At an hour and date to be notified later, the 46th Division, as part of a major operation, will cross the St. Quentin Canal, capture the Hindenburg Line, and advance to a position shown on the attached map A. This was the opening paragraph of the preliminary operation order which was to lead to one of the most outstanding feats of arms of the Great War, and that is where this story begins. It takes us through the planning, the opposed crossing and the subsequent divisional operations up to the armistice. How formidable the task was can be gauged from the photos of the canal; the bed was about 35 feet wide and it was like the ditch of a fortress. The approaches to the canal on the west side were covered by a continuous line of trenches, sited on a slight rise, with frequent strongpoints housing machine-guns, protected by a broad belt of barbed wire. Under the cover of a favourable mist and one of the finest barrages ever seen (fired without registration) the 46th Division stormed the enemy forward positions with few casualties and pushed on to make the crossing. The Riqueval bridge was still intact and it was secured by a party of N Staffs and sappers who rushed it, killing all the demolition party, who had been sheltering from the barrage, before they could reach it. The bridge still stands today, just as it was when captured. This is an absorbing account of an operation that went literally according to plan and from there the division went from one success to another as the story unfolds. The earlier history of the division is only briefly covered in an introductory chapter. It was the first complete TF division to arrive on the Western Front, in February 1915. Its first major battle was an attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt at the end of the Loos offensive in which it suffered over 3,800 casualties in two days. Its attack on Gommecourt on 1st July 1916 was a failure that cost some 2,500 casualties; it also cost the divisional commander (Montagu-Stuart-Wortley). his job It wasn't until the last few weeks of the war that the 46th Division really made its mark. In that time it encountered and defeated sixteen German divisions at a cost of 4,200 casualties. Total casualties throughout the war amounted to 29,569 and six VCs were won. The divisional sign was a rectangle surrounded by a white edge; the top half of the rectangle was scarlet and the lower half rifle green, the colours of the KRRC, the first GOC's regiment.

In November 1918 the BEF under Field Marshal Haig fought a series of victorious battles on the Western Front that contributed mightily to the German army’s defeat. They did so as part of a coalition and the role of Australian ‘diggers’ and US ‘doughboys’ is often forgotten. The Bellicourt Tunnel attack, fought in the fading autumn light, was very much an inter-Allied affair and marked a unique moment in the Allied armies’ endeavours. It was the first time that such a large cohort of Americans had fought in a British army. Additionally, untried American II Corps and experienced Australian Corps were to spearhead the attack under the command of Lieutenant General Sir John Monash with British divisions adopting supporting roles on the flanks. Blair forensically details the fighting and the largely forgotten desperate German defence. Although celebrated as a marvellous feat of breaking the Hindenburg Line, the American attack failed generally to achieve its set objectives and it took the Australians three days of bitter fighting to reach theirs. Blair rejects the conventional explanation of the US ‘mop up’ failure and points the finger of blame at Rawlinson, Haig and Monash for expecting too much of the raw US troops, singling out the Australian Corps commander for particular criticism. Overall, Blair judges the fighting g a draw. At the end, like two boxers, the Australian-American force was gasping for breath and the Germans, badly battered, back-pedalling to remain on balance. Overall the day was calamitous for the German army, even if the clean break-through that Haig had hoped for did not occur. Forced out of the Hindenburg Line, the prognosis for the German army on the Western Front – and hence Imperial Germany itself – was bleak indeed.

Jagging across north-western Europe like an ugly scar, the Hindenburg Line was Germany's most formidable line of defence in World War I. Its fearsome reputation was matched only by its cunning design, with deep zigzagging trenches, concrete fieldworks, barbed wire and devilish booby traps forming an intimidating barrier for any attacking army. Through meticulous research, this volume explores each of the major portions of the Hindenburg Line, paying particular attention to three examples of Allied operations against it towards the end of the war: the critical flanking of the Drocourt-Qeant Switch; the daring but costly rupture of the line of the St Quentin Canal; and the bloody battles of the Meuse-Argonne. Specially commissioned artwork and historical photographs perfectly complement the analysis provided by the authors as they trace the life of the Hindenburg Line from its seemingly invulnerable early years through to the audacious tactics used by the Allies to achieve a bitter victory in 1918.

An expert narrative of 1918, when the breakthrough was finally made, and everything it took to achieve victory.

Surviving the Great War is the first detailed analysis of Australians in German captivity in WW1. By placing the hardships of prisoners of war in a broader social and military content, this book adds a new dimension to the national wartime experience and challenges popular representations of Australia's involvement in the First World War.

The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917-1918 by Rod Paschall is the first volume in the Major Battles and Campaigns series under the general editorship of John S. D. Eisenhower. Designed for the "armchair strategist," this book offers striking proof of the inaccuracy of the conventional depiction of the trench warfare of the First World War, in which commanding generals are seen as mediocre and unimaginative, having stubbornly sent hundreds of thousands of troops over the top to be mowed down by the lethal weaponry of modern war. Paschall builds a compelling case that the generals on both sides invented ingenious new strategies that simply failed in the context of a war of attrition. In a series of vivid analyses of successive offenses, Paschall describes the generals' plans, how their plans were aimed at dislodging the entrenched enemy and restoring maneuver and breakthrough on the Western Front, and what happened when the massed soldiery under their command sought to carry out their orders. Though these strategies and tactics largely failed at the time, they would prove successful when implemented twenty years later during World War II. Dozens of photographs, many never before published, as well as theater and battlefield maps help make The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917-1918 an outstanding and original contribution to the body of knowledge of the Great War.