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1918 German pen and ink drawing of the road to Cambrai, France. Two smaller trees seem to serve as the good and bad thief on either side of the crucified Jesus Christ.
Chosen Boy, a 1918 watercolor by Paul Klee. From Paul Klee: Early and Late Years: 1894-1940. © 2013 Moeller Fine Art
German Minnenwerfer (Mine Thrower) Trench Mortar crew with their officer. The reverse is dated November 2, 1918, nine days before the Armistice.
Pen and ink drawing on a German field postcard of a field hospital on the Lens-Arras road.
Map of the Northwestern Front from March 21 to August 21, 1918. Despite the caption, the map shows primarily the German offensives against the British sector, Operations Michael and Georgette. From The War of the Nations Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings. © Copyrighted 1919 by the New York Times Company
"At eleven o'clock on 23 August, I had just dropped off to sleep when I was woken by loud knocking on the door. An orderly had come with marching orders. All day, the rolling and stamping of unusually heavy artillery fire had blown across the front, and had reminded us on the exercise grounds, over our lunch and over games of cards, not to be too hopeful as far as the further duration of this rest period was concerned. We had coined an onomatopoeic front-line expression for this distant sound of cannons: 'It's whumping.'We hurriedly got packed up and were on the road to Cambrai during a cloudburst." ((1), more)
"Anyhow, we're scrapping like dogs,like gamecockswith masters relentlesslyand furiously betting one anotherand themselves into frenzy:when it's over, one'll be ruined,and the other no better off.And their birds will have slashed each otherand bled to death . . ." ((2), more)
"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." ((3), more)
"I drew up my men in the sunken road, and gave orders to advance in two waves. 'Hundred yards apart. I myself shall be between the first wave and the second.'It was our last storm. How many times over the last few years we had advanced into the setting sun in a similar frame of mind! Les Eparges, Guillemont, St-Pierre-Vaast, Langemarck, Passchendaele, Mœuvres, Vraucourt, Mory! Another gory carnival beckoned." ((4), more)
"Next to attack was Mangin, with an opening move on 17 August, developing into a full and very successful local assault between the Aisne and the Oise on the 20th. A further assault by the British 3rd Army opened on the 23rd, followed by a second combined Rawlinson and Debeney attack which in the event achieved little. Yet another British attack, by the 1st Army on the northern end of the Cambrai to the Aisne Hindenburg Line, opened on 26 August and was complemented by renewed vigorous pressure by Mangin at the southern end, forcing the Germans to withdraw from positions carefully prepared for the winter." ((5), more)
(1) 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, 1918. He 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. In the summer of 1918, 250,000 American soldiers were arriving on the Western Front each month. French and British production of weapons — including tanks and aircraft — supplied the Allied armies, and far outpaced German production. Allied Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch kept up constant attacks on the German line from mid-July on. The 1917 Battle of Cambrai was the first significant tank battle, a British victory, the gains of which were lost to German counter-attacks in subsequent days.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 276, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(2) Stanza from 'Gamecocks' a poem by Edmond Adam, dated May 14, 1918. Wounded on August 21, 1918, the author died on the 24th after receiving the Légion d'honneur.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, pp. 235–235, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(3) 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
(4) Excerpt from German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger's memoir Storm of Steel writing of a German attack on August 24, 1918. Jünger was wounded on the third day of Germany's 1918 Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, in March, 1918, 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. It was Jünger's last battle of the war, as he was seriously wounded, shot through the lung, later in the day. He survives, continues to fight, and eventually, with help from his men, escapes capture, ending in a German hospital the next day. There he resumes reading Lawrence Sterne's Tristam Shandy. Jünger was awarded the Pour le Mérite on September 22.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 280, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(5) Summary of Allied attacks after Battle of Amiens, begun on August 8, 1918 through August 26. French General Charles Mangin had struck the first blow in July in the Second Battle of the Marne, to begin reducing the Marne Salient, eliminating it entirely with subsequent attacks. In the Battle of Amiens, Generals Henry Rawlinson commanding the British 4th Army and Marie-Eugène Debeney the French 1st Army had driven the Germans back 12 miles, and continued their attacks later in the month.
Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-18 by Anthony Clayton, page 173, copyright © Anthony Clayton 2003, publisher: Cassell, publication date: 2005
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