On 30 May, all the Australian infantry divisions were united under the corps HQ, for the first time on the Western Front. Its left hand corps was the British III Corps under Lieutenant General Richard Butler, while the Australian Corps under Lieutenant General John Monash held the right flank and linked up with French armies to the south. When the British retreat had ended in April, the headquarters of the British Fourth Army under General Sir Henry Rawlinson had taken over the front astride the Somme. The commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, already had plans in place for an attack near Amiens. The plan called for reducing the Saint-Mihiel salient (which would later see combat in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel) and freeing the railway lines that ran through Amiens from German shellfire. Foch now tried to move the Allies back onto the offensive.įoch disclosed his plan on 23 July, following the allied victory at the Battle of Soissons. The Germans, recognising their untenable position, withdrew from the Marne to the north. The Allied general, General Ferdinand Foch, ordered a counteroffensive which led to victory at the Second Battle of the Marne, following which he was promoted to Marshal of France. īy the end of the Marne-Rheims offensive, the German manpower advantage had been spent and their supplies and troops were exhausted. Subsequent German offensives – Operation Georgette (9–11 April), Operation Blücher-Yorck (27 May), Operation Gneisenau (9 June) and Operation Marne-Rheims (15–17 July) – all made advances elsewhere on the Western Front, but failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough. A final effort was aimed at the town of Amiens, a vital railway junction, but the advance had been halted at Villers-Bretonneux by British and Australian troops on 4 April. Operation Michael was intended to defeat the right wing of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), but a lack of success around Arras ensured the ultimate failure of the offensive. These offensives were intended to translate this advantage into victory. After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with revolutionary-controlled Russia, the Germans were able to transfer hundreds of thousands of men to the Western Front, giving them a significant, if temporary, advantage in manpower and material.
HUNDRED DAYS OFFENSIVE SERIES
On 21 March 1918, the German Army had launched Operation Michael, the first in a series of attacks planned to drive the Allies back along the length of the Western Front. Amiens was one of the first major battles involving armoured warfare. This led Erich Ludendorff to later describe the first day of the battle as " the black day of the German Army". The battle is also notable for its effects on both sides' morale and the large number of surrendering German forces. Allied forces advanced over 11 kilometres (7 mi) on the first day, one of the greatest advances of the war, with Gen Henry Rawlinson's British Fourth Army (with 9 of its 19 divisions supplied by the fast moving Australian Corps of Lt Gen John Monash and Canadian Corps of Lt Gen Arthur Currie) playing the decisive role. The Battle of Amiens, also known as the Third Battle of Picardy ( French: 3ème Bataille de Picardie), was the opening phase of the Allied offensive which began on 8 August 1918, later known as the Hundred Days Offensive, that ultimately led to the end of the First World War.
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