The toughest, most ruthless commander of both sides was beginning to realise the breakthrough's impact.
"You do not know what the Australians and Canadians have done for the British Empire in these days," he began, but faltered and broke down.
In the best co-ordinated attack in military history, the diggers went into action on August 8, supported on their flanks by the British, Canadians and French, and defeated 200,000 soldiers in eight German divisions - equivalent to an army. Later, when there was a shortage of tanks, Monash ordered 80 dummy tanks built by his engineers to fool the enemy into believing the Australians had a greater force. Another ruse was to have planes fly over enemy positions so the noise of the squealing tanks, inching forward like giant armadillos, would not be heard. The cumbersome masks limited the enemy soldiers' fighting capacity. He used a few more deadly tricks at Amiens, including every day for a week firing coloured smoke at the Germans, who were forced to don masks just in case the in-coming smoke bombs were gas. He was also more than an amateur illusionist who as a teenager was a hit at parties with magic tricks. His attention to detail was obsessive, yet part of his genius. Pershing, got cold feet and wanted to withdraw the 1000 infantry he had allowed Monash to have for the battle alongside 7000 diggers.Įven as the victorious troops were returning with the tanks from Hamel, Monash was working on his grand plan that would precipitate the end of the war. The night before the operation, the commander of American forces, General John J. He proposed that the battle be dominated by tanks, used at night for the first time.
In a trial run for his grander plan, Monash anted to capture the village of Hamel near the Somme. Monash was made commander of Australia's army in mid-May and immediately began planning a massive counter-attack led by his diggers as the "shock troops". In the following months, the British and French high commands did frenetic impressions of little Dutch boys putting their fingers in the dike to stop a flood, when something stronger was needed. Until that day, the only other breakthrough victory in four years on the Western Front had been by the Germans on March 21, 1918, when they attacked with three armies and defeated the British Third and Fifth armies. Monash commanded the Australian Army, sending 102,000 diggers out on a brilliantly planned attack at Amiens, 120 kilometres north of Paris, that delivered a knock-out blow from which the enemy never recovered. EIGHTY EIGHT YEARS ago in 1918, on the eighth day of the eighth month, General Sir John Monash masterminded a victory in France that ended Germany's hope of winning World War I.
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