Even now, at the start of the twenty first century,
For all our advances, we still haven't eliminated the scourge of war.
The last hundred years have seen war waged on a greater scale than of any other time in human.
In this new series, my son Dan and I will be examining some of the greatest battles of the twentieth century.
Battles that will shape the world we live in today.
We'll fly to the Pacific to find out how America turned the tide against Japan.
And see what remains of the ravage city of Starling.
We'll go to the Far East to visit the battlefields of Vietnam.
And the frontline of the ongoing conflict in Korea still unresolved to this day.
We'll travel to the Forkland islands seen of the last war on British territory.
Journey to the Middle East to describe battles at the heart of a mighted relationship between Arabs, israelis and the Western.
The twentieth centuries are the most radical transformation ever in how back.
Witnessed the last cavalry charge and the first nuclear bomb. More people, both military and civilian.
Of the twentieth century than in any other.
Throughout this series, I'll be finding out what it was like for the soldiers, sailors and ermen.
Found themselves fighting, often thousands of miles away from home. The enemy is not the only challenge in this dark and difficult terrain.
And I'll be analyzing how the commanders devise new strategies to exploit revolutionary advances in technology.
Our series begins here in northern France at the start of the twentieth century with the most destructive war the world had yet.
Fighting in all, tens of millions of troops from all around the world and led to a greater death toll of any previous war. In.
The First World War, the great War.
Established the way that battles are fought to this very day. New weapons like tanks and aircraft were used for the first time, with devastating effect.
There was one battle more than any other that harnessed the power of these new weapons to turn the tide of the war.
It was fought here in northeast France, on the Western Front. In nineteen eighteen, it was the battle of Amyang.
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So we think that it's a good thing.
By the beginning of nineteen eighteen.
Europe, superpowers had fought each other to a standstill on the killing grounds of northern France and Belgium.
A war that has been supposed to last six months.
Had dragged on for three and a half blood soaked. Years.
When the First World War began, nobody had expected the conflict would turn out the way it did.
Germany.
And her coalition partners, austro Hungary, bulgaria and Turkey were fighting to secure dominance in Europe and the Middle East.
In the East, they had driven deep into Russia and captured huge swathes of land.
And in the West, they'd invaded first Belgium and then France, expecting a quick victory.
The British army, including men from Australia, canada and other countries of the empire, had helped the French secure the rest of France.
They failed to push the Germans out.
By nineteen eighteen, the Allies were still where they had been three years earlier, with the British holding the line closest to the channel ports.
The great War had turned into a deadly stalemate.
Battles like passion, dale Epe, the sun and their done further down the Western Front.
Had resulted in a catastrophic loss of life on both sides. But the front line had hardly moved.
To break this deadlock, there would have to be a startling change of strategy without it. It seemed the war would never end.
I love you.
The soldiers have been dug in here on the Western Front for the best part of three years.
And they've been slogging it out in a chain of murderous offensives that seem to them to be pretty futile.
Life in these trenches alternated between long periods of mind numbing boredom and short moments of extreme danger.
There was nothing to be seen on a line of earth and sunbags, with occasional pieces, a timber line about.
When you get tired of sitting, you can get up and have a peak between the sunbugs, but a man can be in the trenches for a year and never have fired a shot.
The daily routine in the trenches is made infinitely worse by the fact that months of shelling had destroyed the landscape.
What had been a countryside of rolling farmland was now one of utter devastation.
But the men living and fighting in these dreadful conditions, it must have often seemed like the war was going to go on forever.
But thousands of miles away from these trenches, events were now taking place that would bring these men hope that the end of the war was finally in sight.
Me.
Throughout the war, there had been a vicious fight for control of the Atlantic shipping lane.
At first, germans, U boats only aim to sink British vessels.
By 1917, they made the mistake of targeting supply ships belonging to the United States of America.
From Americas, president Woodro Wilson, this was an outrage, too far, forcing him to declare war on Germany.
After three years of watching and waiting, america was now firmly in the fighting.
Singer.
Hundreds of thousands of strong, fresh American troops would soon be arriving in northern France.
It was exactly what the exhausted Allied soldiers on the Western Front had been waiting for.
With this huge infusion of Americans, the balance of power should shift irreversibly away from the Germans into the Allies favor.
As we marched through the town, the sidewalks were full of people.
Felt so proud and important that such a fuss was being made over us. The French girls would jump in the ranks and throw flowers in.
Of course, we were looking forward to the great adventure ahead of us. We were looking forward to the fight.
June nineteen, seventeen.
A trickle of Americans arriving in France became a flood.
But there was a problem with these American troops nicknamed doughboys. They were raw, inexperienced recruits.
Once they arrived in France, they'd need months of training to get them ready for battle.
The facts was, the Allies would have to hold the line against the Germans by themselves for a while longer.
And if that was bad news, it was worse to come from the war in the East.
Since the beginning of the war, germany had been locked in battle with Russia on the Eastern Front.
But by the beginning of nineteen eighteen, this had changed dramatically.
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After seizing power in the Russian revolution, communists made peace with Germany.
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With the war in the East at an end, in early nineteen, eighteen, hundreds of thousands of crack German troops.
Could be freed up to fight on the Western Front. For the time being, the balance of power had swung in favor of the Germans.
But if the Germans were to win this war, they had to make their move before the Americans became fully operational.
After three and a half long years, the war had suddenly become a race against time.
By spring, nineteen eighteen, it looked as if Germany would win that race.
Singer.
Germany was counting on one man to deliver victory.
Their chief strategist, eric Ludondor Ludondor had presided over Germany's victory in the East.
Now he planned to finish off the allies in the West.
Ludendoff knew this could be Germany's last chance to win the war.
Even with freed up German troops flooding in from the East,
Ludundov still didn't have the manpower to launch a general offensive all along the Western Front.
So he decided to focus on one part of the line.
If he could push the British back into the sea, the French would be on their own, and the war would be as good as one.
He came up with a plan called Kaiser Schlocked, the Emperor's battle.
His troops would concentrate their attacks in a series of powerful punches.
The first punch was aimed to drive a wedge here between the British and the French, where the two armies met just east to the city of Amyan.
Hello,
Yang was the most important city on the Western front.
But it lay only thirty nine miles behind a part of the front that was poorly defended.
It was a key transport hub vital for getting supplies and reinforcements up to the Allied trenches.
If Londol could capture this city of Amyang,
Then he would divide the British from the French and cut their supply line. He chose marched the twenty first to launch as offensive.
Named it after Germany's patron saint Michael.
A massive force of unprecedented strength and quality began to be put together for the offensives.
The German army was scoured for the toughest, fittest and most experienced soldiers.
Weak and the old were transferred to the rear.
Only the very best of all would be trained up of storm troopers, specialist units of shot troops that would punch through the Allied lines.
The men of the storm battalions were treated like football stars, they lived in comfortable quarters, they did their jobs and disappeared again.
And left it to the poor foot sloggers to dig in.
It wasn't just fresh troops Luddendoff was counting on. He intended to throw away the old rule book on how to fight a battle.
The front lines ran through these fields, just here. This is where I'm standing, forty miles east of Amyang.
The German infantry were here in a series of trenches skirting round the town of San Quentin.
Just a few hundred meters away across No man's land, with the British infantry and their trenches, their heavy guns further back here and here.
Usually, an infantry attack was preceded by a long, indiscriminate bombardment lasting days if not weeks to care apart through enemy defences.
The problem was that these long bombardments gave the enemy plenty of warning that an infantry attack was eminent.
This time Luddendorf planned a barrel of just five hours, but with more artillery guns than ever before.
For the first two hours, a mixture of gas and high explosive shells would target the British artillery positions back here.
Then they would file on the British infantry positions further forward.
Bombardment would keep the British hunger down in their trenches.
Exactly five hours after the bombardment started, the elite force of German storm troopers would begin their advance.
Luddendolph hoped that this artillery fire plan.
Couple with the storm troopers would cause such mass confusion that the entire British front line would fall apart in just one day.
In Luddendoff, the Germans had a strong commander with a clear battle lamp.
On the Allies side, there was no man in overall charge. The British were led by Field Marshal Douglas Hague.
He rarely saw eye to eye with the French chief of staff general, further than Fush.
And now there was also the American commander, general John Pershing.
There was little sign of coordinated leadership between the Allied commanders.
And March nineteen, eighteen would present them with their greatest challenge so far.
Across no man's land, the British army were woefully unprepared to deal with any kind of offensive.
The ground had frozen hard during the winter, so they didn't even have a proper network of trenches.
On top of this, it had to take over an extra forty two miles of the front line to use up pressure on the French.
Worst of all, though, was the fact that the British government had been so horrified with the losses of nineteen seventeen, they hadn't sent enough men to the front in nineteen eighteen.
British army was sitting ducks.
We cannot tell what even the next moment has in store for us.
But what will this seem, sport be when the Germans attack.
Bloody infernal, it may happen at any moment, sudden jumped from stillness into hell.
On the stroke of forty am on March twenty one, the eerie calm in the Allied trenches was broken.
By the heaviest bombardment of the entire First World War.
Six and a half thousand guns and three and a half thousand crench waters.
Fired virtually simultaneously along a forty six mile front, in the greatest concentration of bottom fire power to date.
Into this brew of high explosive and razor sharp shrapnel.
Was mixed, a concoction of lethal gases which hung in the air for hours, burning the eyes of soldiers and horses.
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In the half built British trenches, the German artillery bombardment was obliterating whole regiments at a time, entire units were literally being wiped off the face of the earth.
The British were being slaughtered.
Such hell makes weaklings of the strongest.
And no humans, nerves or body were ever built to stand such torture, noise, horror and mental pain.
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At 9:41 m, the first wave of German troops scrambled forward in their gas masks through the fog.
They were so well prepared that they had maps showing British gun emplacements sewn into their sleeves.
They were Ludendorf's elite, the storm troopers.
Singer.
All morning, the storm troopers forced their way through gaps in the Allied lines.
Which were already weakened by the artillery ballad, armed with like, machine guns, hand grenades and flame throwers, they swarmed for.
Whatever they came up against.
They skirt around it, looking for weak points elsewhere, and seeking out the more exposed artillery positions in the rear.
The strong troopers left the job of mopping up any remaining strong points to the main infantry force moving up bit.
Gaps appearing all along the front line.
Tens of thousands of Ludendoff's regular German infantry Now it buds and were surprised at how quickly they broke through.
The British had lost control of the situation.
We crossed a better tangle of wire without difficulty, and at a jump, were over the front line.
The English jumped out of their trenches and fled by battalions across the open.
They stumbled over each other as they fled, and in a few seconds, the ground was strewn with dead. Only a few got away.
Thousands of British troops were cut off and surrounded and forced to surrender.
Costless attack, thousands more, suffering from the effects of gasing, coughed and staggered their way to the rear where they hope to find some shelter.
By midday, the British troops facing the attack had lost a third of their number.
A full scale British retreat had begun for days. The German advances continued.
Then on April fifth, the Allies finally managed to stand firm, just eleven miles from Amyang.
Lundos first offensive had won a remarkable series of territorial gains for the Germans. That village is the furthest they got.
Here it is, V-A Bret on her. They advanced 28 miles and made a massive dent in the British front line.
But the British line had not broken.
Over the next eight weeks, luddendolph launched four more offensives here here here and here.
The last advance took them to within 37 miles of Paris.
Each time the offences fell short of that crucial breakthrough.
Despite everything learned all through at them, the Allies were holding on.
The outcome of the First World War now hung in the balance.
The Germans had extended their front lines so much they were outstretched very thinly along the length of the Western Front.
And the Allies were finally starting to regroup. It was a critical point in the race against time.
That would mark the tip of the German advanced towards Paris.
Control of it gave the Germans a key, strategic foothold on the road to the French capital.
If the Allies would have prevent Luddendor from strutting down the Seans, alise, the German stronghold in Bellow Wood would have to be cleared.
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In the blazing heat of June sixth, allied troops prepared to start their advance on this wood.
But these men weren't British or French. Instead, the task of clearing Bellowwood had been given to the United States Marine Corps.
For the first time in World War one, the Americans were going on the offensive.
Even though it had been fourteen months since the United States had declared war on Germany,
This had not been long enough to master modern tactics. Now the US Marines prepared to retake Bellow wood in the old fashioned way.
Advancing line abreast.
Over their heads, american guns laid a barrage of shells to soften up the German defenses.
But the advancing marines were in for a nasty shock.
Hidden amongst the tightly packed trees, there were units of dogged German soldiers, veterans of the Russian Front.
They had the perfect cover for their machine gun nests and interlocking fields of fire. When the Marines got close enough, the Germans let Rip.
We hadn't gone fifty yards when they cut loose at us from the woods ahead.
The more machine guns than I had ever heard before. I have a vague recollection of urge in the whole line on faster.
We came to an open wheat field full of red puppies, and here we can't help.
Some of the Marines fought their way through the machine gun fire, managed to establish a small foothold in this forest.
But it cost them terrible casualties.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, one young American officer was told to retreat by some French troops that were pulling back. He famously said, retreat, hell.
We just got here.
The difficulty with bellow wood was that you never knew where the from was.
While you were fighting in one direction, all of a sudden, without warning, you would find there are some Germans to the rear that needed to be mocked up.
That was Bella Wood.
Five times the Marines made headway five times they were beaten back.
But on the sixth attempt, the Marines finally prized Bellowwood away from the German grip.
Is had built a terrible cost. In their first encounter with the Germans, the US Marine Corps suffered 10000 casualties.
With the Allied victory of Bellow Wood, luddendor's path to Paris had been blocked.
The Marines hadn't won the war, but they had helped save the Allies from defeat.
More importantly, the Germans had come face to face with the Americans for the first time.
And the dough boys had delivered a massive psychological blow to German morale.
No one could know, doubt that the Americans were in the war for real.
If those in front of us are fair specimens of the average American troops, and if they are as many as they say, they are.
Then good bye, fast.
Throughout the spring offensives, luddendorf had committed everything he had, and he now came face to face with the plain truth.
That his army was exhausted and over extended, and he had lost more men than he could ever replace.
And for all that, he'd still failed to break the Allied line.
Now the allies had the opportunity, and they seized it.
They would now take the fight to the Germans.
The Allied attempt to break through on the Western front were been led by a British general, sir Henry Rollinson.
Rollinson had been the commander at the battle of the Sum back in 19:16, where 58000 British soldiers had been lost in one day.
This would be his chance to prove, he'd learned the lessons of past battles.
The Allies now came up with a plan for a counter offensive that was one of the most significant initiatives of the war.
It must be a milestone in military history.
The idea came into July, nineteen, eighteen at a conference of Allied generals, which offered him a chance to redeem his reputation.
His men controlled the ground east of Amir.
Where Luddendorf had now thinned out his troops, presenting Rollinson with a perfect spot for a breakthrough.
What Rollinson came up with was an imaginative and radical new strategy.
He would concentrate a force of around 350 thousand troops along a seventeen mile front.
This force would massively outnumber the Germans facing them.
North of the river, some in this hilly country was the British three core.
Below them the Australians on the other side of this railway line, the Canadians.
And next to them the French.
What attracted Rollins into this terrain was that apart from the Ruggy, the more difficult ground to the north.
It was dry and open, ideal territory for the Allies newest weapon tanks.
Today, tanks and arm and vehicles are one of the most important weapon systems in a modern army.
Back in nineteen, eighteen troops regarded them with quell of suspicion. They were prone to mechanical failure, and they were slow.
Top speed was about four miles per hour, and this made them vulnerable to enemy artillery fire.
Tanks could be very claustrophobic and disorientating, but perhaps worst of all was the fact there was no separation.
Where the engine was and the area for the cruise, which meant that after half an hour, temperatures could reach about one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
Not only did the men frequently suffer from burns, but more crewmen died from carbon monoxide poisoning than were killed by enemy action.
Usually after just one day of battle, tank crews had to be sent to recover in a field hospital from the experience.
Despite this, they did have their advantages. They were in vulnerable to machine gunfire, and they could crush bark wire.
Lastly, they put the fear of God into the Germans.
The Germans had virtually no tanks.
Now they were about to face the greatest concentration of tanks ever assembled on a battlefield.
Tanks were only part of Rollinson's grand design.
The battle of Amyang would use all the resources he had working closely together, just as they do today.
We've come to Soulsbury Play to watch a combined arms exercise.
A modern day equivalent of what Rollinson had in mind for the battle of Amyan.
One of the main roles of the tank, and I don't think it's really changed, because actually, to help.
Protect the infantry and deliver them onto the enemy position in good order. And that's something the tank does very well, indeed,
Both tanks and infantry are supported by the big guns of the artillery.
Gunners back in nineteen eighteen didn't have computers or satellites to help them find the right range.
Normally before a battle, they would fire off test shots, but before the battle of Amia, they were ordered to use only maps and mathematics so as not to alert the Germans.
Four, five.
A battery can can drop something like four and a half tons of explosives on an area, and a very short period of time.
Um, so, you know, TH there are the people that give us a great, short effect on enemy.
Unlike nineteen eighteen, today's infantry are carried into battle by armored personnel carriers.
But the carriers can only take them so far in the final stage of an assault. There's no alternative but to get out and go in on foot.
Air power is the final component of the all arms attack.
Crucial that all the different elements work together.
Tanks on their own are very, very vulnerable.
Likewise, the the infantry and everything else, so it's crucial that the tanks, the engineers, the artillery and the air support all work together.
To to destroy the enemy positions. So as Rollinsson approached the battle of Amyar, he had a quite new.
System of.
Weapon systems, tactics and everything is all arms cooperation.
That's right. And although the, the weapons and the vehicles have become much more technologically advanced over the years,
The basic tactics that they used back in nineteen eighteen haven't really changed a great deal.
Isn't it amazing how everyone we've talked to today is kept saying.
What we're seeing today is, is it began back in nineteen eighteen It's extraordinary, all their tactics are really date back from then, and you consider that two years before nineteen, eighteen.
It was still just a bunch of riflemen lining up in a line and walking towards the enemy trenches. It's amazing how much change happened in those two years, and what show price have we seen.
All arms working together, aircraft, tanks, infantry combining to overwhelm the enemy.
August nineteen, eighteen will be the first time in history that all available weapons were coordinated on such a scale.
To a particular timetable. The guns would create a.
That would move forward one hundred meters every three minutes, wiping out many German defensive positions.
Protected by the cover of fire, the Allied infantry would advance, and the closer they followed, the barrel.
More likely they were to overcome their enemy.
When infantry found themselves up against stiff opposition, they would call in the tanks to overrun German position.
They had lighter tanks, too, called whippings.
They were twice as fast as the heavy tanks and could look for gaps in the enemy lines through which they could drive and cause.
They'd be the cavalry of the future, but in nineteen eighteen, they could still only do eight miles a mile.
Horses were still faster, and Rollinson had thousands of them waiting to gallop into battle.
Rollinson Cities Men, three objectives.
First he drew a green line on the map, two miles behind the first enemy line.
He gave them two hours to reach it.
There they consolidate, and new forces would pass through them and fight their way through to the red line, which he marked three miles further off.
And if by the end of the day, they could then reach his blue light.
They would have achieved an eight violent bonds altogether. It would be the biggest advance in one day's fighting of any Allied force on the Western Front since the war began.
In early August, amia was a ghost town.
The population had been evacuated during the Ludendorf offensives.
Now the city was only eleven miles behind the front line, and no civilians had been allowed to return.
The only people here were military, and there were more of them on their way.
The troop builder was hidden by a shroud of secrecy. The element of surprise was essential if the British plan was to succeed.
Sand was even laid down on some of the deserted roads to deaden the sound of the troops and artillery massing in and around the city.
And hundreds of tanks were hidden on the banks of the tree line canals.
Thank you.
To make sure each soldier knew just how important it was to maintain secrecy.
A small note was pasted into their paybooks.
It told them that if they were captured by the Germans, they were allowed to say their name, their serial number and their rank and nothing else. It ended with the words.
Keep your mouth shut.
And I'm going to tell you.
A few days before the battle began,
Reports reach German commanders that unusual noises have been heard outside I'm, yeah, perhaps signifying an Allied buildup.
But Luddendoff discounted these reports. There is nothing he said to justify this apprehension, as long as our troops are vigilant and do their duty.
Rollinson's obsessive secrecy was paying off.
You know.
The early hours of August the eighth provided the perfect conditions for the launch of Rollinson's elaborate plan.
It was a moonless night, and from the river valleys, a ground beast provided valuable cover for the tanks rumbling into position.
And.
One.
This countryside was an ant hill of activity as tens of thousands of Allied troops moved towards the front line. The men render strict instructions.
There's been no shouting, no flashlights and no cigarettes, no unnecessary noise.
The silence played on our nerves a bit.
As we got our guns into position, you could hear drivers whispering to their horses and men muttering curses under their breath.
And still the silence persisted.
Zero hour was set at 4:21 m, the hour before dawn.
As it approached, all was silent.
Thank you.
The moment British guns had opened fire on German positions, the British infantry had started there.
Creeping barrage, which the advancing foot soldiers now hugged as closely as possible, was delivered by 700 heavy guns.
At the same time, hundreds more guns concentrated on German strong points and artillery positions further back.
Seventeen miles along the front, flares lit up the countryside as a mass.
Tanks moved forward under the barrel.
As the British, canadian in Australian infantry advanced, the early, the morning fog was so thick, they could only see about ten yards in front of them.
It was made, even murkia by the smoke from the exploding artillery shells.
We were traveling fast.
The sweat was rolling down my face, the shells were bursting everywhere, some of them very low, machine gun bullets also whistled over us from the left flag.
Where the advance had been held up for a while.
Precisely as planned, the creeping barrows and the almost simultaneous infantry assault took the Germans totally by surprise.
Some lead Allied units stormed into enemy trenches and bunkers and captured or killed the German defenders before they had any chance to organize a counter attack.
Oh,
Six, thirty a M. This village of Marcel Carve became the target of the Canadian infantry.
But they could make little headway against well dug in German machine guns. Then help appeared in the form of a lumbering Mark five British tank.
Its commander, a lawyer from Somerset, sized up the situation and advanced into the village.
I'm with you.
Thank you.
Busted away by the tanks, six pound guns, the rest were crushed under its tracks.
It was all over in about half an hour, and the tank commander handed the village over to the Allied.
But not until a typical lawyer like fashion, he received a receipt. The village of Marcel Carve was now officially in Allied hands.
The taking of this village of Marcel Carve.
But the Canadians across Wallinson's first objective, his green line.
British soldiers operating north of the river, some had been given less distance to cover because they were fighting on Rafa to raid.
With about three hours into the battle, most of Rollinson's units had reached their objectives.
Now they could rest while new troops were pushed through to continue the attack.
By around nine A-M, the fog was beginning to lift right, the way across the wide battlefield.
And Rollinson was now able to employ his final weapon in his armouring aircraft.
The Ryan Air Force, barely a few months old, sent in six hundred fighters and bombers to provide close air support to the Allied.
The phosphorus bombs were dropped ahead of the advancing tanks and the planes straight, german ground targets, like machine gun emplacements.
I'm going to be.
Low flying planes ate away at Germans morale. For any experience, british Ermen, it was a bewildering experience.
We were over the target and dropping bonds before I realized we cross the lines. I leaned over the side to watch them form.
You have a look down from a high building, you felt as that, you must throw yourself down. I had to turn away.
Gaps were now appearing in the German line, which the Canadian Australian troops tried to exploit as quickly as possible.
This led to one of the more bizarre sites of the day.
A group of Canadian cyclists peddled off down the road, their rifles slung across their shoulders.
They're escorting a group of armor plated cars carrying machine guns. The Allies were willing to try anything to increase their speed and mobility.
The cyclist sped off down the road looking for German positions.
This mobility paid off when they came across the enemy held village of Mesier.
The cyclists rode through the back streets and overwhelmed a German machine gun post from behind.
But in this area north of the River some, the British ran into the most stubborn resistance of all.
They were heading across here, tours that high ground over there called Chippeli Ridge.
When they ran into concentrated fire that stopped them in their tracks.
I don't know.
The British troops didn't have that many tanks supporting them, because the terrain on this side of the sun was unsuitable.
To make matters worse, these men had borne the brunt of months of heavy fighting, and they were weakened.
And exhausted, they did manage to get to the edge of this open field, just opposite a pilly ridge over there.
But as soon as they got here, they were driven back into these woods by devastating German machine gunfire.
The British north of the some were pinned down in front of Chapele Ridge.
But to the south of the river, rollinson's plan was ahead of schedule. By late morning, most of his men had reached the second objective, the red Line.
They moved a remarkable five miles in half a day.
Already some of the light whippet tanks had pressed on at a heady eight miles an hour, causing havoc behind enemy lines.
The exploits of one of these tanks nicknamed Musical Box would pass into legends.
Nine hours it ran wild, attacking German artillery from the rear, surprising resting German troops and even ramming a truck into a stream.
The Germans peppered the tank with bullets.
They perforated fuel tanks stored on the roof, and soon petrol was flooding down inside the tank.
The crew were forced to don gas masks as they pushed on, now ankle deep in petrol.
Soon, a German shell hit the tank and it burst into flames.
The three crewmen scrambled to escape, and as they did so, one of them was shot dead, and the other two captured by the Germans.
The British tank drivers were the only ones to feel the heat of the German guns that afternoon.
On the southern banks of the river Sun, australian troops were taking a beating.
German artillery firing at them from across the river, from positions high up on Chabily ridge which the British was still struggling to capture.
Hours after the British were supposed to have captured.
This vital sector of the North Bank of the sun, the area was still in German hands.
Every time British troops tried to leave the shelter of this wood, they were cut down by German machine gun and artillery fire. The prospects for advancing any further look grim.
It wasn't until the next day that Allied troops finally managed to secure the north bank of the Sun.
On this first day of battle, august, the eighth.
Rollin, since units south of the river Sun were pushing deeper and faster into German hill territory than ever before.
To keep up the pace of his advance, rollinson ordered his horseman to go into the front line.
Two entire cavalry divisions, over 20000 horsemen, now moved up to the front through the infantry, to begin the attack on the final objective.
The blue line.
The cavalry surged forward, easily outstripping the lumbering tanks that were supposed to provide them.
Mounting fire, but once the horsemen left the tanks behind, they found themselves at the mercy of German machine gun.
One group of horsemen left this village of Bokoor and ran into lethal fire from that wood over there.
Men and horses crashed to the ground. The surviving horses stampeded.
Even with this bloodshed, august the eighth would still be the British cavalry's most successful day of fighting on the Western Front during the entire war.
Online have been shattered for the first time in years, the cavalry could charge through the gaps.
They galloped East, so in chaos behind enemy lines and taking thousands of prisoners.
By noon, it was clear that enemy resistance was confined to a few small pockets everywhere else, their positions were collapsing.
Allied soldiers found that the German troops were all too willing to surrender to them.
In fact, one loan Australian was nearly overwhelmed when one hundred Germans tried to give themselves up.
The once mighty German army was showing signs of falling apart.
The Germans were surrendering everywhere.
You could feel the hair breaking up on your spine with excitement, because we knew it was going to be the end of the war.
Luddendorf lost more ground to the Allies on the first day of the battle of Amyang than almost any other day in the war on the Western Front.
But what he found even harder to accept was that entire German units had surrendered wholesale.
And the skill with which the British had coordinated tanks, aircraft and artillery, was beyond anything the Germans without capable of.
The morale and discipline of the German fighting machine had cracked.
Luddendor later called August the eighth the blackest day for the German army in this war.
He had a nervous breakdown and told the Kaiser the war must be brought to an end.
Rolling's attack went on for three more days, then finally lost momentum.
The battle of Amyang was over, put it on Rollinson, a place in military history.
As the man who use new technology and tactics to liberate warfare from the tyranny of the trenches.
Singer.
Those few days in August, nineteen eighteen turned the tide of the First World War.
After the battle of Amir.
British and French refreshed by American troops fought on for another months, liberating more and more German hill territory.
At the start of October 19:18, the Germans finally asked America's President, mudro Wilson for an armisters.
Early in the morning of November the seventh, the Supreme Allied Commander Marshall Fash.
Arrived here by train in the Forest of Conclaine outside Paris.
Please.
Just after five A-M, on the eleventh of November, the leader of the German delegation signed the Armestys document.
It would take effect at eleven that morning.
After more than four years of fighting and fifteen million dead, the guns were now silent.
A new world order emerged from the First World War.
A world without kaisers in Germany or Zars in Russia.
Well, with new systems of government like Communism and new countries like Yugoslavia and Iraq.
And with it, this new order brought new tensions and rivalry that will plague the world for the rest of the twentieth century.
But the darkest legacy of the First World War began in a military hospital where a corporal in the German army was recovering from the effects of being gasped by the British.
He was seething with resentment at what he perceived as Germany's national humiliation.
That resentment would simmer away until twenty years later, it ignited a second great global conflict. That corporal's name was Adolf Hitler.
Would never forget the experience of Nineteen eighty.
Next time in Nineteen forty two.
These Pacific islands were at the heart of a battle between America and Japan. I've been looking at how a new form of warfare.
Demanded split second Decisions from the Kabad.
And I'll be revealing the risks taken by servicemen and learning the skills they needed to survive.
This titanic struggle took place over just one day. It was the Battle of Midway.