Operation Michael
24th—26th March 1918
The German plan unravels
The original plan conceived by General Ludendorff was for his Eighteenth Army (General von Hutier) to push the British back to the area of the Crozat Canal and then form a defensive flank against the unlikely (in his mind) event that the French would rush to the aid of the British.
To the north of Péronne the Second Army (General von de Marwitz) would advance on that town allowing the Seventeenth Army to use its left flank to take Bapaume. From there it would strike northwards towards Arras as Operation Mars to the north of the town engaged it in a pincer movement.
By the 24th March 1918 von Hutier’s Army was where it was supposed to be along the Somme and the Crozat Canal. The British right flank was being taken over by the French but in such a piecemeal fashion that the French Division’s were without their artillery, and ammunition trains were lagging behind. The French found themselves arriving, not behind the British as reinforcements but as the new front line.
Although the British Fifth Army had been driven back kilometres in a matter of a few days, General Sir Julian Byng’s Third Army had proved a harder nut to crack.
For the moment von Hutier continued his drive westwards gaining more and more territory. The Allied soldiers found themselves back in the French front line trenches of 1916 and then, behind them. Ground that the British and French had taken months to capture during the Battle of the Somme was lost in hours.
On the 24th March Général Philippe Pétain, commanding the French forces drove to Dury, to the south of Amiens (Not to be confused with the one near Arras), in order to meet with his British counterpart, Sir Douglas Haig.
Haig stated that he needed a force in front of Amiens but Pétain expressed his worries that the situation before them was a mere prelude to a greater German offensive against the French in the Champagne region. His premonitions were correct but Ludendorff had not yet finished with the British and would launch Operation Georgette on the 9th April 1918 in the area of the Lys River. Attacks on the French would, only then, follow.
Pétain also made it quite clear that his orders to Général Fayolle, who was now in command of all Allied forces south of the Somme, were to retire towards Beauvais (well to the south of Amiens) in order to protect the French capital, rather than maintain the line with the British.
Haig returned to his GHQ at Montreuil sur Mer and dispatched a message to London requesting the immediate presence of Lord Milner and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson.
Wilson was a blatant Francophile whose constant contact with the French military had resulted in them using a W on their maps for British units ! A native of Carrickfergus in County Antrim, he was assassinated on 22nd June 1922 outside his home in London by two members of the IRA.
The Hôtel de Ville at Doullens
Lord Milner was in fact, already on his way to France for a meeting with General Sir Henry Rawlinson at Versailles. Rawlinson had taken Wilson’s place at the Inter-Allied Supreme War Council. This Council had been formed the previous November with a view to advising the two separate commands but Wilson had not taken long in pushing towards the idea of placing Haig under the command of the French.
Wilson arrived in France on the 25th March and having spoken with Haig headed to Paris to see Rawlinson and Milner. A conference was organised for the following day at the Town Hall in Doullens.