Amiens! Amiens!

Today I learned about the Battle of Amiens. Hoo boy was this HUGE! This was the one which finally repelled the Germans AWAY from Paris. August 1918 and the Germans were only 37 miles from the City of Lights. That long trenchline through Belgium and France finally began to break for the Allies with this collective triumph > British, French, Canadians, Australians, even Americans got involved. This is why it worked: the first time all parts worked together - IN SECRET. It was all well-planned when the battle began hours before dawn with a bombardment (with artillery shells fulla deadly gas! blimey!), then sent in wave after wave with different attacks all up and down the line. This was the first big battle to use beaucoup de tanks -- big tanks (Mark V), little tanks (whippets) -- and the Germans pretty much shat themselves when the 1st round of these 4-mile-per-hour machines came rolling through. Of course, operating these monsters was pretty f'ing scary too ... in the middle of it all: cavalry -- hundreds and hundreds of men on horseback ripping through the German defenses, then, later in the day ... PLANES (the Royal Air Force was only a few months old). Pretty much the first full-scale multi-pronged modern attack -- sorta the beginning of the end of trench warfare, right there on the largest, most famous trench of all. They broke the line and began the colossal push-back. General Ludendorff called August 8th "the black day of the German Army." It should also be noted the Americans were the ones who got the ball rolling back in June, clearing out Belleau Wood. The French couldn't clear it, but wave after wave (six full assaults lasting for weeks) of US soldiers finally pushed the Germans out. This was the first US/German scrap. They originally had the place defended so well cuz they had machinegun nests with inter-locking fields of fire all mathematically coordinated while the Americans (featuring thousands of black troops -- yes yes y'all) initially marched in line abreast, getting slaughtered. The wood was a thick'n'nasty thatch of dense, dying forest ... ugly scene, but ultimately mightily heroic. The French gave medals to the black soldiers. They hardly ever gave their medals to anyone not French. Right on.