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By Root 1103 0

had decided on the latter. The aim was to drive a spearhead deep into British lines and then veer westward, toward the French coast, trapping hundreds of thousands of soldiers with only the English Channel at their backs. Germany's last great gamble had begun, and after this it had no more cards to play. Its cities short of food, its farms and factories stripped of young men, the country was like a bloodied boxer in the final round, risking all his remaining strength on a knock-out punch. General Erich Ludendorff, directing the assault, declared that if victory required it, he was willing to lose a million men. If the offensive failed, he said, "Germany must go under."

At the end of the first day, German losses of 40,000 were—startling for an offensive in this war—almost even with Britain's 38,500. And yet the balance was in Germany's favor, because some two-thirds of its casualties were wounded, many of whom would recover to fight again, whereas a humiliating 21,000 of the British total never would: they had been taken prisoner. The new storm trooper tactics had caught them by surprise. "I thought we had stopped them," said one private, who had been aiming his machine gun forward through the fog, "when I felt a bump in the back. I turned round and there was a German officer with a revolver in my back. 'Come along, Tommy. You've done enough.' I turned round then and said 'Thank you very much, Sir.'"

As British troops retreated, they were forced to give up even the graveyards of men killed in earlier battles. Wounded men filled the hospitals and fleeing French civilians carrying their belongings clogged the roads. "Old women in black dresses there were," remembered one British officer; "bent old men trundling wheelbarrows; girls in their Sunday best—to wear it the best way to save it; farm carts loaded with the miscellany of hens, pigs, furniture, children, mattresses, bolsters; moody cows being whacked and led by little boys." Behind them columns of smoke rose from their farms and villages, torched by Allied soldiers who wanted to leave nothing of use to the Germans.

The Kaiser was delighted. "The battle is won," he shouted jubilantly to a soldier on guard at a railway platform as he boarded his private train. "The English have been utterly defeated!" He gave German schoolchildren a holiday, and presented Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the supreme military commander, with the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Rays, a medal last awarded to Marshal Gebhard von Blücher for defeating Napoleon. To General Ludendorff, the actual architect of the attack, he presented an iron statuette of himself. Once again, he could imagine himself as master of all Europe. In Berlin, flags were broken out and church bells rang.

In London, John French used the occasion to urge Lloyd George to fire Haig. From the capital, Alfred Milner traveled through the night to France to survey the damage and report back. Before he left, he dashed off a pessimistic note to Violet Cecil: "The force of the blow was beyond all precedent, even in this war, and beyond expectation." After conferring with British commanders, he joined Haig, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and French military leaders for an emergency conference at the town of Doullens, which had seen wars ever since the Middle Ages. As the shaken dignitaries gathered around an oval table beneath a chandelier in the mansard-roofed town hall—Milner with his stern, drawn face, an unsmiling Haig in uniform and boots, and the balding, stocky Clemenceau fearing his entire country might be overrun—it was a desperate scene. The leaders could hear the constant pounding of artillery and the gravelly rattle of British tanks maneuvering into position to guard the town's perimeter against a German breakthrough. Haggard, dust-covered troops were retreating through the streets.

The Germans continued to press forward, although, without the element of surprise, not as swiftly and dramatically as on the first day. Particularly heartbreaking for British soldiers was their retreat over ground