Читать книгу Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights - Kelly Miller - Страница 67

The initiative was with Germany, and the German command selected the British army in position along the Scarpe River, north of Cambria, to the Oise River—a distance of sixty miles—as the object of the first drive. The assault began the morning of March 21, 1918. Along the entire front the artillery fire that opened the drive was on the scale never before approached in war. More than one million men, the choicest troops of Germany, were ready to assault the British lines and they came on, wave after wave, and Germany came perilously near success in her efforts to break through the British lines. The British were driven back beyond the lines of the battle of the Somme in 1916, important towns were captured, but their lines still held. The first phase of the great battle—known in history as the battle of Picardy—was a defeat to German hopes.