March 22, 1918 - Further German Advances as Spring Offensive Continues
Pictured - German troops drag supplies with them. The trench stalemate is ended and armies move again.
When March 21 ended 21,000 British prisoners and 100 miles of ground had been taken. It was the biggest breakthrough on the Western Front in years and made a mockery of previous Allied efforts in the Somme region. Whether an enveloping fog or their tactics deserved the credit, the Germans had ended the trench stalemate.
But the battle was only beginning. On the second day German forces continued to try and break through the British line. The British fought back with all they had. A number of desperate counter-attacks were made; in one 16 out of 25 attacking tanks were destroyed. Whole British brigades fought to the end, the South African Brigade, for example, would be totally overrun and captured that week.
The break-throughs were coming especially on the southern flank of the BEF, where General Gough’s Fifth Army had no reserves. French divisions began arriving to help. But every time British troops stood and fought, they found themselves flanked by the Germans. War had returned to the murderous, mobile sort of 1914. In a German report of the fighting, they concluded that one British corps had “covered the retreat of the main body even to the extent of being destroyed itself.” That was not unusual in the fighting of March 1918.