove costly in terms of casualties. He had a better idea. Known to study maps and aerial reconnaissance photographs for hours, Monash had already looked for, and spotted, a weak link in the Hindenburg Line, which happened to be opposite the failed line of advance of the British III Corps assault of 18 September.

At the point in question, the St Quentin Canal disappeared into a hill, flowing beneath the slopes in a tunnel, known as the Bellicourt Tunnel because the hill village of Bellicourt sat astride it, before reemerging into the open 6500 metres to the north. In that tunnel, the Germans had moored barges which provided accommodation for German regiments defending the line, deep beneath the hill and impervious to Allied shelling or bombing. If an attacking force could successfully assault and take that hill, this would create a passage over the top of the canal far more useful than any bridge.

In the Monash plan, the two American divisions would lead the assault, with British Fourth Army support on their flanks, advancing to the hill over the tunnel against German trenches and emplacements to a green-line primary objective. The Australian divisions coming behind would then leapfrog the Americans and drive over the tunnel to the blue-line objective, which would be beyond the fourth line of the Siegfried defences, several kilometres east of the canal. Directly on the heels of the assault, engineers from all the Australian and American divisions would build a minimum of four roads over the tunnel hill. This would create a wide and deep breach in the Hindenburg Line, a breach through which the British Third and Fifth Armies could pour to wrap up the rest of the Hindenburg Line from the rear.

Monash’s proposal was quickly approved by Haig and Foch. The day after the Australian submitted his plan, 19 September, Rawlinson came to Monash’s Assevillers HQ. Monash’s assault involving the five Australian and American divisions could go ahead as proposed, with the exception that the taking of the last line of German defences, known as the Beaurevoir Line, would not be an objective on the first day of the assault. Rawlinson felt that aiming to overrun all three remaining German lines of defence in the one day was asking a bit much, even of the apparently superhuman Aussies.

Rawlinson had been made aware by Field-Marshal Haig that the French in the south and British and Belgian armies to the north would also attack the Hindenburg Line in their sectors about the same time that the Australian-American assault was launched, so he had decided that his British IX Corps should make a direct assault on the canal as part of the Fourth Army contribution to what would be an almost simultaneous multi-pronged assault the length of the Hindenburg Line. British XIII Corps had recently been transferred to Rawlinson’s command, and, instead of the poorly performing III Corps, which would be replaced in the line by the Americans, XIII Corps would be the unit tasked with passing through the opening in the Hindenburg Line created by the Australian and American ‘shock troops’.

With the date of the great multi-pronged assault set for 29 September, Monash and his staff immediately commenced work on the planning for the second operation of the war, after the Battle of Hamel, in which American forces would go into battle under overall Australian command, although this would involve much larger numbers and be on a much grander scale than at Hamel, which now lay well behind the Allied front line. In this latest operation, Monash would wield 200,000 troops, 200 tanks and 1000 artillery pieces.

To facilitate close cooperation between the Americans and Australians, General Read relocated his American II Corps headquarters to nearby General Monash’s HQ. Read, who was ‘reserved, agreeable and courteous’ in Monash’s view, was prepared to stand back and let the experienced Australian general take the lead, making no attempt to impose his will or ideas on Monash as he prepared for the operation. ‘He very generously took upon himself the role of spectator,’ Monash was to say, ‘so that I might not be hampered in issuing orders or instructions to his troops. At the same time, I am sure that in his quiet, forceful way he did much to ensure on the part of his divisional commanders and brigadiers a sympathetic attitude towards me and the demands I had to make of them.’²⁷⁵

On 11 September, General Pershing’s new American First Army had finally seen action, in the attack on the Germans at St Mihiel. That same First Army would subsequently join the French in a 26 September attack between Verdun and Rheims. These events made the Americans now under Monash’s command all the more anxious to get into the fray. But, as much as Monash valued the enthusiasm and fighting spirit of the Americans, he did have concerns about the efficient internal management and discipline of their units, and the lack of American familiarity with the way Australian units worked and fought. Joe Sanborn’s 131st and Abel Davis’s 132nd Infantry had been schooled in both at Hamel, but with those regiments now in a different sector, the Australians would have to bed in a new and much larger group of keen but green Yankee student soldiers.

To overcome these concerns in the little over a week that he had available to him before the joint assault, Monash proposed a liaison body, the Australian Mission, made up of Major-General Maclagan of his now relieved 4th Division, with 216 experienced officers and NCOs from the 1st and 4th Divisions, who were to be spread across the American corps, division, brigade and battalion headquarters. Their job would be to advise their American counterparts on Australian methods and tactics, so that the forces of the two countries could integrate easily during the battle ahead.

General Read readily agreed to this idea, which was implemented at once. But Read quite deliberately failed to inform his superior General Pershing that he was doing this. Pershing had developed such a jingoistic distaste for foreign advisers that he had recently vetoed a plan to send British and French officers with experience in trench warfare to the US to help train recruits there, and he would surely have scuppered the idea of the Australian Mission to his 27th and 30th Divisions had he known about it. It seems that Pershing may never have learned of the Australian Mission and its work.

General Monash, at a 23 September conference at his HQ, explained his plan for the upcoming battle to General Read, Read’s divisional commanders Major-General John F. O’Ryan of the 27th Division and the 30th Division’s Major-General Edward M. Lewis, and their senior officers. Monash delivered this briefing as he would to his Australian commanders, only to be deluged with questions from the Americans when he had finished. From experience, Monash’s Australian commanders knew exactly what he was talking about when he briefed them, but his operational language was as clear as mud to the Americans. Monash was forced to run through the plan again for them, this time in fine detail, using a blackboard, to explain terms and tactics and to graphically illustrate what he expected of the American troops.

There was one element that Monash stressed above all else to the listening American generals and colonels – this was the vital importance of the ‘moppers up’, the troops who came behind the first wave in Australian assaults. To maximise the speed and maintain the momentum of an assault, Australian troops of the first wave passed over enemy first line trenches once they had dealt with defenders, leaving any enemy who remained skulking in dugouts or emplacements to be handled by tanks and the ‘mopper up’ troops of the second wave. This included posting men at dugout and tunnel entrances to flush out occupants. If mopping up was not thoroughly and efficiently carried out, enemy troops would be left in the rear of the first wave – men who could emerge and attack them from behind.

Monash knew that, at the Battle of Hamel, Americans of the 33rd Division had been more interested in dashing forward to the attack than staying back to mop up, a proclivity they would again display in their next campaign to the north. American commander-in-chief General Pershing had been told of the propensity of his troops to rush forward, beyond set objectives or into their own side’s artillery barrages, that they displayed during the Battle of Hamel. Yet he took no steps to discourage it. He would write of the 33rd Division in 1931, downplaying this ill-disciplined tendency, and characterising it as a positive: ‘This division afterwards displayed the same eagerness to get at the enemy at several hard-fought engagements during the trying days of the Meuse-Argonne offensive.’²⁷⁶

General Monash felt that this habit, unless checked by their officers, had the potential to create unnecessarily high numbers of American casualties, and could put the overall success of an operation in jeopardy. This issue would be particularly important on 29 September because, from German documents captured by the British Third Army to the north, Monash had learned the detailed layout of that part of the Hindenburg Line that faced him. ‘The whole defensive system [is] provided, on quite an exceptional scale,’ Monash told the American commanders at the 23 September conference, ‘with underground shelters, galleries, passages and dugouts.’²⁷⁷ As a consequence he instructed the American commanders to allocate fully half their men to mopping up duty. The Americans left this conference assuring Monash that they ‘got it’.

Extensive troop movements were involved in preparations for the 29 September attack, as the Americans came down from the north and the Australians moved out of the line to be replaced by divisions from the French First Army and relocated north to that part of the line that faced the Bellicourt Tunnel and had previously been occupied by British III Corps. Uniquely, for a period of five days while these movements were underway, there were no Australian troops in the front line on the Western Front, for the first time in the war since they had initially gone into the line in April 1916 following their withdrawal from Gallipoli.

Monash was holding a joint conference of all his Australian and American commanders on 26 September when Field-Marshal Haig turned up unexpectedly. He came to watch, and to impress on participants the fact that, if successful, this operation would hasten the end of the war. Clearly, of the trio of attacks scheduled for three days’ time, it was this Australian-American operation for which Haig held the highest hopes.

But before the main operation could be launched, there was an obstacle to overcome that went back to 18 September. This was when British III Corps had failed to reach its blue-line objective, the northern part of the Hindenburg Outpost Line attacked by the Fourth Army that day. Their failure had left the front line at that point 1000 metres behind the new front line created by the Australian Corps to their south.

To rectify this and finish the job, in the process levelling out the front line for the start of the main operation on 29 September, General Rawlinson instructed Monash to send the American 27th Division on 27 September to attack that part of the Hindenburg Outpost Line in his path that still remained in German hands. Rawlinson also told Monash to base all planning around the assumption that the Americans would take this objective and the front line would be even for the jumping off of all forces on 29 September.

Monash never normally made assumptions, but now he was forced by Rawlinson’s order to base his battle plan on the assumption of success by inexperienced American troops. ‘For the first time,’ Monash was to say, ‘I had to gamble on a chance. It was contrary to the policy that governed all my previous battle plans, in which nothing had been left to chance.’²⁷⁸

One of the key elements of Monash’s detailed planning for 29 September covered the 1000 artillery pieces that would provide the creeping barrage for his Australian-American assault. The artillery, infantry and tanks had to be provided with detailed maps showing the coordinates for the start point and the successive lift points of the massive barrage on the day of the main battle. Hundreds of maps were prepared, printed and distributed to all artillery, infantry and tank commanders down to battery and platoon level, marked according to the assumption that the American 27th Division would reach the 18 September blue line in its 27 September attack.

This preliminary American assault duly commenced at 5.30 am on 27 September, supported by a creeping barrage and British tanks, with the objective of reaching and taking the German trench system in front of what had once been Quennemont Farm and Gillemont Farm. To rapidly identify the extent of enemy ground taken in advances, General Monash had recently schooled his own troops in a system where they fired orange flares into the sky when Australian reconnaissance aircraft flew by, and the Americans were introduced to this system. As the morning of 27 September unfolded, Monash received conflicting reports about the American division’s progress. General Read’s HQ was telling him that American troops had reached their objectives, but Australian aircraft were seeing no orange flares rising from all the strategic points where the Yanks ought to be, such as Gillemont Farm.

It transpired that elements of two battalions of American 27th Division troops had in fact reached their furthest objective, the village of Le Catelet, well to the east. But in their enthusiasm to reach their main objective they had ignored Gillemont Farm, leaving it, and its defenders, behind them. Breaking Monash’s golden rule by failing to mop up en route, these men of the 27th had allowed Germans to emerge from underground hideaways in their rear. Of course, these Fritzes were soon attacking the Americans from behind.

The American troops in Le Catelet found themselves surrounded in the village, and although they refused to surrender, their advance had been for nothing, and their position was perilous. As a consequence, much of the Hindenburg Outpost Line in General Monash’s path remained in German hands. The American assault proved a waste of time and lives, and failed to meet the assumption of ground secured by day’s end that had been forced on Monash by Rawlinson.

With this knowledge, Monash hurried to General Rawlinson’s HQ and sought a postponement of the 29 September main assault to give the 27th Division time to send in more troops to make a second attempt at completing the taking of the Outpost Line, and free the trapped American battalions, before the main attack began. Rawlinson responded that a postponement was not possible, as planned attacks by all British, French, American and Belgian armies were tied to a coordinated schedule. Although Monash managed to obtain more tanks from Rawlinson for the 27th Division’s use, fresh troops from that division would have to rapidly advance 1000 metres against the enemy on 29 September to liberate their surrounded colleagues, reach the old blue line and catch up with the Australians and the creeping barrage, all before continuing with the main assault.

All through this period, General Monash had striven to keep two secrets from his men, after finding himself, as he said, ‘in a sea of troubles’.²⁷⁹ Earlier in the year, the British War Office had decreed that, because of decreasing troop numbers, all brigades in divisions made up of men from around the British Empire were to be reduced from four battalions to three, with men from the abolished battalion distributed among the others. Monash’s predecessor General Birdwood had, in May, been about to implement this order when Monash took over the Australian Corps.

Monash, considering this a typically stupid Whitehall pen-pushers’ solution to the problem of falling battalion strengths, had ignored the abolition order for months. He knew that, while some Australian battalions had a history going back only two or three years, their surviving men were fiercely proud of their units, their sacrifices and their victories, and would resist disbandment. ‘The private soldier,’ said Monash of his Australians, ‘valued his battalion colour patch almost more than any other decoration.’²⁸⁰

This proved the case. After the abolition was forced on Monash in October via an order from above, received on 19 September in the middle of the Hindenburg Line campaign, the men of eight Australian battalions slated for abolition would go on strike. One of the units set down for disbandment was the 42nd Battalion, which had participated in the Battle of Hamel victory. Its survivors were destined for the 43rd Battalion. Only the 59th and 60th Battalions would merge without demur. For now, Monash received permission from General Rawlinson to put off the matter of battalion abolition for several weeks until the Hindenburg Line campaign had been wrapped up, keeping news of it from his rank and file to prevent his troops from being distracted from the task at hand.

Then there was Monash’s second secret. On 16 September, two days before his Hindenburg Line campaign began, the general had received a communique from the War Office telling him that 6000 of his Australians who had served continuously since 1914 were to be sent back to Australia for six months’ special furlough. This would become known as 1914 Leave. It would transpire that this had been initiated by Prime Minister Hughes. The War Office was securing ships to take these men home, and Monash was told that the withdrawal order affecting these men could come through with just forty-eight hours’ notice.

For the moment, Monash also failed to tell his men about this. Whilst good news for the 6000, this special leave would be a wrench both for men who would be going and those staying. It would also deprive Monash of 6000 of his best men. Determined that there would be no distractions from the task at hand, for his troops or himself, Monash kept the subject of 1914 Leave under wraps as he focused on 29 September.

When the time came, 29 September proved one of the most trying days of General Monash’s military career. After Zero Hour at 5.50 that misty morning, all began well; very well in fact. At the canal, the British IX Corps attack, meant as a diversion to draw German attention away from the main Bellicourt Tunnel assault, achieved surprising success. Using all manner of contrivances, British troops of the 46th Division had crossed the canal in several places and were fighting on its east bank. On the right of the Australian-American assault, the American 30th Division seemed by 10.00 am to be on track to fighting its way to its green-line objective by 11.00, when the following Australian 5th Division was scheduled to leapfrog it and push on to the blue-line objectives east of the tunnel.

Then, at 11.10 am, Monash received a disturbing message: his 5th Division’s advance on the right had been held up because the Americans of the 30th Division ahead of it were locked in desperate fighting in the town of Bellicourt, above the tunnel, against German troops the Americans had failed to mop up in their wake and reinforcements brought in along the canal in boats by the Germans.

Two minutes later, the Australian 3rd Division reported from the left that it was still dug in west of the tunnel because troops of the American 27th Division were bogged down ahead of them, west of Gillemont Farm. It later eventuated that only two of the six American battalions involved in the advance had succeeded in catching up with the creeping barrage as planned. These battalions had rushed on over the tunnel to gain their green-line objectives, but yet again over-eager Doughboys had failed to mop up in their rear. As large numbers of German troops emerged from their hiding places behind them, these American battalions soon found themselves in trouble. Meanwhile, most of the British tanks assigned to the 27th Division’s assault had been knocked out by a combination of German artillery and landmines.

In the south, the 5th Division’s advance guard came up on the rear of the German forces that had trapped Americans of the 30th Division in Bellicourt. In fierce hand-to-hand fighting, the Australians overwhelmed the Germans in their path, fought their way through the village, mopping up all the way, and liberated large numbers of American troops. As the Australians pushed on, bent on achieving their blue-line objectives east of the canal, the Americans in Bellicourt, instead of sticking to General Monash’s plan and staying where they were and consolidating their position at the green line, excitedly joined the Australians in their advance east of the main Hindenburg Line.

Thus, by hook and by crook, the southern part of the Bellicourt Tunnel fell into Monash’s hands. But to the north it was a different story. The 3rd Division found itself having to achieve the 27th Division’s objectives before it could proceed to achieve its own. By 2.00 pm, General Monash knew that the 3rd was partly astride the tunnel, its front line now running obliquely from northeast to southwest, with the tunnel’s northern entrance still in German hands.

With a number of isolated parties of American troops of the 27th Division known to be cut off in German territory, Monash decided he couldn’t use artillery in his efforts to take the northern tunnel defences, as that risked shelling these Americans. Forced by events to throw out his original carefully structured battle plan, late in the day Monash brought his reserve division, the Australian 2nd, up by bus from near Péronne to within striking distance of the tunnel. He also ordered the withdrawal of all American troops of the 27th and 30th Divisions who could be reached, officially for rest and reorganisation but in reality to get them out of his hair. It was only with some difficulty that those Americans who had unofficially attached themselves to rampaging Australian units were convinced to pull out of the fight and return to the rear.

Monash’s worst fears about the Americans and their potential to fail to mop up in their rear had come to pass, with expensive consequences for the American divisions involved, and headaches for Monash. Yet, he was not overly critical of them. ‘They demonstrated their inexperience in war, and their ignorance of some elementary methods of fighting,’ he was to say. ‘For these shortcomings they paid a high price.’ Still, he felt they were ‘entitled to high credit for a fine effort’.²⁸¹

With the Americans pulling back, Monash ordered his 3rd Division to that night swing left, despite torrential rain, and combine with the northernmost elements of the 5th Division to attack German northern tunnel defences from due south the following day, without the benefit of artillery support or tanks. On 30 September, the soaked 3rd Division fought halfway to its objectives through a tangle of muddy trenches in desperate hand-to-hand combat with bayonet and grenade, whilst the 5th Division gained ground to the east. By nightfall on 1 October, in Monash’s view driven by his subordinate General Gellibrand’s personal tenacity, the day’s objectives including the northern entrance to the canal tunnel had been secured by the 3rd Division, with more than 3000 German prisoners taken by the Australians before another two days had passed.

The Allies’ first breach in the main Hindenburg Line had been made, and while the fourth and last line of Hindenburg trenches, the so-called Beaurevoir Line, remained in German hands for the moment, the 50th Division of the British XIII Corps was able to pass through the gap created over the top of the tunnel by the Australians and Americans, swing left, and envelop and wrap up the main Hindenburg Line defences to the north.

Many remaining lost parties of American soldiers including wounded were recovered by the 3rd Division from the previously German-held territory, but when Australian patrols reached Le Catelet, where men from two battalions of the American 27th Division had been reported cut off days earlier, no trace of the Yanks was found. The Germans had just pulled out of Le Catelet, in such a hurry that they had left their own wounded behind. A senior Boche officer taken prisoner on the last day of the assault informed General Monash when he questioned him that the German Army had taken 1200 American officers and men of the 27th Division prisoner in and around Le Catelet, after which they had been quickly shipped east, before the Australians could free them. Those 1200 Americans had paid the price for their impetuosity and were now on their way to POW camp in Germany.

The men of the Australian 3rd and 5th Divisions had done magnificent work, but they were exhausted. Monash knew it, and withdrew them to join his 1st and 4th Divisions resting southwest of Amiens. They were replaced in the line by a single division, the 2nd, Monash’s last remaining Australian division. It linked up with the British 32nd Division, which was now a part of IX Corps. The 2nd wasn’t just a place-filler; there was still work for the Australian infantrymen to do before the Hindenburg Line was fully breached.

Over 3 and 4 October, the 2nd Division assaulted and took a 6000-metre length of the Beaurevoir Line, the fourth, most easterly and final of the ‘impregnable’ Hindenburg Line defences, in the process taking another 1800 German prisoners. They did this despite tough resistance, despite most of the remaining 5th Tank Brigade machines being knocked out by German artillery in the attack, and despite most of the small, two-man Whippet light tanks that were also assigned to the assault finding the German trenches too wide to cross and proving of little assistance to the Australians. All four strands in the Hindenburg Line had now been cut by the Aussies. The way to Germany now lay open to the Allies, and the German Army was soon in wholesale retreat.

General Pershing, in his memoirs, would characterise the 29 September battle for the Bellicourt Tunnel as essentially an American victory. Here is how he depicted the assault: ‘Good reports came in regarding the operations on the 29th of our II Corps (Read), which was with General Rawlinson’s British Fourth Army. With both the 30th (Lewis) and 27th (O’Ryan) Divisions in line, this corps formed the main wedge in the attack against that portion of the German line that included the Bellicourt tunnel of the Cambrai-St Quentin Canal.’

Pershing continued his misleading narrative by saying: ‘The [American] II Corps, attacking on September 29th against stiff resistance, gallantly captured the ridge of the tunnel, which was part of the Hindenburg Line. The 30th Division did especially well. It broke through the Hindenburg Line on its entire front and took Bellicourt and part of Nauroy by noon of the 29th. The Australian 5th Division coming up at this time, continued the attack with elements of the 30th Division and the line advanced a considerable distance. The 27th Division, due to no fault of its own, had been unable to take full advantage of the accompanying barrage, which was laid down over 1000 yards ahead of the line from which the troops started the attack. Despite the handicap, it took the enemy trenches of the Hindenburg Line south of Bony, captured the Knoll, and established its line south from that position to a point just west of Gillemont Farm.’²⁸²

Whilst Pershing did mention the role of the Australian 5th Division in the assault, he failed to mention that of the Australian 3rd Division that day, or the subsequent role of the Australian 2nd Division. He neglected to admit that both his 27th and 30th Divisions failed to meet their objectives, or that many of their men had to be rescued by the Australians. He likewise did not reveal that 1200 of his men from the 27th had been taken prisoner by the Germans in the battle. Neither could he bring himself to say that the American divisions were under overall Australian command leading up to and during the battle, or that the assault was masterminded by General Monash.

On 5 October, Monash withdrew his 2nd Division and sent it by bus and train southwest, to join its four brother Australian divisions for a long overdue rest. The 2nd was replaced in the line by the American 27th and 30th Divisions, with General Monash yielding command of the American troops back to their own General Read.

That same day, the German Government commenced secret negotiations with the Allies for an Armistice that would bring an end to the war. That Armistice would eventually come into effect at 11.00 am on 11 November. Right up to that time, the fighting, and the dying, would continue. American troops would be engaged to the bitter end, but the Australian Corps had fought its last battle and won its last victory.

In expectation of further fighting, on 5 November the well-rested Australian 1st and 4th Divisions commenced to march east, and General Monash proceeded towards the chateau at Le Cateau that had been the HQ of his adversary General von der Marwitz, commander of the German Second Army. Von der Marwitz had been relieved of command of the Second Army on 22 September and sent to take over Germany’s Fifth Army, which was facing American troops on the Meuse. Monash was still en route to Le Cateau on 11 November when word reached him that the Armistice had finally been signed at 5.00 that morning, in a French railway carriage, and would come into effect at 11.00 am. The war was over.

Monash was to say that in their great battles and victories from 8 August to 5 October, the AIF lost 5000 men killed. This toll from the two-month period of nonstop victory compares to a total of 61,000 Australians killed throughout the war, from the first deaths in New Guinea in 1914 through Gallipoli in 1915 to the last casualties on the Western Front in 1918. Monash considered this a small price to pay for final victory.

From the day the United States entered the war in April 1917 to the Armistice in November 1918, the US lost close to twice as many service personnel as Australia did in the entire war. Certainly, America committed many more men to the conflict, but General Monash was of the firm view that many American casualties during this war were due to the over-exuberance of American rank and file and the inability of their officers to impose the discipline necessary to keep men out of friendly barrages and to hold back to mop up in the wake of their advances. Years of battle experience had taught Australians to uniformly keep a respectful distance from friendly bombardments and to follow orders to thoroughly mop up rather than go charging ahead in search of glory.

Monash confessed in his memoir of the battles of 1918 that he drove his men hard towards the end, as he saw total victory within his grasp. He had become uncharacteristically quiet and introspective by the time 11 November came, and his hands were seen to have developed a faint shake. Had the war lasted into 1919, as many expected it would, Monash may have by that time been invalided out of his Australian Corps command. Perhaps he had foreseen this and drove himself even harder than his men to achieve swift success.

When he’d taken command back in May, it had been with a simple mantra: ‘Feed your troops on victory.’ And this was what he did. ‘They came to believe,’ he was to say of his Australian soldiers, ‘because of success heaped upon success, that they were invincible.’²⁸³ That belief began with the halting of the Germans in their tracks outside Amiens in March. It had been fed by the crushing ninety-three-minute victory in the Battle of Hamel that had put the Australian Corps and the Allied armies generally on the offensive in the summer of 1918. From Hamel forward, with an ironclad belief in themselves and their general, the Australians fought their way east and truly did feast on victory.