DECISIVE VICTORY: The Battle of the Sambre, 4 November 1918

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Analyzes the Battle of the Sambre, 4 November 1918, at the operational and tactical levels: the BEF was no longer striving for a breakthrough - sequential 'bite and hold' was now the accepted method of advance. Thirteen divisions of the BEF led the assault on a frontage of approximately twenty miles, supported by over 1,000 guns, with initial plans presuming an involvement of up to 70 tanks and armored cars. The German Army was determined to hold a defensive line incorporating the Mormal Forest and the Sambre-Oise Canal, hoping to buy time for a strategic withdrawal to yet incomplete defensive positions between Antwerp and the Meuse, and thereby negotiate a compromise peace in the spring of 1919.

Examines the battle into its wider strategic context and reaches important, new conclusions: that this victory, hard-won as it was by a British army hampered by logistical, geographical, and meteorological constraints and worn down by the almost continuous hard fighting of the summer and autumn, irrevocably and finally crushed the will of the German defenders, leading to a pursuit of a demoralized, broken, and beaten army, whose means of continued resistance had been destroyed thus expediting the armistice. Contains 35 b/w photos, 23 maps (6 sketch & 17 color), 4 diagrams, 1 b/w painting, and 4 tables.