It has taken too long for the British army's WW1 achievements in 1918 to be recognised. In March, April and May 1918 it was buffeted by German attacks, the first of which, as Professor Richard Holmes maintains, came perilously close to winning the war. It rapidly switched from the defensive to the offensive, and in the first world war's last Hundred Days advanced steadily eastwards, breaking the Hindenburg Line and reaching the Belgian town of Mons - where the British Army it had fired its first shots in 1914.
This 1918 Commemorative tour overlaps 8 August, the opening of the battle of Amiens, that Ludendorff called 'the black day of the German Army in the war.' But this first world war tour begins by looking at the experience of the British Fifth Army under the Kaiserschlacht, the German March offensive, and its retreat across the Santerre plateau south of the Somme. It then considers the Australian attack at Le Hamel on 4 July before examining the battle of Amiens on the 8 August, with special emphasis on the Canadians, and following the victorious advance to the Hindenburg Line south of Cambrai, and shadowing that last push across the downland to Mons. Professor Richard Holmes will take travellers to see the site of one of his favourite battles, the cavalry action at Honnechy. This battlefield tour ends with the British attacking canals very much like those they had defended in 1914, with the Royal Engineers, four years on, again at the forefront of the battle.
The cemeteries which mark the path of the fighting during the Hundred Days show a tragic mix of old and young: conscripts of 1918 and old sweats who had been 'out since Mons.' All of them were men who, had they lived only another week or two until the Armistice, might have gone on to see their grandchildren. It was their victory, and we will remember them proudly.
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