Part V: The First World War in .NET framework

Making Denso QR Bar Code in .NET framework Part V: The First World War

In the weeks following the Battle of Amiens the Allied offensive became general along the Western Front Much of the burden fell on the British armies Mobility was back on the battlefield and the British adapted quickly to its demands Throughout August and September 1918 the advance continued Tanks led local attacks that steadily gnawed away at the German defences On 29 September a second tank battle took place near Cambrai when groups of German tanks, most of them captured British vehicles, led a counterattack The Tank Corps 12th Battalion met them and sustained some loss, but destroyed six of the eleven enemy tanks The Germans had begun to fight harder once more, not because they had any hope of victory, but because their leaders had told them they were now defending the Fatherland Despite this, the Allies had broken through the formidable defences of the Hindenburg Line by 5 October Simultaneously, in Flanders, the British and Belgian armies finally broke out of the Ypres salient In late October and early November, the pace of the advance was beyond even that of the Whippet tanks Whenever the cavalry were not held up, they followed the German armies as the enemy retreated towards their homeland When the Allies reached Mons, the Belgian town may have stirred memories among some of the troopers After all, for the British Army, the war had started here, over four years earlier On 6 October Germany indicated that it welcomed an armistice The Allies replied that they would not negotiate with a military dictatorship Ludendorff resigned on 27 October to permit negotiations to continue, but his gesture was too late Two days later the German High Seas Fleet, rusting at its moorings since Jutland (see 17), mutinied Riots, rebellions, and mutinies in the cause of peace spread like wildfire across Germany On 9 November a republic was proclaimed Next day Kaiser Wilhelm formally abdicated, then scuttled off to neutral Holland The new government finally agreed terms with the Allies and an armistice came into effect at 11 am on 11 November Haig considered that the humiliating terms that the victorious Allies imposed on Germany would simply lead to another war, and he was right (see Part VI)

Hardly a family in Great Britain did not lose at least one of its members during the First World War The trauma remains deep-seated within the national consciousness Very few war memorials existed prior to 1918 Subsequently, they appeared in every city, town, village, hamlet, and even in the workplaces of those who had been killed In such times of raw grief, thinking of rational explanations was difficult when the nation had suffered nearly one million casualties

18: Storm Troopers and Tank Attacks: The Western Front, 1918

A popular saying was that during a conversation between Hindenburg and Ludendorff they described the British Army as lions led by donkeys No such conversation ever took place, but the phrase entered common usage Of course, the prior experience of most generals had not prepared them for the realities of trench warfare, and some were incompetent or promoted beyond their abilities as the army expanded, but the same was true of every army in the field What is interesting is that the generals were considered competent enough before trench warfare set in during the autumn of 1914, and also when mobility returned to the battlefield in 1918 Most staff officers performed to the best of their abilities, but others worked their way into staff jobs that offered safe, comfortable billets and the opportunity for a spot of bureaucratic empire building The staff lived and worked well behind the lines, in or near their general s chateau, generally in some style The troops resented their clean-shaven, spick-and-span visits to the front line, which the occupants shared with greedy lice, well-fed rats, and corpses, not simply because they were tactless, but because the orders they brought usually meant trouble of one sort or another for someone Staff offers wore the same red band around their service dress caps and the same red lapel tabs as their generals Such, however, was the dislike and contempt of the front-line soldier for the staff, expressed in the song The First Staff Officer Jumped Right Over the Second Staff Officer s Back , that these distinctions were withdrawn after the war Too much, perhaps, has been made of the generation of poets who served during the war The views they expressed were personal, and many were writing in the late 1920s when the war may have been won but the peace had been lost At such a time, all the effort and sacrifice of the war must have seemed pointless