We’ve seen them on battlefields, alone, in groups, or even by the dozen, but we’ve
never seen them fight by the hundreds - tanks, tanks, and more tanks.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week, the British army continued its advance in Palestine, though its three and
a half month offensive of the Western Front, the Battle of Passchendaele, came to an end
with casualties in the hundreds of thousands.
The October Russian Revolution continued, with teenage cadets fighting and dying against
the Bolsheviks, and when the former Prime Minister fled it was the final end of his
government.
This week’s star, as I said, is tanks, and we saw them at the Battle of Cambrai.
“The triple belts of wire were crossed as if they had been beds of nettles, and 350
pathways were sheared through them for the infantry.”
The Battle began at 0600 November 20th, with a preliminary barrage of 1,000 guns and 6
infantry divisions of the British Third Army, supported by nine Tank Corps battalions.
According to the Tank Museum, Bovington, there were 476 total tanks and 378 of them were
fighting tanks.
324 of these were used in the opening attack; this was the first time in history such a
large tank force was used.
There were also 300 supporting aircraft.
More infantry and 3 cavalry divisions were in reserve.
The successes were huge and immediate - they broke through the Hindenburg Line, in places
nearly 10 km deep.
The British managed to reach the woods on Bourlon Ridge and the Bapaume-Cambrai Road
that day, taking some 4,000 casualties and over 4,000 prisoners, but a full 180 of the
tanks were already out of action, destroyed, broken down, or ditched.
The Mark IV tank had some serious issues.
Even that day, just at Flesquieres, German artillery knocked out 39 tanks and stopped
the advance in the sector.
One German, Unteroffizier Krüger, reportedly knocked out 7 tanks by himself, working his
gun alone until he was shot.
He is the only German soldier in the First World War to be mentioned in British military
dispatches (Gilbert).
There is a certain legendary quality to that story, but how ever many tanks Krüger and
co knocked out, they were with the German 54th Division, which had undergone specific
anti-tank training and had faced French tanks during the Nivelle Offensive.
The next day, a fresh German division arrived from the Russian front, and was rushed forward
into the line on the St. Quentin Canal, where a British breakthrough seemed possible.
This ruined the next phase of the British plans, which was in fact a cavalry breakthrough.
On the 23rd, news of the initial breakthrough was made public in Britain.
The British papers called it the greatest British victory of the war.
They rang the church bells throughout the land- the first time they had done so so far
during the war.
But that day, even with all the elation at home, the tide of battle turned in a violent
confrontation at Bourlon Wood.
British commander Sir Douglas Haig had insisted that the wood be taken so that they could
renew the wider plan of attack.
He suggested that the cavalry, whose initial task was to exploit a tank breakthrough, dismount
and fight as infantry.
They did, supported by 100 tanks, but they could not take the high ground above Bourlon,
and the German counterattacks were successful and even recovered 100 of their captured guns.
So the week came to an end with the heavy fighting at Bourlon Wood still in progress,
and the British unable to push ahead.
But something big came from Cambrai - generals on both sides saw that tanks - properly deployed
- could have a big impact in battle, particularly in breaking through supposedly impregnable
barbed wire, though the combined use of artillery, infantry, tanks, and aircraft which was in
play here certainly had perhaps more impact.
And the Germans learned to deal with the tanks fairly quickly.
In “A World Undone”, there’s a record from a German Leutnant about it.
“Some of the boys discovered they could stop the tanks by throwing a hand grenade
into the manhole at the top.
Once this was known, the boys realized there was a blind spot - that the machine guns couldn’t
reach every point around the tank...
I was shocked and felt very sorry for those fellows in the tanks, because there was no
escape for them.
Once a man was on top of the tank it was doomed to failure...”
There was also more news from the east, in Russia.
On the 19th, the Bolsheviks asked for an immediate armistice on all fronts.
On the 21st, they dismissed army commander in chief, for refusing to negotiate an armistice.
That day Lenin authorized front line troops to negotiate peace with the enemy and at the
end of the week issued a decree to further disband the army.
Now, in Petrograd, the British and American embassies had not been attacked in the revolution,
but they had been basically cut off from the outside world, telegrams, mail, and couriers
being blocked by the Bolsheviks.
This week, as the ice and snow of winter began in earnest, 35 Americans, along with many
members of the Red Cross, who had simply quit because of the horrors of the past two weeks,
boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway heading east.
For the British colony in Petrograd, however, Leon Trotsky refused exit permits because
of the arrest and imprisonment in England of two Bolsheviks for spreading anti-war propaganda.
In Moscow the fighting had been even bloodier than in Petrograd.
The officer cadets there were forewarned about the fate of the Petrograd cadets last week
and took strong defensive positions in the Kremlin.
It took ten days and a death toll in the thousands to beat them, and those that surrendered were
victims of horrible atrocities.
As for that immediate armistice, new French Prime Minister George Clemenceau responded
that his policy is “war, nothing but war.”
Also, the following day, British PM David Lloyd George had some serious words for President
Woodrow Wilson’s emissary Colonel House.
See, American army leader John Pershing’s hope of having a million trained American
soldiers in France by the summer of 1918 was not looking so good.
Recent calculations had reduced the number to 525,000 by May.
But the US didn’t have the shipping tonnage to supply and feed them all, and possibly
wouldn’t until 1919 (Gilbert).
There had been logistical incompetence - some American supply ships were reaching France
with less than half of their cargo space being used.
Lloyd George told House “...I should put the facts quite frankly to you, because there
is a danger that you might think you can work up your army at leisure, and that it does
not matter whether your troops are there in 1918 or 1919.
But I want you to understand that it might make the most vital difference.”
Still, the British were advancing without great losses in Palestine at the moment.
By the 19th, they’ve reached the hills of Judea, and are 10 km from Jerusalem.
General Edmund Allenby’s army had made good advances, sure, but he did have to rein in
and reorganize his forces.
And the Ottoman’s Yildirim Army Group - or Thunderbolt Army Group - that had been diverted
from Mesopotamia to Palestine, was not only German inspired and trained, in - among other
things - storm troop tactics.
It was led by none other than Erich von Falkenhayn, who seems to be absolutely everywhere this
war.
Falkenhayn now had the rank of Mushir, or Field Marshal, in the Ottoman army.
His counter attacks in late November against Allenby’s men failed, but he was preparing
to face off against Allenby over Jerusalem.
One other thing that he and other German officers would do over the winter, that I’ll jump
ahead and mention now, was help prevent Djemal Pasha, in his capacity as governor of Greater
Syria, from carrying out the forced removal of Jews from Palestine.
Djemal had ordered the evacuation on much the same lines as the Armenian Genocide.
There was a single death of note in the Middle East this week.
Okay, two weeks ago, British General Sir Stanley Maude routed the Ottomans at Tikrit on the
Tigris, taking lots of war materiel.
Even with the Russian army collapse and revolution freeing up a lot of Ottoman troops for attacks
on Maude’s forces, they were still in good position.
They had extended their supply lines so that they had a truly modern transport system from
Basra to Baghdad.
Irrigation and flood control measures had managed the river flows; marauding Arabs on
communication lines had been quelled by pacification and slaughter, and the campaign had pushed
ever further up the Tigris, Euphrates, and Diyala Rivers.
But this week, Maude died of cholera.
Sir William Marshall took over command and Maude’s final instruction was, “carry
on”.
And the week ends, with fighting in Palestine, a plethora of tanks at Cambrai, the Russians
demanding an end to fighting, and down in German East Africa, a force of 1,000 Germans
and Askari surrender to the British Southeast of Chivata.
You know, it might not seem like it, but in several ways this was a pivotal week of the
war.
Obviously, the largest scale deployment of tanks, but also the evolving use of combined
aircraft, infantry, artillery, and tanks.
That is a big part of modern warfare, and we haven’t seen a whole lot of it so far
in the war, but the Allies are starting to put it together.
But it might be too late.
Russia asked for an armistice and it looks like they’re going to leave the war, which
would free up thousands upon thousands of German troops to head west, and the US troops
don’t seem like they’re going to be there in time for that.
What could the British do?
Well, they’d just have to do as Maude instructed on his deathbed, “Carry on”.
If you want to learn more about the British Tank Corps at the Battle of Cambrai, check
out our episode from the Tank Museum Bovington right here.
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