Original photo-etched ordnance survey map showing the terrain and area covered during the capture of Mt St Quentin from August 31st to September 1st 1918 by the Australian Corps of the Fourth Army during the One Hundred Day Offensive on the Western Front.
Operations for the 31st August are delineated in Red showing the positions of all the Battalions; and in Green for the following day, 1st September. The participating Brigades are shown in various hachures.
The advance on Peronne in 1918 was a critical operation primarily carried out by the Australian Corps under the leadership of Lt Gen John Monash. The offensive succeeded in capturing the strongly fortified French town of Peronne from the German forces with battle raging between the 29th of August and the 3rd of September. The victory included the capture of Mont St Quentin and was hailed by Rawlinson, the head of the Fourth Army, as the finest single feat of the war!
Peronne was a key German defensive stronghold on the Somme River, surrounded by water moats and fortified ramparts. Initial attempts to take the town directly from the south on 29th August had failed. After two days of intense fighting on the 31st of August and the 1st September the Australian Corps captured the hill of Mount St Quentin which overlooked Peronne. Its capture was necessary to advance the attack on Peronne. Three Australian Divisions the 2nd, 3rd and 5th, participated in the capture. These included the 5th, 6th, 10th,11th and 14th Brigades.
The 14th and 15th Australian Brigades then attacked Peronne from the north, crossing the Somme and moved through the town clearing it street-by-street. Its capture on the 2nd September forced the Germans to retreat to the Hindenburg Line, their final and main line of defence.
The Australian Corp under the command of General Lt Gen. John Monash executed this daring, quick manoeuvre battle rather than a slow, traditional assault, despite his troops being severely depleted and exhausted following the hard month of warfare. The battle was costly. 17000 Australians were involved and approximately 3000 were killed or wounded. As a consequence of this battle the strain was so severe that a brief rare mutiny occurred within the 59th Battalion on 11th September when men refused orders after the continuous fighting. The battle is commemorated by the 2nd Australian Division Memorial at Mont St Quentin.
The results of incredible feats of bravery and guile by the Fourth Army continued breaking through the seemingly impregnable Hindenburg Line contributing to the ultimate Allied victory and Armistice on the 11th November 1918. The 1918 advances were notable for the massive co-ordinated use of over 400 tanks, artillery and other combined arms tactics, chiefly planned by Sir John Monash. This form of warfare employed by the Fourth Army, had transformed the war from static trench fighting to mobile warfare.
The final battles fought by the Fourth Army early in November were near Le Cateau, ironically the site of the battle in 1914 that had begun the war.
This is one of the maps compiled to illustrate The Story of the Fourth Army Battles of the Hundred Days written by Major General Sir Archibald Montgomery, and an Officer of the final campaign to end WWI.
Britain’s Fourth Army under Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson, was the force that bore much of the brunt of the campaign called the Hundred Days – the great counter attack beginning on August 8th 1918 which finally forced the German command to sue for the Armistice that came into effect on November 11th, ending the Great War in the West. Germany’s commander Gen. Paul von Hindenburg called August 8th the black day of the German army in this war and it was indeed the beginning of the end. The high tide of Ludendorff’s Spring Offensives had been halted just before the vital Cathedral city and road and rail junction of Amiens, and on August 8th, spearheaded by Australian troops and a strong force of tanks, the Allies hit back. New tactics had at last been learned after the futile offensives of 1915, 1916, and 1917, and the Allied troops moved forward under the cover of creeping barrages in small, fast-moving groups tasked to achievable bite and hold operations. When resistance stiffened the attack would be broken off and renewed on another part of the line. By such means the seemingly impregnable Hindenburg Line – which made use of canals and tunnels to form a mighty defence barrier – was rapidly broken and the offensive passed into the open country to the East. The final battles fought by the Fourth Army early in November were near Le Cateau, ironically the site of the battle in 1914 that had begun the war.
In WWI the Western Front was the main theatre of combat, a 700-kilometre line of trenches and fortifications stretching from the Swiss border to the North Sea. Much of the front-line encompassed France and Belgium’s vital industrial regions and, at times parts of Southern Germany. Between 1914 and 1918 this area was the war’s most critical area of fighting defined by the horrors of trench warfare with immense casualty rates, and for most of the war, a ‘brutal stalemate’ between the Allies and Germany.
The Front was characterised by five things:
Trench warfare – where both sides ‘dug in’ creating a vast network of trenches allowing both sides to hold ground leading to a war of attrition
Industrialised warfare – which included tanks, aircraft, advanced artillery and the extensive use of machine guns
Chemical warfare – tear gas, chlorine and mustard gas was used by both sides. The use of these was prohibited in the Geneva Convention in 1925
Disease – with the unsanitary conditions in the trench’s disease carried by rodents and water were rife, contributing to many unnecessary deaths
No Man’s Land – the devastated and dangerous space between the opposing forces, the name of which is indelibly linked with the futility of this War.
Major battles included the Battle of the Marne in 1914 which halted the German’s Schlieffen Plan preventing the early fall of Paris. The Battle of the Verdun in 1916, a ten-month battle designed to bleed France white resulting in over 700,000 casualties. The Battle of the Somme in 1916 which was an Allied offensive known for having 1 million casualties including over 57,000 British casualties on the first day alone. The Third Battle of Ypres and Passchendaele in 1917 famous for horrific mud and heavy losses with limited gains. The German Spring Offensive in 1918 which was Germany’s final attempt at victory before the arrival of American troops which nearly broke Allied lines, and the Hundred Days Offensive in 1918 which was the Allies final offensive that broke German lines and forced the November 11th Armistice.
