Wednesday August 14^th, 1918

Not sick. Parades all morning. Concert afternoon. Mail up – one from home.

Strategic Importance of the Battle of Amiens

The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, made a speech in Newport on August 10th, 1918.  In it, he shared the strategic importance of the success of the Battle of Amiens:

‘One place we have captured is a most import place opposite Amiens. Since the start we have driven the enemy back twelve miles. If you had know the anxiety we had owing to the fact that the railway through Amiens was directly under gunfire you would realize what the news now means. It means that Amiens is now free from gun fire – Amiens a place where 100 trains a day pass through. We were deprived of that railway centre for a time. Recently we were only able to put through twenty trains a day, but now it will be safe.’¹

The following map shows the lines before the Battle and as at August 10th.  This makes it clear how pressed Amiens was. It is interesting that Lloyd George has probably never been so open about the challenges the Allies faced – until the threat was past.

Cautious Optimism

In the same speech, Lloyd George, also asked for continued effort and vigilance:

‘Still I want to say again that it is not over. This country has got to depend upon its resolution, upon its courage; it has got to keep up its heart in the long struggle. It is the heart that tells in the long climb; it is the hear that tells going over rough country; it is the heart that tells in the long run.’

‘This is a world job; it is one of those things that Providence gives to a generation to do for the ages. You are not doing these things for yourselves alone, and not even for your children, you are doing one of those things that God chooses a generation to do for the destiny of the world in all ages to come. Therefore He is never in a hurry. Do not feel ‘Let us have done with it,’ because if you try to have done with it now you would only have to being it again a hundredfold worse later on. When you really get done with it see that it is done.’¹

Unfortunately these stirring words did not prove true and Britain will be drawn into the Second World War just over 20 years after the Armistice of ‘the war to end all wars’.

9^th Battalion War Diary – 14^thAugust 1918 – Haudricourt

Training and work as per programme.

References & Further Reading

¹ Speech by Lloyd George in Newport, Wales, reported in The Observer, August 11th, 1918, page 5

* Map showing the Allied Advances in the first days of the Battle of Amiens. The Observer, August 11th, 1918, page 6