Come on! Come on!
Let's go! Let's go, Logan!
Get that thing firing!
Spring, 1918.
A ferocious German offensive pushes the Allies to the brink of defeat.
The shock as the Germans unleash a hurricane fire.
It was basically the genesis of Blitzkrieg.
Their relentless attack stuns the Allies.
I think for a moment, the Allies think they will lose the war.
Fire!
With their backs against the wall,
Allied commanders dramatically change their approach...
Secrecy is vital.
..with new weapons,
new machines,
and radical new ways to coordinate infantry, artillery,
air force and tanks.
Working together, they manage to halt the German offensive...
We're advancing all along the line.
We have the enemy on his back foot.
..but they've lost huge areas of French territory
and their enemy is still fearsome.
There's still a lot of fight left in Germany
and the Germans are still preparing to fight on,
and the Allied commanders
think that the war will probably go on to the summer of 1919.
The German Army still don't believe they're going to lose the war,
they still don't believe that the German Army
is going to be destroyed on the Western Front,
so they're still a formidable fighting force.
The Allied commanders are a diverse and unlikely team -
British old school Field Marshal Douglas Haig,
French Marshal Ferdinand Foch,
and colonial outsiders,
Australian John Monash,
and Canadian Arthur Currie.
They've turned the tide,
now, they face the supreme challenge -
victory.
Welcome, gentlemen.
General Monash, good to see you.
General.
I suppose that it rarely happens that such a distinguished gathering
should so meet under such stirring surroundings,
with the guns thundering all around.
An extraordinary meeting of the Allied high command.
Just two days earlier, using ideas from Monash and Currie,
they defeated the German Army at Amiens,
advancing 12km in just four days,
greater gains than any time in the past four years.
Amiens was a significant blow against the Germans
and I think the Allied Commander Foch realised
that perhaps this was the moment
where the attritional warfare had finally ground the enemy down
and so there would be a series of battles
to break the Hindenburg Line.
It was a fearsome position for the Allies to face.
This, gentlemen, is our next objective.
The Hindenburg Line is in fact five heavily-fortified trench lines
connected by a series of concrete bunkers
and bristling with machine-gun nests and booby-traps.
Stretching over 400km,
each line is protected by vast belts of barbed wire
laid out to channel attacking infantry into killing zones.
It's more formidable than anything the Allies
have faced in the entire war.
The Hindenburg Line assumed almost a mythical status
for the Germans and for the Allies.
For the Germans, it was their last great defensive line.
For the Allies, they knew this was a line they would have to break
if they wanted to break the German Army.
The Allies create an ambitious plan -
Supreme Commander Foch orders a series of multipronged attacks
on the German forces standing between them
and the Hindenburg Line.
Delivering a series of hammer blows against the Germans
is absolutely crucial, and the idea here, of course,
is to keep hitting the Germans in multiple battles,
to wear them out, to wear out their reserves,
to force them to continually fight.
The entire strength of the Allies on the Western Front will be needed
to break through the Hindenburg Line.
Foch coins his famous war cry...
American forces, now a million-strong,
will mass in the Argonne region.
The French in the Meuse, Champagne and Picardy.
The Canadians, British and New Zealanders
will attempt to break through at the Canal du Nord.
And Australian, British and American forces
take aim at the Saint-Quentin Canal,
and they face tough fighting
before they can even reach the Hindenburg Line.
You have Foch and you have Haig
planning battles and talking off the same page.
You've then got the acceptance and the use of these new technologies.
This leads to the opening up of the entrenched situation,
and then it's fighting this new style of warfare.
I think the fighting we see in 1918
is a precursor to the fighting we'll see throughout the 20th century.
There'll be new technology, of course,
but the idea of attacking together in this combined arms warfare
very much emerges from the trenches, from the Western Front,
from the need to find a way to break the stalemate.
The strategy is simple -
keep the enemy on the move.
Instruct all ranks to act boldly.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig makes sure
the 1.2 million British and dominion troops under his command
get the message.
Risks, which a month ago would have been criminal to occur,
ought now to be incurred as a duty.
And it is risky -
the Germans still have four million men on the Western Front.
Another one from Westminster.
Don't tell me - Wilson from the War Office?
Haig's reputation comes back to haunt him.
Earlier in the war, he's presided over campaigns
producing colossal bloodshed for very little progress,
earning him the nickname, Butcher Haig.
I know the War Cabinet would become anxious
if we received heavy punishment
in attacking the Hindenburg Line without success.
Now, the politicians in London are getting cold feet.
What a wretched lot of weaklings
we have in high places at the present time.
Haig and Wilson hate each other,
and that was typical in the British Army,
these personal feuds and rivalries.
This was a famous one.
So, all this warfare's going on
while the rest of the warfare is going on
on the Western Front.
High command is very fraught by this time.
The first target standing between the Allies and the Hindenburg Line
is Mont Saint-Quentin,
a pivotal German defensive position on the River Somme.
Monash's Australians are handed the task.
Monash was the huge advocate of carefully-planned battles
that take place step-by-step, and having all the support in place,
and getting the tanks up and making sure the artillery is in place.
He kind of threw that out the window at Mont Saint-Quentin.
He just basically said,
"Here's a tough position, we've got some infantry -
"I reckon we can do this."
Sir? Monash.
General Henry Rawlinson,
the commander of the British Second Army, is sceptical.
It's risky, sir, I know,
but I believe it is a sound plan.
Mont Saint-Quentin is a formidable obstacle in his way.
It's well-fortified.
It's being manned by the Second Prussian guard,
one of the elite formations within the German Army.
Right, gentlemen...
..here.
If they can take it, the Australians will command
a perfect staging ground for an attack on the Hindenburg Line.
You know what to do.
They had to cross the Somme River - they were on one side of the river,
they had to cross over before they could approach Mont Saint-Quentin,
and everything they did was under German observation.
The Germans were confident
that this was where they were going to stop the Allies.
31st of August, 1918. Dawn.
The artillery bombardment begins.
The Australians advance under a creeping barrage.
"I felt a blow on the face as if struck by an axe
"and a white mist flew before my eyes."
"I could feel the broken jaw bone
"and a great rush of blood
"and I saw a little wooden cross before my eyes
"with my name and number on it."
GUNFIRE AND SHOUTING
Suddenly, I saw the Sergeant drop
like I've seen an animal drop that I've shot.
I wasn't long in reaching him.
Perhaps two seconds.
Even in that time, he was black in the face, gasping for breath.
The pressure to keep attacking weighs heavily on Monash.
I was compelled to harden my heart.
It was imperative to recognise a great opportunity
and seize it unflinchingly.
Casualties no longer mattered.
The Australian 2nd Division storms the slopes
of Mont Saint-Quentin.
The reports say they charged at the Germans with rifle and bayonet.
They yelled like bush rangers as they charged up the slope
to make the Germans think
there were more soldiers than actually were attacking.
For the next 48 hours,
the high ground on Mont Saint-Quentin is won,
then lost...
..then won again by the Australians
amid vicious fighting.
So, this isn't killing from afar by an artillery barrage.
This is desperate hand-to-hand fighting.
And it's by no means clear which side is going to succeed.
HE BLOWS WHISTLE
MEN SHOUT
Fighting at Mont Saint-Quentin is Edward Phillips,
one of over a thousand indigenous Australians
who volunteered to fight.
And we should remember that these men are not even citizens
of the country that they're fighting for.
And when they're in the line, they do actually achieve equal rights
alongside other soldiers.
Phillips is awarded a military medal for his bravery.
This NCO displayed great initiative and personal bravery
in working his Lewis gun.
He stood up on the parapet, firing from the hip,
causing very heavy casualties.
But in spite of his heroism,
after the war, he will remain a non-citizen.
The Australians have one Lewis gun for every ten men.
A potent open warfare weapon that is light,
compact and can fire 600 rounds per minute.
After three days of bloody fighting, Australian forces capture
Mont Saint-Quentin and take the town of Peronne.
In three days, the Australians suffer 3,000 casualties.
But their sacrifice is rewarded.
They force the Germans to withdraw eastwards
back to the Hindenburg Line.
Hello? Rawlinson.
What is it? We've done it.
You've done what? We're on top of Mont Saint-Quentin.
I don't believe you. Come and see.
Mont Saint Quentin was a fantastic victory.
In my opinion one of the greatest Australian victories
of the First World War.
But the victory belongs to the men, not to Monash.
In his next step,
Supreme Allied Commander Foch orders Currie's Canadians
to make a risky move on another strategic defence,
standing between the Allies and the Hindenburg Line.
That's a crucial bit of real estate.
Their target, a German stronghold
called the Drocourt-Queant, or DQ Line -
a kilometre-thick fortified barrier of dugouts,
trenches and machine-gun nests protecting the Hindenburg Line.
In this new, more mobile war, intelligence gathering
and reconnaissance is crucial.
Bombing and reconnaissance alternated and we were kept busy.
And Jerry had his crack squadrons, with their finest machines
against our front, and seemingly intent to prevent
photography at all costs.
The Allies need eyes in the sky.
It's the only way to reveal defences that have been deployed in depth.
The war in the air begins to take on a new urgency.
Every day we were at it.
Attacked, trapped, or chased.
Time after time, we ran the devils out of petrol,
sneaked back and stole the photos.
Aerial photos reveal the position of German artillery.
Increasingly confident in his men, this technology and the new tactics
he has developed with Monash, Canadian General Arthur Currie plans
the attack in meticulous detail.
Believing the Drocourt-Queant Line to be the backbone of German
resistance, we have decided to put all our strength against it.
Not to attack it until we are ready.
And then to go all out.
The Drocourt-Queant Line is the hinge of the Hindenburg Line.
What it did is defend the flank of the Hindenburg Line,
so if you can break the DQ line, you can get in on the flank
of the Hindenburg Line and then roll it up.
The Canadians will fight alongside the battle-hardened Scottish troops
of the 51st Highland Division.
Go, boys, go!
MEN SHOUT
The fighting qualities of the 51st are second to none
in all the Allied armies.
GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS
All right, lads. Once more, on your feet!
At dawn on the 2nd of September, the Canadians, Scots and other
British forces launch their attack, supported by 80 tanks.
But the German Army has a new weapon.
The world's first anti-tank rifle.
It can pierce 22mm-thick armour plate at 100 metres.
Whereas German machine-gun bullets just bounce off.
There we were - the engine roaring, the guns blazing, the cab stacked
with explosives, with not even enough air to keep an oyster alive.
The armour was twice penetrated by an anti-tank gun.
Let's get out! Move!
A shell pierced the rear sprocket and put us out of action.
We went over the top, along with a tank.
Take cover!
But the Germans were using these anti-tank rifles.
One of our fellows got shot by one of these rifles -
it made a terrible hole, big enough to put your two fists in.
MEN SHOUTING
Stay down!
Cover, cover!
SHELLS WHISTLE
Gas! Gas!
Everybody, masks on now! Look around!
The barrages were terrific on both sides.
We went over the top with the battalion,
we passed through heavy shell fire and gas.
I dressed a few wounded in a sunken road and I kept 18 stretcher bearers
to carry them out.
I got a little sleep during the night, but had to wear
a gas mask for about four hours.
Gas, gas, gas!
My partner said, "Do you smell anything strange, Donald?"
I said, "No, do you?"
"Yes, it's faintly like lilac.
"I'm not taking any chances, I'm putting on my gas mask."
It was mustard gas.
And apart from blinding, it was very sore for those
wearing their kilt.
After ten hours fighting, with heavy casualties on both sides,
the Canadians take the Drocourt-Queant Line.
The breaking of the Drocourt-Queant Line has shaken the enemy badly
and he's hurrying back to the line of the Canal du Nord.
That line joins into the Hindenburg Line further south.
The hinge of the German system has been broken.
We are advancing all along the line.
But despite the success of the Australians and Canadians,
the Allies still have 10km of hard,
pounding fighting before they even get to the most formidable defensive
line in history - the Hindenburg Line itself.
Now it is the United States' turn to lead the advance.
Until now, General Pershing, the commander of the million strong
American Army, has refused to fight under British or French command.
The 26th of September, 1918.
The biggest army in American history forms up along a 20-mile section
of the Western Front, known as the Meuse-Argonne.
During the Battle of Meuse-Argonne,
you have something like 1.2 million doughboys being sent into battle.
That's an enormous number of men.
And they're being supported by an enormous number of guns,
some 2,700 guns are brought into play in the first four hours
of fighting there.
Hundreds of thousands of untested American soldiers
launched their attack into the milky fog.
The Americans are making the same sorts of mistakes,
and making mass attacks, taking huge casualties
from machine-gun and artillery fire,
just like the British did in 1915.
The Germans find that the Americans are often outrunning
their artillery, or don't have properly coordinated artillery.
Which then gives them the opportunity to destroy
the Americans en masse.
The Germans will not give way,
and General Pershing's Americans are bleeding casualties,
losing over 2,500 men a day.
America, of course, was reluctant to enter the conflict
in the first place.
Pershing can't afford to have these kind of casualties.
He finally decides to stop the offensive,
to spare American lives and to spare American opinion.
With the Americans stalled, Foch instructs the Canadians
to build on their success at the DQ Line and press ahead to make
the first direct assault on the Hindenburg Line itself.
They must cross the biggest single barrier
in front of the Hindenburg Line -
the heavily fortified, 37-metre-wide Canal du Nord.
The Canadians had captured orders from the German High Command saying
it must be held to the last man.
They had issued orders like this before,
but there is a sense here that the Germans will not give it up.
British commanders order Currie
to conduct a direct assault on the canal.
The Germans have deliberately flooded the approaches,
and Currie thinks it's suicide.
Instead of simply rejecting the British plan, Currie suggests
a better but even riskier one.
He locates a narrow, dry choke point of the canal,
just 2,500 metres long.
Because it's so obvious, the Germans defend it heavily,
and then they almost take for granted that you can't cross there.
Like, it's impossible, nobody should even try.
Like, we get it, that's the only place you can cross.
But because it's so obvious
to us and any attacker, it's crazy.
It would be crazy to try and attack across the canal in that place.
So that is exactly where Currie decides to attack.
Currie explains his plan to British commander,
General Henry Horne.
So, if the Germans laid down artillery fire,
or even worse, they feared, gas,
the assault would stall
and the Canadians would be caught in a killing ground.
When he briefs his plan to Horne,
Horne says, "I don't think so, that's way too risky."
You've got to reconsider.
Horne calls for Currie's trusted mentor, General Sir Julian Byng.
And Byng said, "It's too dangerous."
Currie explained his plan to him.
If you fail, it means home for you.
I understand, sir.
And so, Horne has to support this attack that I think
he is really deathly afraid is going to be the end of
not just his career, but Haig's career as well.
And maybe even a decisive defeat on the Western Front.
Currie has grown in confidence during the last few months,
but he knows that his reputation
and that of the entire Canadian Corps is now on the line.
He masses his men in the dangerous bottleneck -
60,000 of them will funnel through the dry canal.
Like they did at Amiens, Currie uses the element of surprise,
hiding his men in the woods until the moment is right.
FLARE WHOOSHES
At zero hour, the Allied artillery commence counter battery fire
to destroy the German guns,
then lays down a creeping barrage to screen the advancing infantry.
I am in the state of waiting for news, which is always most trying.
I hope and pray that all may go well.
WHISTLE BLOWS
SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE
Our third big show opened up at 5:20am on September 27th.
As the barrage would lift every four minutes,
the infantry would advance.
And they say every gun seemed to have lifted together.
The Hun retaliated heavily on our position.
He's putting up an awful tough fight.
The old-timers say
it's the hardest nut the Canadians have ever had to crack.
Currie and McNaughton, his chief counter battery advisor,
had a model.
They wanted to pay the price of victory in shells,
and not in life.
So they used unreal amounts of artillery.
It would shock GHQ and some of Haig's staff officers,
because they were like, "That's ridiculous amounts of artillery!"
But in using that much artillery, it really had a decisive effect.
By the holy Moses, it was wicked.
German soldiers are getting it now with a vengeance.
There are no rehearsals for these attacks now,
for it is all open warfare
and trenches are all left far behind.
The Germans are rocked by the artillery barrage.
On the 27th of September, the Canadians are able to cross
the canal and then flood into the fields beyond.
SHELLS WHISTLE
All succeeded in crossing the canal.
Currie's bold gamble pays off.
British, Canadian and New Zealand forces make big gains.
The Canadians have crossed the Canal du Nord,
and have reached the outposts of the Hindenburg Line.
But the Germans dig in and hold them there.
But the Allies continue to pay a high price for Foch's
ferocious, multipronged offensive.
In less than three months since Amiens,
the Canadians alone have suffered 30,000 casualties,
with over 6,000 killed.
Right across the Allied armies, manpower is running low.
They are now face-to-face
with the deadliest killing zone on the planet...
..the Hindenburg Line.
Northern France, late September, 1918.
It's nearly 60 days since Foch and Haig launched
their multipronged, all-arms attack
against the German wall of iron.
Despite 75,000 casualties, they're still on track.
200 Allied divisions, about two million men,
gather along the Western Front,
all pointed toward the Hindenburg Line.
IN FRENCH:
While the Canadians are fighting hard to break
through the Hindenburg Line near the Canal du Nord,
Foch and Haig aim a simultaneous hammer blow at another point -
the St Quentin Canal.
If they can take it,
they will break the Hindenburg Line in two.
The Germans understand its significance and have made it
the best defended section of the entire line.
As far as they are concerned, this is where the advance stops,
this is part of northern France that they will occupy for ever.
So it has both a symbolic as well as a strategic importance.
Once again, Monash's Australians are chosen to spearhead the attack.
Their recent successes have brought them and their leader praise.
But also exhaustion.
We slept while riding our horses.
We slept while walking.
And we slept while standing up.
It's obvious to Monash that his exhausted troops have only
one more battle left in them.
And so does he.
At times, when I feel very tired, I am tempted to hope
that this will be the last serious work
I shall ever have to do in my life.
British and untested American units will join the Australians
in what could be the critical battle for the Hindenburg Line.
But Monash is given the responsibility of planning it.
The attack on the Hindenburg Line is made for Monash because it is
a battle that demands a methodical approach -
and that is exactly what Monash does.
So it's a set piece - everyone knows where the ground is,
the Germans know where the attack's coming.
It calls on all the skills that Monash has perfected.
The battle is more a matter
of engineering and organisation than of fighting.
Monash's engineer's brain analyses the task.
He plans to break the German defences set on top of the canal,
where it runs underground for over 5km at Bellicourt.
And he tries another of the Allies' tactical innovations -
the leapfrog.
The Americans will launch the initial attack,
then the Australian divisions move forward through their lines
to maintain the advance.
And the Allies now have a major advantage -
enormous artillery resources that can be unleashed
with deadly mathematical accuracy.
Monash's superior, General Rawlinson,
revises Monash's plan, ordering a British formation,
the 46th North Midland Division,
to launch a head-on assault directly across the canal.
Crossing the canal is an incredibly dangerous task.
It's part of the strategy
that Monash is nowhere near in agreement with.
He argues fiercely with Rawlinson over whether this is necessary.
Imagine those rafts crossing, exposed to fire.
EXPLOSIONS
The 29th of September, 5:50am.
Monash unleashes the greatest artillery bombardment of the war.
Aircraft and tanks wait to attack.
A thunderous attack opened up at dawn.
And four times that day, our guns advanced -
talk about work!
SHELLS WHISTLE
The noise was terrible, with hundreds of guns,
aeroplanes and hundreds of machine-guns screaming.
It was a scene never to be forgotten, with infantry,
tanks, guns, everything in action
in a sort of inferno of smoke and shell bursts.
The explosive curtain of artillery fire creeps forward,
protecting the first wave of American infantry.
But the inexperienced Americans advance too fast
and leave some well defended German positions
untouched behind them.
It wasn't that the Americans were bad troops,
they were just inexperienced.
By this stage, the Australians had had four years of warfare,
and knew a lot about it.
They knew a lot about how to fight this war and how to stay alive.
Machine-guns opened up on us
and this puzzled us, because we knew the Yanks were on ahead.
Until we discovered they had not mopped up the dugouts.
We found ourselves out of the frying pan, into the fire.
The air was thick with bullets.
Our boys were falling like apples from branches in a gale.
I saw many Huns still in the Hindenburg Line,
and a good number of tanks burning in front of it.
Called for flares, but none were shown -
no advance appears to be made.
The whole situation is very obscure and dangerous.
The American advance has stalled.
Tell our boys to keep moving.
Whatever it takes!
In this battle, the Americans demonstrated
their inexperience in war.
For these shortcomings, they paid a heavy price.
But Monash's powerful artillery is pulverising German defences
right along the St Quentin canal.
Every kilometre is hit with 250 shells every minute for eight hours.
A total of a quarter of a million shells.
WHISTLE BLOWS
MEN SHOUT
There are still tens of thousands of German soldiers
defending the Hindenburg Line
as the British North Midland Division launches its attack
across the St Quentin canal.
The opposite bank was pitted with machine-gun nests.
How any of us even reached the water beats me,
but a surprising number did.
Holding a gun above my head was bad enough
without being machine-gunned as well.
I still don't know how we got away with it.
It is an astonishing moment.
The British don't just cross the canal -
supported by Monash's artillery, they smash through
the main defences of the Hindenburg Line itself.
It's broken.
The bloody Hindenburg Line is broken!
It's the most extraordinary feat of arms.
And it's done by a division that is basically a run-of-the-mill
British territorial division, at the very end of the war,
mixed in with conscripts
and jaded and experienced volunteers.
It's the demonstration that, for all of Monash's methodical
genius and the Australians' tactical skill, this is an army
that's learned how to fight on the Western Front in 1918.
So it's a British territorial division that actually
breaks through the toughest bit of the Hindenburg Line.
That's telling us something very important.
It's not actually the particular national uniform
that you wear that matters.
It's not actually the individual attributes of those soldiers.
In the Great War, it's a question of where the artillery works the best.
Get this to the 46th at once.
The 46th North Midland Division draws a special mention
in his dispatches from Field Marshal Haig.
So thorough and complete was the organisation for this attack,
and so gallantly, rapidly and well was it executed by the troops,
that on this one division took, on this day,
over 4,000 prisoners and 70 guns.
We were right in among the Germans,
firing point-blank and bombing machine-gun posts.
They came popping out of holes like rabbits,
and as thick as rabbits.
With hands up, they called for mercy - sometimes they got it,
and sometimes they did not.
Soon after the Australians break through, capturing
the remaining German trench systems.
At the same time, the Canadians, Scots and other British forces
break through the line at the Canal du Nord.
Outflanked, the Germans have two choices -
surrender, or withdraw from their prized defensive position.
As the Australians get through the Hindenburg Line,
Monash pushes the Australians into one last fight
on the Western Front.
5th of October, 1918, they attack a village called Montbrehain.
And 135 Australians die in a battle that was totally unnecessary.
The village had no tactical significance.
No-one can imagine the loss of life or the horror of war
unless they were in it.
For the last three days,
we had to pretty well live in our gas masks.
The dead on the battlefield is an horrific sight to behold.
Some of the men killed at Montbrehain, last battle of the war,
had survived the war thus far - had fought all the way
from Gallipoli, only to be killed
at that furthermost point of the line.
The sadness here is that's a place, unlike the great cemeteries
of the Somme and Belgium, that Australians seldom visit.
It's a forgotten place. And it's a pity.
This demonstrates that Monash really did regard his men as units,
as production units, as symbols on a map.
He didn't really care about the men that he was ordering into action.
I think it's one of the greatest criticisms of Monash,
the greatest flaws in Monash, that he ordered that attack.
The Australians have fought their last battle.
After four years of war, 214,000 Australian casualties,
and over 60,00 dead from a population of just five million.
Without conscription, enlistments have dwindled.
After their great successes along the Hindenburg Line,
Australia, against Haig's wishes, must pull back from the front line.
We have the highest desertion rates of the war
amongst Australian forces during 1918.
A lot of men are simply unable to fight any more.
It had always been Monash's strategy to preserve the strength of his men.
It had always been his strategy to rotate divisions,
to relieve men so that they're not exposed to the trauma
of fighting for too long.
1918 is where he begins to push his men just that bit too far.
The Hindenburg Line has been pierced,
but the Kaiser and Ludendorff still command three million men
and an air force of fearsome skill.
The Allies must press ahead with their war of movement.
In early October, the Canadians, New Zealanders and Scots
target the city of Cambrai.
Currie knew that his corps, though battered and bruised,
could deliver another victory.
And the prize was Cambrai - the major logistical town
that the Germans were using to supply the whole front.
What Currie and Horne don't know is Cambrai is defended by
three German lines spanning some 6km,
manned by 200,000 battle-hardened veterans.
All protecting this last great hub of German communications.
If you threaten that hub, or even better, if you can take
it away, the Germans lose their strategic mobility,
their ability to reinforce all along the front.
The Canadians and British will send 324 tanks at the German lines,
closely supported by infantry and aircraft.
But they lack detailed intelligence on enemy strength and position.
It's a huge risk.
The armoured units will converge here.
We hear General Currie has said he will have Cambrai,
though he'd lose 75% of his corps.
If so, he is a fool and a murderer.
You hear? Next show is in Cambrai.
Cambrai. Jesus!
Will it ever end?
Chin up.
Won't be long now.
Cambrai can be taken,
but we do not need to be slaughtered to capture it.
Really, it comes down to those infantry battalions fighting
for their lives against the German counterattacking forces,
in attack and counterattack.
I think it's an indication that the Germans,
though they have suffered tremendous defeats all along the Western Front,
they were still fighting fiercely for key positions.
And Cambrai itself was an absolutely crucial one.
My mood during 1918 was one of black despair,
which tried to mask itself in a spirit
of carefree, military enterprise.
I was in a frenzy for something to happen -
wounds, death, anything.
After they start to win some of these battles,
there's that sense of, "I might just survive.
"So, please, let's not do another attack,
"let's not do another frontal. Please.
"We've got the Germans on the run, let's not push it too hard
"so that we have to risk lives."
The end of the war feels close,
but the fighting will be as bloody as ever.
The attack began at 1:30 and has proved a brilliant success.
By eight o'clock this morning, troops of the 3rd Division
had passed through Cambrai - north, south, east and west.
Caught the Germans asleep, and we got through Cambrai.
It was a great thing getting them out of Cambrai, but the brute
has looted and destroyed a great deal of the town,
and started many fires.
This is a brutal occupation and it ends in a terrible way.
As the Germans withdraw from Cambrai,
there's a scorched earth policy.
They will leave nothing that the Allies might take advantage of.
German occupation was not nice.
It was often very harsh
and the Germans did not treat the civilians well.
After years of occupation, French citizens rejoice
at the arrival of Allied troops.
But in spite of Foch's brutally effective assault
on the Hindenburg Line, and the loss of the strategic hub
of Cambrai, the Germans refuse to give up.
It will be a fight to the finish.
October, 1918.
The Hindenburg Line has been broken,
and the war itself will be over in 30 days.
For the commanders of the Allied armies on the Western Front,
the focus remains on one objective - ultimate victory.
Foch aims to drive the Germans out of France and Belgium,
and force them to cede everything to the Rhine river.
IN FRENCH:
We have got the enemy down.
In fact, he is a beaten army.
And Haig wants nothing more than to press the Allied advantage.
My plan is to go on hitting him as hard as we possibly can,
until he begs for mercy.
Dispelling all doubt that the war will continue,
on the 25th of October 1918,
German commander General Ludendorff issues a proclamation to his men.
IN GERMAN:
Haig still sees the Germans as a threat,
and after meeting Monash on the 27th of October
orders the Australians to return to battle.
On the 5th of November, three Australian divisions
are moving back up to the front line.
And although the Allied advance continues at a ferocious pace,
the Germans resist them every step of the way.
The Germans placed their machine guns and light artillery
so as to delay our advance.
As soon as we begin to press,
he moves off to the next suitable position.
Machine-guns were waiting for us.
I never experienced so intense fire.
Field gunners from the Royal Artillery pursue the Germans east
of the Hindenburg Line, towards Germany.
We took risks in this advance.
Sometimes, we were ahead of the foot sloggers.
We were shooting with rapid fire and blasting machine-gun nests,
transports and German troops running back along the roads.
It was an artilleryman's paradise.
By the first week of November, France has been liberated.
And since August 1918,
some 375,000 German soldiers have been taken prisoner.
There were rumours swirling among the soldiers
that the war was coming to an end.
There had been rumours like this from the start of the war.
No-one really believed them, but they could look around,
they could see the German Army was defeated.
What becomes in the mind of the German Army -
the Canadian Corps, the BEF become unbeatable.
We can't stop them.
Our troops have again made good progress,
advancing an average depth of 5,000 yards,
being tonight within six miles of Mons.
One of the soldiers fighting town to town,
pursuing the German forces towards Mons,
is Captain Charles Smith.
Captain Smith led his platoon forward with such rapidity
that he surprised a party of enemy sappers preparing
to blow up a road mine.
Smith is a Haudenosaunee of the Cayuga Nation,
one of more than 4,000 indigenous Canadians to serve in World War I.
By defusing the mine,
he saves dozens of his comrades' lives,
and for his valour, wins the Military Cross.
In the final days, British and Belgian forces pursue
the Germans across Belgium.
In the Argonne, the Americans and French
have forced them out of France.
The Canadians, in General Horne's 1st Army, move into Mons -
the town where the war began for the British.
It would be a great satisfaction for me to take Mons,
as I commanded the rearguard of 1st Corps when we left it
four years ago, last August.
The town of Mons in southern Belgium
did hold a very important place, I think,
in the memory of Henry Horne.
He had been in Mons in August 1914, when it was lost.
He participated in what was called the retreat from Mons.
If you think about it, the sublime irony of this cataclysm,
this huge thing that changed the entire world,
and it begins and ends for the British Empire
in exactly the same place.
The final for Mons sees house-to-house,
hand-to-hand combat in the medieval city streets.
Around 5,000 men die
on what will be the last day of the war.
Ludendorff and Hindenburg were finally having to admit
that they couldn't carry on with the war,
victory was getting more and more elusive.
So they suddenly turned to their civilian government
and said, "By the way, things haven't been going very well.
"You have to try and get some sort of armistice."
On the morning of the 11th of November, at 7am,
word arrives at the front lines.
All fighting will cease at 11 o'clock.
I had the honour of being the first machine over newly captured ground.
From every house, civilians waved madly,
and in some cases, went as far as to wave tablecloths.
We were flying very low, below the treetops sometimes.
When we marched through a French village, the inhabitants were almost
delirious with joy.
They lined the road and waved at us,
and the children ran alongside, crying, "Bonne Canada!"
I'd like to be in Blighty tonight.
It'd be a grand evening to be home.
I bet there would be something doing too.
Aye.
I bet there'd be a few good tears too.
Scottish troops, in the same vein as everybody else,
participated at all of the main points.
But I don't think any evidence exists which says that the Scottish
formations performed any better or worse than anybody else.
They just did the thing that they were supposed to do -
which was to fight, and often, to die.
The moment that great silence falls across the Somme,
a nurse is serving in the Australian field hospital
at Villers-Bretonneux.
Alongside her is a boy who they all call "Sunny Jim".
One very young boy, who has been suitably nicknamed Sunny Jim,
was practically dying when we went on duty this morning.
When the celebrations started at 11am, he wanted to know
the meaning of it.
He thought it was the commencement of a barrage.
When we told him that the war was over,
he seemed unable to realise it.
And during the next few hours remaining to him,
called to us frequently and asked, "Is it really over?
"Won't I have to go back?"
He seemed so happy each time we reassured him.
This poor little lad finished his battle towards evening.
He was barely 18 years and we were all so fond of him.
He was a Sunny Jim to the last.
The Great War has ground on for four years,
claiming 16 million lives
and inflicting 23 million casualties.
In 1918, the Allies fight as one under fresh leadership,
using revolutionary tactics, and end it in just 100 days.
But every yard is paid for in blood.
If you compare the 100 Days to the Somme,
the casualty rates are quite similar in many formations.
You've got an awful lot of casualties.
But the operational success is there.
Victory is there. And that is what's remembered.
And as politicians at Versailles redraw the map of the world,
millions of front-line soldiers try to get on with their lives
and come to terms with the terrible losses that continued
to the very last day of the war.
General Monash returns to Australia.
He receives an enthusiastic welcome from a grateful nation.
But tragedy does not leave him alone for long.
Within a year, his wife succumbs to cancer and his own health
begins to suffer.
After a decade of supporting returned soldiers and working
in important government and academic posts,
Sir John Monash dies in 1931, aged 66.
His state funeral, with crowds of at least 250,000,
a quarter of the population of Melbourne, is the largest
in Australia to that time.
Monash was a fantastic general.
He was one of our greatest leaders we've ever seen on the battlefield.
It took us a while to remember that after the war,
but I think it's really come full circle now.
We recognise that now, of just the great work
he did on the battlefield.
Field Marshal Haig was immensely popular
in the immediate aftermath of the war.
He served as President of the British Legion
and devoted himself to lobbying Government
for better treatment of veterans.
Aged 66, Haig suffers a fatal heart attack
in January, 1928.
He receives a state funeral in London.
Marshall Foch comes to say goodbye to a rival who became a comrade.
Scenes at his funeral were rather like Princess Diana,
it was mass mourning.
He lay in state in London and then was brought to Edinburgh
and it was estimated 100,000 people filed past
his coffin in Edinburgh.
A lot of them ex-servicemen.
Currie, dogged by years of allegations that he needlessly
sacrificed Canadian lives to raise his own profile,
fights a court case in 1928 and clears his name.
Those rumours had been repeated by a small-town newspaper in Ontario
that accused him of being a butcher,
and that was the time when Currie struck and he sued for libel.
It was Currie fighting for his reputation.
He won, but he suffered a stroke afterwards.
He never recovered from that
and he died five years later, in 1933.
Marshall Foch, the hard-driving Supreme Allied Commander,
dies in 1929.
He is entombed in Les Invalides,
the pantheon of French military heroes, next to Napoleon.
Having seen France invaded twice by Germany in his own lifetime,
he had insisted on harsh reparations for the German people
in the Treaty of Versailles.
There was a fundamental mishandling of the German people and
the German state towards the end of the peace conferences in 1919.
The idea that there should be reparations,
there should be retribution, the German people should pay back
what they started was perceived to be, "You started it,
"you actually have to now pay this back to us, you owe us."
Really more damaging to the future peace of Europe than any particular
treaty was that the war itself tragically had left terrible damage
and not settled all that much.
So it had destroyed lives, it had destroyed societies,
it had destroyed four great empires.
It had left a Europe that was not in particularly good shape.
This is not an honourable peace at all -
it's a peace of victors and it's a peace of villains.
And that means, of course, there are old scores to be settled
in 1939, and the Germans who marched to that war are, of course,
the same Germans who marched to war in 1914.
The Germans learn from their World War I defeat.
21 years later, General Heinz Guderian,
the architect of Germany's blitzkrieg in World War II,
would point to a single battle as a crucial influence -
the great Allied fightback that began the 100 Days to Victory,
the Battle of Amiens on the 8th of August, 1918.
IN GERMAN:
The Germans learned the right lessons from Amiens
and from the 100 Days, and the Allies, in the rush to forget
about the war, forget the lessons, and they wind up having to learn
some of those harsh, important lessons
on the Western Front in the second war.
The tactics of 1914 would have been recognisable to Napoleon,
and the tactics of 1918 would be recognisable to a modern soldier.
That's how much they advanced.
So by 1918, by these attacks, this is the birth of modern warfare,
this is the way we still fight wars today.
Our lines are broken here and here.
Four years of fighting the deadliest war in history
transformed these commanders.
Some of them were men of another age.
Others, misfits from the corners of the British Empire.
By November 1918, they had all become innovators
and masters of war.
Today, we remember the Somme, Passchendaele and Gallipoli -
with catastrophic numbers of dead, all were failures.
But in the 100 days from Amiens to the Hindenburg Line,
the Allies did something different.
They abandoned old methods and old rivalries
and they learned how to win.
Forward!