Careless Disasters: Allied Relations in 1918

Kempshall, Chris

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-89465-2_6

Chris Kempshall²

216 Accesses

Abstract

In this chapter, Kempshall examines what he claims are the most important periods for the Entente alliance during the First World War. He initially analyses the aftermath of the French Mutinies of 1917 and discusses how they changed the mindset of French soldiers. He then provides in-depth examinations into allied relations during the German Spring Offensive of 1918, and shows how French esteem for their British ally collapsed following the retreat after 21 March. This chapter then shows how French appreciation for US efforts was offset by the high casualties incurred in battle. It concludes with an examination of allied relations and celebrations on 11 November 1918 and the state of the alliance by the end of the war.

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Notes

1.
Speech to the French Department of Deputies, November 1917 taken from; Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (London: Belknap, 2005), p. 402.
2.
Ian F. W. Beckett, Timothy Bowman, and Mark Connelly, The British Army and the First World War, Armies of the Great War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 308–9.
3.
For an in-depth examination of the events of 1917, see Stevenson’s masterful book; David Stevenson, 1917: War, Peace, and Revolution (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
4.
Peter Hart, 1918: A Very British Victory (London: Phoenix, 2009), p. 229.
5.
Hart, p. 28.
6.
D. Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 201–2.
7.
Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War, p. 416.
8.
Doughty, p. 416.
9.
Hart, 1918: A Very British Victory, pp. 26 and 33.
10.
For more on the SWC, see: Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Victory Through Coalition: Britain and France During the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Chapter 7; David F. Trask, The United States in the Supreme War Council (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961).
11.
Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War, p. 399.
12.
Jean-Yves Le Naour, 1918: L’étrange Victoire (Paris: Perrin, 2016), Chapter 10.
13.
Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War, p. 368.
14.
Stevenson, p. 441.
15.
J. Williams, Mutiny 1917 (London: Heinemann, 1962), p. 6.
16.
Anthony Clayton, Paths of Glory: The French Army, 1914–1918 (London: Cassell Military, 2003), p. 136. For a more detailed examination of the events and specific failures of Nivelle’s offensive, see: Clayton, Chapter 7; Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War, Chapter 7; Jean-Yves Le Naour, 1917: La Paix Impossible (Paris: Perrin, 2015), Chapters 3 and 4.
17.
Because of the embargo placed upon the records of 1917 by French authorities, it was not until the 1960s that it was possible to begin fully analysing the mutinies and to dispel some of the myths surrounding them. However, for a thorough examination of the mutinies and mutineers themselves, G. Pedroncini, Les Mutineries de 1917 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967) remains the seminal text on the subject.
18.
Leonard V. Smith, ‘Remobilizing the Citizen-Soldier through the French Army Mutinies of 1917’, in State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War, ed. John Horne (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), p. 158.
19.
Smith, p. 146.
20.
Smith, p. 144.
21.
Adam Zientek, ‘Surtout Que Personne Ne Boive: The Curiously Sober Mutiny of the 129th Regiment of Infantry’ (Violence in French History, Trinity College Dublin, 2009).
22.
Smith, ‘Remobilizing the Citizen-Soldier through the French Army Mutinies of 1917’, pp. 144 and 150.
23.
Robert B. Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms; America and France in the Great War (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003), p. 84.
24.
Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War, p. 404.
25.
David French, ‘Watching the Allies: British Intelligence and the French Mutinies in 1917’, Intelligence and National Security 6, no. 3 (1991): pp. 573–4.
26.
French, p. 574.
27.
There were multiple obstacles facing this attempt, however, foremost amongst them the dual political implications of such an approach. Firstly, the investigation would have to be carried out by someone who was seen as amenable by both the French and the British. Initially, this role was to be filled by Lieutenant-General Henry Wilson, a recognized francophile; but this same reputation made him ‘suspect in Haig’s eyes’ whilst his ‘close association with Nivelle’ meant that General Pétain was equally reluctant to deal with him. French, p. 575.
28.
French, p. 576.
29.
French, p. 584.
30.
C. A. Hartley, ‘Typescript Diary’, 1917 1916, IWM: DOCS - 87/54/1, Imperial War Museum, 2 July 1917.
31.
Gerard J. De Groot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 92–6.
32.
Douglas Gill and Gloden Dallas, ‘Mutiny at Etaples Base in 1917’, Past & Present, no. 69 (1975): 88–112.
33.
David Englander, ‘Soldiering and Identity: Reflections on the Great War’, War in History 1, no. 3 (1994): 127.
34.
Englander, p. 126.
35.
Englander, pp. 138–9.
36.
Gill and Dallas, ‘Mutiny at Etaples Base in 1917’, p. 99.
37.
David Englander, ‘Discipline and Morale in the British Army, 1917–1918’, in State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War, ed. John Horne, Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare 3 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 129.
38.
Englander, ‘Soldiering and Identity: Reflections on the Great War’, pp. 131–2. There were two sorts of Field Punishment in the British army; Field Punishment No. 1 consisted of the soldier being ‘attached to a fixed object’ (usually a gun carriage/wheel or a post in the ground) for two hours a day in three out of any consecutive days, up to a total of 21 days in all. Field Punishment No. 2 was essentially the same but ‘the prisoner was not liable to be attached to a fixed object’. Anthony Babington, For the Sake of Example: Capital Courts Martial, 1914–1920 (London: Paladin, 1985, 1983), p. 113.
39.
A. J. P. Taylor, The First World War: An Illustrated History (London: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 140.
40.
Gill and Dallas, ‘Mutiny at Etaples Base in 1917’.
41.
Smith, ‘Remobilizing the Citizen-Soldier Through the French Army Mutinies of 1917’, pp. 152–3.
42.
Jean Nicot, ‘Perceptions Des Allies Par Les Combattants En 1918 d’apres Les Archives Du Contrôle Postal’, Revue Historique Des Armées, no. 3 (1988): pp. 46–8.
43.
Leonard V. Smith, Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Annette Becker, France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 77–84.
44.
D. Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall; Victory and Defeat in 1918 (London: Allen Lane, 2011), p. 31.
45.
Stevenson, p. 34.
46.
Stevenson, pp. 35–6. Stevenson explains that whilst German divisions tended to be smaller than the British and French equivalents, they were able to achieve tactical manpower superiority on the Western Front by careful positioning of their forces.
47.
Stevenson, p. 39.
48.
Stevenson, p. 38.
49.
Hart, 1918: A Very British Victory, p. 61.
50.
Hart, p. 65; Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Foch in Command: The Forging of a First World War General, 2014, p. 297.
51.
Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall; Victory and Defeat in 1918, pp. 53–4.
52.
Greenhalgh, Foch in Command, p. 297.
53.
Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall; Victory and Defeat in 1918, pp. 54–5. Total losses for both sides on 21 March were largely even, but, as Stevenson explains, German wounded would likely fight again whilst captured British would not.
54.
‘11 Battalion Durham Light Infantry (Pioneers)’, n.d., WO 95/2108/2, National Archives, Kew, 22 March 1918.
55.
Greenhalgh, Foch in Command, p. 297.
56.
Sir Douglas Haig, G. D. Sheffield, and J. M. Bourne, Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters, 1914–1918 (London: Phoenix, 2006), p. 390.
57.
Le Naour, 1918, p. 155.
58.
Le Naour, p. 155.
59.
Greenhalgh, Foch in Command, p. 298.
60.
Le Naour, 1918, pp. 162–3.
61.
Private Robert Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, 1921, IWM: DOCS - PP/MCR/C48, Imperial War Museum, 23 March 1918.
62.
Cude, 23 March 1918.
63.
Cude, 23 March 1918.
64.
Cude, 23 March 1918. Cude seemed to direct a good deal of admiring sympathy towards the Curé, whom he describes as ‘a brave man’, and was reluctant to see this man left behind for the Germans.
65.
Cude, 24 March 1918.
66.
Cude, 25 March 1918; ‘7 Battalion Buffs (East Kent Regiment)—War Diary’, n.d., WO 95/2049/1, National Archives, Kew, 25 March 1918.
67.
Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, 25 March 1918.
68.
Cude, 25 March 1918.
69.
Cude, 26 March 1918.
70.
Cude, 29 March 1918.
71.
Corporal Henry Halgate Storm, A Soldier’s Diary of World War One—France 1917–1919, ed. A. Margaret Bok (USA, 2006), p. 116.
72.
Storm, p. 117.
73.
SHD - 16 N 1421, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La VIe Armée’, 1918, Section entitled: ‘Impressions of the Commission’ 26 March 1918, 16 N 1421, Archives de l’Armeé de Terre; SHD - 16 N 1421, Section entitled: ‘Impressions of the Commission’ 28 March 1918.
74.
SHD - 16 N 1422, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La VIe Armée’, 1918, 16 N 1422, Archives de l’Armeé de Terre, all from reports dated 7 April 1918.
75.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Report dated 7 April 1918.
76.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Report 13 April 1918.
77.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Report 12 April 1918.
78.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Report 11 April 1918.
79.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Section ‘England and Dominions’ from report dated 14 April 1918.
80.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Section ‘Relations with Allies’ from report dated 20 April 1918.
81.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Report dated 20 April 1918.
82.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Section ‘Relations with Allies’ Report dated 21 April 1918.
83.
Nicot, ‘Perceptions Des Allies Par Les Combattants En 1918 d’apres Les Archives Du Contrôle Postal’, pp. 49–50.
84.
SHD - 16 N 1430, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La VIIe Armée’, 1918, 16 N 1430, Archives de l’Armeé de Terre, ‘Report Gare Régulatrice’, 11 April 1918.
85.
SHD - 16 N 1430, ‘Report Gare Régulatrice’, 11 April 1918.
86.
Paul Maze, A Frenchman in Khaki (Eastbourne: Naval and Military Press, 2004), pp. 293–319.
87.
Henri Désagneaux, Jean Desagneaux, and Godfrey J. Adams, A French Soldier’s War Diary, 1914–1918 (Morley: Elmfield Press, 1975), p. 52.
88.
Désagneaux, Desagneaux, and Adams, p. 57.
89.
Désagneaux, Desagneaux, and Adams, p. 58.
90.
Elizabeth Greenhalgh, ‘Supreme War Council’, ed. Ute Daniel et al., 1914–1918 Online—International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 2016, https://doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10886.
91.
Greenhalgh discusses the seeming delays in moving designated troops into position for use in the General Reserve at; Greenhalgh, Foch in Command, pp. 298 and 303.
92.
Greenhalgh, p. 304.
93.
Greenhalgh, pp. 305–6.
94.
Greenhalgh, p. 300.
95.
Le Naour, 1918, Chapter 7.
96.
Le Naour, p. 176.
97.
Brigadier the Viscount Dillon CMG DSO, Memories of Three Wars (London: Allan Wingate (Publishers) Ltd., 1951), p. 113.
98.
SHD - 16 N 1415, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La Ve Armée’, 1918, 16 N 1415, Archives de l’Armeé de Terre, Report dated 27 April–3 May 1918.
99.
SHD - 16 N 1422, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La VIe Armée’, Report 17 April 1918.
100.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Report 27 April 1918.
101.
SHD - 16 N 1422, Report 30 April 1918.
102.
Captain W. Graham Wallace, ‘Typescript—“Memoirs of 1914–1918”’, 1935, IWM: DOCS - 86/9/1, Imperial War Museum. This period of Wallace’s diary is not accurately dated beyond the approximate period between the end of March and beginning of April.
103.
Wallace, Ibid.
104.
F. Mulliss, ‘Typescript Diary—Recollections 1914–1918’, 1918 1914, IWM: DOCS - 98/33/1, Imperial War Museum. Around May–June 1918.
105.
Wallace, ‘Typescript—“Memoirs of 1914–1918”’, dated in late March as in the previous Wallace quotations.
106.
SHD - 16 N 1422, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La VIe Armée’, Report 1 May 1918.
107.
SHD - 16 N 1415, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La Ve Armée’.
108.
SHD - 16 N 1415, Report 1 May 1918.
109.
SHD - 16 N 1415, Report 25 May 1918.
110.
SHD - 16 N 1415, Report 6 May 1918. Letter redacted.
111.
SHD - 16 N 1415, Report 15 May 1918.
112.
SHD - 16 N 1415, Report 17 May 1918.
113.
Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, roughly dated to 3 August 1917 and 1 September 1917. Also as Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: Allen Lane, 1998), p. 343, describes; British soldiers on a shilling a day in 1917 reacted with indignation when they came into contact behind the lines with colonial troops on five or six times as much (hence ‘fuckin’ five bobbers’ as a derogatory term for dominion soldiers).
114.
Captain W. H. Bloor, ‘Typescript Diary’, 1917 1915, IWM: DOCS - 99/22/1, Imperial War Museum, 26 July 1917.
115.
Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms; America and France in the Great War, pp. 168–9.
116.
C. R. Keller, ‘Private Papers (TS)’, 1919 1914, IWM: DOCS - 11876, Imperial War Museum, p. 81.
117.
Keller, p. 83. Keller later suggests that this story by the US soldiers was concocted to cover up the fact they had tried to threaten some local French women who had seen them off with French police.
118.
Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, 23 January 1918.
119.
Wallace, ‘Typescript—“Memoirs of 1914–1918”’, August–September 1918.
120.
Edward C. Lukens and Englar McClure Rouzer, A Blue Ridge Memoir … and The Last Drive and Death of Major G. H. H. Emory (Baltimore: Sun Print, 1922), pp. 15–16.
121.
For information regarding the formation, motivations, and limitations of the CEP, see: F. R. D. Meneses, ‘“All of Us Are Looking Forward to Leaving”: The Censored Correspondence of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in France, 1917–18’, European History Quarterly 30, no. 3 (July 2000): 333–55.
122.
Harry Gore, ‘Transcript Memoir’, 1930s, IWM: Docs - 01/36/1, Imperial War Museum, Dated April 1918.
123.
Captain L. Gameson, ‘Typescript Memoir’, 1923 1922, IWM: DOCS - PP/MCR/C47 & P395 - 396 & Con Shelf, Imperial War Museum, dated September 1918.
124.
Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall; Victory and Defeat in 1918, pp. 85–6; David R. Woodward, The American Army and the First World War, Armies of the Great War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 240–1.
125.
Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall; Victory and Defeat in 1918, p. 85.
126.
Alexander Watson, ‘German Spring Offensives 1918’, ed. Ute Daniel et al., 1914–1918 Online—International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 2016, https://doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10911.
127.
Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall; Victory and Defeat in 1918, p. 85.
128.
Stevenson, p. 84.
129.
Stevenson, p. 86.
130.
Shipley Thomas, The History of the AEF (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1920), pp. 89–91; Hélène Harter, Les États-Unis Dans La Grande Guerre (Paris: Tallandier, 2017), pp. 304–7; Woodward, The American Army and the First World War, pp. 241–9.
131.
Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall; Victory and Defeat in 1918, pp. 105–6.
132.
‘Historique Du 131ème Régiment d’infanterie’, 1920, SHD, https://argonnaute.parisnanterre.fr/ark:/14707/a011403267961qsJiRj; Arthur W. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine—The Story of New York’s Colored Volunteers (New York: Covici Friede, 1936), pp. 168–171.
133.
Chester D. Heywood, Negro Combat Troops in the World War—The Story of the 371st Infantry (Commonwealth Press, 1928), p. 76.
134.
Jean de Pierrefeu, French Headquarters, 1915–1918 (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1924), p. 272, https://archive.org/details/frenchheadquarte00pieruoft.
135.
Joseph T. Dickman, The Great Crusade—A Narrative of the World War (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1927), p. 44.
136.
SHD - 16 N 1430, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La VIIe Armée’, Report: Front – Etranger: 2e–8e April 1918.
137.
SHD - 16 N 1430, Report: Front—Etranger: 2e–8e April 1918.
138.
‘Operations Report of French Military Mission with American Forty-Second Division’, United States Army in the World War 5, no. 170 (17 July 1918), cited by: Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms; America and France in the Great War, p. 233.
139.
There are numerous references within the records of US soldiers for joint celebrations on 4 and 14 July including: Alta Andrews Sharp, War Diary, n.d., p. 91; Dickman, The Great Crusade—A Narrative of the World War, pp. 66–7 and 76; Chaplain F. C. Reynolds and Chaplain W. M. F. McLaughlin, 115th US Infantry—The World War (Baltimore, USA: The Read Taylor Co., 1920), p. 79.
140.
William F. Clarke, Over There with O’Ryan’s Roughnecks (Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, n.d.), p. 44.
141.
Lawrence Westerman and James Pritzker, ‘Transcript Oral Interview with Lawrence Westerman’, 18 February 1995, USAHEC WWI 8175 (33rd Division), US Army Heritage and Education Centre, p. 23.
142.
Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms; America and France in the Great War, pp. 223–4.
143.
David R. Woodward, Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations, 1917–1918 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), pp. 181–2.
144.
Woodward, p. 182. The Australians bore the brunt of the allied losses in capturing Le Hemel losing 51 officers and 724 other ranks whilst the Americans lost 6 officers and 128 other ranks.
145.
Woodward, The American Army and the First World War, pp. 220–1.
146.
Woodward, p. 276.
147.
Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War, p. 420.
148.
Stevenson, p. 441.
149.
Jonathan Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918, 2014, p. 22.
150.
Ferguson, The Pity of War, p. 290.
151.
Ralf Raths, ‘From the Bremerwagen to the A7V: German Tank Production and Armoured Warfare, 1916–1918’, in Genesis, Employment, Aftermath: First World War Tanks and the New Warfare, 1900–1945, ed. Alaric Searle, Modern Military History 1 (Solihull, West Midlands, England: Helion & Company Limited, 2015).
152.
Lieutenant Ivan R. S. Harrison, ‘Manuscript Memoir’, 1925 1920, IWM: DOCS - P323, Imperial War Museum, mid-July 1918.
153.
Harrison, mid-July 1918.
154.
Harrison, 18 July 1918.
155.
Harrison, 24 July 1918.
156.
Harrison, 27 July 1918.
157.
Gameson, ‘Typescript Memoir’, end of July–beginning of August 1918.
158.
Group Captain F. C. Gillman, ‘Manuscript Diary’, 1918, 20 July 1918, IWM: DOCS - 88/6/1, Imperial War Museum.
159.
Gameson, ‘Typescript Memoir’, 3 August 1918.
160.
The ‘Hundred Days’ moniker was popularised as a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte; Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front, p. 1.
161.
William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (London: Little, Brown, 2009), pp. 519–20.
162.
Philpott, pp. 522–3.
163.
Philpott, p. 524.
164.
Dickman, The Great Crusade—A Narrative of the World War, p. 140.
165.
For a detailed overview of these battles and the logistical and operational issues surrounding their build-ups, see: Woodward, The American Army and the First World War, Chapters 17 and 18.
166.
Within the postal censor records for the French IV Army, the Americans were given their own subsection to tally up the number of letters of praise for them. SHD - 16 N 1409, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La IVe Armée’, 1918, 16 N 1409, Archives de l’Armeé de Terre.
167.
SHD - 16 N 1409, Reports dated: 17, 19, 21, and 25 September.
168.
SHD - 16 N 1409, Report dated 25 September.
169.
Woodward, The American Army and the First World War, p. 314.
170.
Mark E. Grotelueschen, The AEF Way of War: The American Army and Combat in World War I, 2010, p. 50.
171.
Grotelueschen, pp. 51–3.
172.
US Army, United States Army in the World War 1917–1919, vol. 3: Training and Use of American Units with the British and French (Centre of Military History, Washington, DC: United States Army, 1989), p. 294.
173.
Some personal accounts on the Meuse-Argonne Offensive can be found in: James E. Pollard, 47th US Infantry: A History (MI, USA: Seeman & Peters, 1919), Chapter 4; Emil B. Gansser, History of the 126th Infantry in the War with Germany (Grand Rapids, MI: 126th Infantry Association, 1920), pp. 165–97; Clarence J. Minick, ‘Diary (Ms)’, n.d., pp. 100–108, 80.58.1, National WW1 Museum; Stephen A. Banks and Corporal Elmer Dewey, Doing My Duty: Corporal Elmer Dewey—One National Guard Doughboy’s Experiences During the Pancho Villa Punitive Campaign and World War I (Springfield, VA: S. A. Banks, 2011), pp. 166–96.
174.
Grotelueschen, The AEF Way of War, p. 3.
175.
Ralph L. Williams, ‘The Luck of a Buck’, 1984, pp. 159–166, USAHEC WWI 5499 (2nd Division – Folder 3), US Army Heritage and Education Centre.
176.
Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914–1918 (UK: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 534.
177.
Beckett, Bowman, and Connelly, The British Army and the First World War, p. 365.
178.
Beckett, Bowman, and Connelly, pp. 365–6.
179.
Accounts of this attack can be found in: Clarke, Over There with O’Ryan’s Roughnecks, pp. 80–9; Robert Stewart Sutliffe, Seventy-First New York in the World War (The United States, 1922), pp. 298–353.
180.
Mitchell A. Yockelson, Borrowed Soldiers: Americans Under British Command, 1918, Campaigns and Commanders, v. 17 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), p. 172.
181.
Yockelson, p. 173.
182.
Beckett, Bowman, and Connelly, The British Army and the First World War, p. 369.
183.
Donald F. Biggs, William Zimmerman Jr., and Watterson Stealey, eds., Illinois in the World War—An Illustrated History of the Thirty-Third Division (Chicago: States Publications Society, 1921), pp. 115–118 and 222.
184.
Herbert Barry et al., eds., Squadron a—A History of Its First Fifty Years 1889–1939 (New York: Association of Ex-Members of Squadron A, 1939), p. 241.
185.
Gillman, ‘Manuscript Diary’, 7 September 1918.
186.
Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, 8 September 1918.
187.
Cude, 13 September 1918.
188.
Cude, 25 September 1918.
189.
D. D Dunnet, ‘Manuscript Letters’, 1918, IWM: DOCS - 78/59/1, Imperial War Museum, 26 September 1918. Dunnet’s use of French in his diary entry is an affectation that several British soldiers seem to have acquired at various points in the war.
190.
Percy Arthur Glock, ‘Typescript Memoir—“Notes from 1914–1919”’, n.d., IWM: DOCS - 99/84/1, Imperial War Museum, August–September 1918—with post 1918 notation added.
191.
Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, 27 September 1918. For more on the reasons behind the German collapse on the Western Front, see: Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918, Cambridge Military Histories (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), Chapter 6; Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front, Chapter 8.
192.
Stephen A. Banks, Doing My Duty: Corporal Elmer Dewey—One National Guard Doughboy’s Experiences During the Pancho Villa Punitive Campaign and World War I (Springfield, VA: S. A. Banks, 2011), pp. 170–1; Gansser, History of the 126th Infantry in the War With Germany, pp. 84–6.
193.
James T. Duane, Dear Old ‘K’ (Boston, MA: Thomas Todd Co, 1922), p. 32.
194.
Anon, A. Company Tank: ‘Treated 'Em Rough’ 301st Battalion Tank Corps, n.d., p. 56.
195.
SHD - 16 N 1415, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La Ve Armée’, Report dated 2 September 1918.
196.
Gansser, History of the 126th Infantry in the War with Germany, pp. 155–6; Walter Zukowski, ‘Memoirs of a Sergeant’, n.d., p. 45, USAHEC WWI 4419 (32nd Division), US Army Heritage and Education Centre.
197.
Major Alan Johnson, ‘Manuscript Memoir—“Double Survivor”’, 1977, IWM: DOCS - 87/6/1, Imperial War Museum, October 1918. Johnson also reported that the ceremony rapidly descended into a farce as the unveiling of the statue was nearly prevented by the knots the British had tied; and that the speeches by French dignitaries poved to be a source of amusement to the gathered Tommies.
198.
Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, 13 October 1918.
199.
This is discussed in detail by; Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front, Chapter 4.
200.
Godefroy Skelton, ‘Typescript Memoirs’, n.d., IWM: DOCS - 06/46/1, Imperial War Museum, shortly after 13 October 1918.
201.
Cude, ‘Typescript Diary’, 18 October 1918. The town in question was probably Pommereuil, east of Le Cateau, France.
202.
Hugh Tinsley, ‘Manuscript Letters’, 1918, IWM: DOCS - 99/15/1, Imperial War Museum, 18 October 1918.
203.
Wallace, ‘Typescript—“Memoirs of 1914–1918”’, November 1918.
204.
Wallace, November 1918.
205.
SHD - 16 N 1416, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La Ve Armée’, 1918, 16 N 1416, Archives de l’Armeé de Terre, Report 12 October 1918.
206.
SHD - 16 N 1422, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La VIe Armée’, Report 26 September–2 October 1918.
207.
SHD - 16 N 1416, ‘Commissions de Contrôle Postal de La Ve Armée’, Report 1 October 1918.
208.
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Chris Kempshall

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Kempshall, C. (2018). Careless Disasters: Allied Relations in 1918. In: British, French and American Relations on the Western Front, 1914–1918. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89465-2_6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89465-2_6
Published: 17 June 2018
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