Амиенское сражение: Начало Стодневного наступления Первой мировой войны.

First World War allied offensive operation

The Battle of Amiens, also known as the Third Battle of Picardy , 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. Allied forces advanced over 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) and Gen Marie Eugène Debeney's French First Army playing the decisive role. The battle is also notable for its effects on both sides' morale and the large number of surrendering German forces. This led Erich Ludendorff to later describe the first day of the battle as "the black day of the German Army". Amiens was one of the first major battles involving armoured warfare.

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. 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. These offensives were intended to translate this advantage into victory. 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. 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. Subsequent German offensivesOperation 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. By the end of the Marne Rheims offensive, the German manpower advantage had been spent and their supplies and troops were exhausted. 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. The Germans, recognising their untenable position, withdrew from the Marne to the north. Foch now tried to move the Allies back onto the offensive.

Foch disclosed the plan on 23 July, following the allied victory at the Battle of Soissons. 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. The commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, already had plans in place for an attack near Amiens. 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. 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. On 30 May, all the Australian infantry divisions were united under the corps HQ, for the first time on the Western Front. The Australians had mounted a number of local counter attacks which both revealed the suitability of the open and firm terrain south of the Somme for a larger offensive, and established and refined the methods which were to be used. The mastermind of the plan was Monash, who used the same innovation and mastery of modern technology, in particular tanks, that he had demonstrated five weeks earlier in the Battle of Hamel. Rawlinson had submitted Monash's proposals to Haig in July and Haig had forwarded them to Foch. At a meeting on 24 July, Foch agreed to the plan but insisted that the French First Army, which held the front to the south of the British Fourth Army, should participate. Rawlinson opposed this as his and Monash's plans depended on the large scale use of tanks (now finally available in large numbers) to achieve surprise, by avoiding a preliminary bombardment. The French First Army lacked tanks and would be forced to bombard the German positions before the infantry advance began, thus removing the element of surprise. Eventually, it was agreed that the French would participate, but not launch their attack until 45 minutes after the Fourth Army.

The battle began in dense fog at 4:20 am on 8 August. Under Rawlinson's Fourth Army, the British III Corps attacked north of the Somme, the Australian Corps to the south of the river in the centre of Fourth Army's front, and the Canadian Corps to the south of the Australians. The French 1st Army under General Debeney opened its preliminary bombardment at the same time, and began its advance 45 minutes later, supported by a battalion of 72 Whippet tanks. The British, Australian and Canadian infantry of the Fourth Army sustained about 8,000 casualties, with further losses by tank and air personnel, and French forces. German Army Chief of Staff Paul von Hindenburg noted the Allies' use of surprise and that Allied destruction of German lines of communication had hampered potential German counter attacks by isolating command positions. The German General Erich Ludendorff described the first day of Amiens as the "Schwarzer Tag des deutschen Heeres" (the "black day of the German Army"), not because of the ground lost to the advancing Allies, but because the morale of the German troops had sunk to the point where large numbers of troops began to capitulate. and the initial force of more than 500 tanks that played a large role in the Allied success was reduced to six battle ready tanks within four days. On the Canadian front, congested roads and communication problems prevented the British 32nd Division from being pushed forward rapidly enough to maintain the momentum of the advance. The Chipilly Spur was still in German hands. The Germans on the ridge commanded a wide field of fire to the south of the Somme, and poured devastating machine gun and artillery fire that kept the Australian Corps pinned down across the river at Hamel. The job of taking Chipilly Ridge was ultimately assigned to three battalions of American doughboys from the 33rd U. S. Infantry Division. According to B. J. Omanson, "Their attack took place at 5:30 p. m. and, despite heavy machine gun and artillery fire pouring down on them from Chipilly Ridge, the Americans could not be driven back. They repeatedly pressed the assault until the northern half of the ridge and southern end of nearby Gressaire Wood were taken. Continuing the assault the following day, they took the rest of Gressaire Wood and by day's end were in possession of seven hundred German prisoners, thirty artillery pieces, one aircraft, and more than one hundred machine guns." During the 33rd U. S. Division's assault on Chipilly Ridge, Corporal Jake Allex, a Serbian immigrant from Kosovo, took command of his platoon after all the other officers had been killed. Corporal Allex led them in an attack against a German machine gun nest, during which he personally killed five enemy soldiers and captured fifteen prisoners. For his actions at Chipilly Ridge, Corporal Allex became the second American soldier to be awarded the Medal of Honor during the First World War. On 10 August, there were signs that the Germans were pulling out of the salient from Operation Michael. According to official reports, the Allies had captured nearly 50,000 prisoners and 500 guns by 27 August. Even with the lessened armour the British drove into German positions by 13 August. Field Marshal Haig refused the request of Marshal Foch to continue the offensive, preferring instead to launch a fresh offensive by Byng's Third Army between the Ancre and Scarpe. This offensive, the Second Battle of the Somme, took place 21 August – 3 September 1918.

The Battle of Amiens was a major turning point in the tempo of the war. The Germans had started the war with the Schlieffen Plan before the Race to the Sea slowed movement on the Western Front and the war devolved into trench warfare. The German spring offensive earlier in 1918 had once again given Germany the offensive edge on the Western Front. Armoured support helped the Allies tear a hole through trench lines, weakening once impregnable trench positions: the British Third Army, with no armoured support, had almost no effect on the line, while the Fourth, with fewer than a thousand tanks, broke deep into German territory. The British war correspondent Philip Gibbs noted Amiens' effect on the war's tempo, saying on 27 August that, "the enemy is on the defensive" and, "the initiative of attack is so completely in our hands that we are able to strike him at many different places." Gibbs also credits Amiens with a shift in troop morale, saying, "the change has been greater in the minds of men than in the taking of territory. On our side the army seems to be buoyed up with the enormous hope of getting on with this business quickly" and that, "there is a change also in the enemy's mind. They no longer have even a dim hope of victory on this western front. All they hope for now is to defend themselves long enough to gain peace by negotiation."

On the night of August 8–9, 1918, as Doughboys from the 33rd U. S. Division were beginning their assault on Chipilly Ridge, American war poet Lt. John Allan Wyeth and Lieut. Thomas J. Cochrane were assigned to deliver sealed orders from Division HQ at Molliens au Bois to the Field Headquarters of all three battalions engaged in the attack. The location of each battalion was unknown, but they were believed to be along the northern bank of the Somme, near the village of Sailly le Sec. In his 1928 sonnet sequence This Man's Army, Wyeth described the mission in detail in his six interlinked "Chipilly Ridge sonnets." According to Bradley J. Omanson, "Lt. Wyeth, as it happened, was a cultured man, a recent Princeton graduate in languages and literature, and he rendered his experiences of that night into an accomplished, highly original cycle of six linked sonnets – part of a much longer cycle of over fifty sonnets which covered the entirety of his service in the war. But it is this self contained six sonnet sequence in particular – describing one soldier's stumblings through the metaphoric valley of death – which delves most memorably into the nature of war."

Eight Canadians received the Victoria Cross for actions during the Battle of Amiens: Private John Croak, Corporal Harry Miner, Corporal Herman Good, Corporal Frederick Coppins, Lance Corporal Alexander Picton Brereton, Sgt Raphael Zengel, Lieutenant James Edward Tait and Lieutenant Jean Brillant. Corporal Jake Allex (1887–1959) of the 33rd U. S. Infantry Division was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the capture of Chipilly Ridge. The President of the United States of America, authorised by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Sergeant Swan E. Johnson (ASN: 1386504), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with Company B, 131st Infantry Regiment, 33d Division, A. E. F., at Chipilly Ridge, France, 9 August 1918. His company having been held up by concentrated machine gun and artillery fire, Sergeant Johnson and another soldier went forward and made a reconnaissance, locating a way forward which was protected from direct fire. Although he was badly wounded, Sergeant Johnson returned and led his company along this route, thereby enabling the entire battalion to advance. 12 Aug 1918 Monash was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath by King George V in the field. First time in 200 years a British monarch had done this.