German Minnenwerfer (Mine Thrower) Trench Mortar crew with their officer. The reverse is dated November 2, 1918, nine days before the Armistice.
"In the afternoon there was an officers' meeting, at which we were told that the following night we were to take up a position of readiness to the right of the main Cambrai—Bapaume road, not far from Beugny. We were warned of the danger from a new breed of rapid, agile tanks.I paraded my company in battle order in a small apple orchard. Standing under an apple tree, I addressed a few words to the men, who were drawn up in front of me in a horseshoe arrangement. They looked serious and manly. There wasn't much to say. In the course of the last few days, and with a kind of sweepingness that is only to be explained by the fact that an army is not only men under arms, but also men fused with a sense of common purpose, probably every one of them had come to understand that we were on our uppers. With every attack, the enemy came forward with more powerful means; his blows were swifter and more devastating. Everyone knew we could no longer win. But we would stand firm."
Excerpt from German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger's memoir Storm of Steel. Jünger was wounded on the third day of Germany's 1918 Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, in March, and returned to his regiment on June 4. The last German offensive of the war, the Champagne-Marne Offensive, ended on July 17. The counter-offensive that would end with Allied victory began the next day. The 'new breed of rapid, agile tanks' was the British Whippet tank, first used on August 8 in the Battle of Amiens.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, pp. 276–277, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
1918-08-24, 1918, August, Cambrai, Bapaume, trench mortar crew
