I had to leave some out, because it had political overtones, but the guts of the story is there. The Americans War in the Western Front had a less than auspicious start. Anyone who has studied the history of the Western Front in WW1 knows the story.


From the new daily
"Australians have become accustomed to their nation’s subservient relationship with the United States, because it has prevailed for so much of their adult lives. What happened earlier, at the start of the “hundred years of mateship”, was very different.It was 1918, the final year of the Great War. The Germans had launched an immense offensive on March 21. The United States had entered the conflict officially in April 1917, but had been slow to make its presence felt on the front line. The Germans were hoping that the massive assault they launched a century ago this month would bring them victory before American soldiers could become influential. This was the climax of the most momentous conflict there had ever been.Initially, the offensive was ominously successful. The British were driven back no less than 40 miles, a substantial distance considering the Western Front had been essentially deadlocked for years. Even the strategically important city of Amiens seemed under threat. With some British formations retiring in disarray, the Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, issued a special order describing the situation as “a crisis”.


After years of ghastly casualties that would blight a generation, a grim prospect loomed. Vera Brittain, who was to become one of the most acclaimed memoirists of the era, emphasised in her famous book Testament of Youth “the crushing tension of those extreme days” when “into our minds had crept for the first time the secret, incredible fear that we might lose the war”.Formations of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) were rushed to the rescue. They made a vital contribution to the crisis. In fact, Australian soldiers were influencing the destiny of the world in 1918 more than Australians have done in any other year before or since. Australia’s emphasis on remembering the conflict has been on Gallipoli ever since 1915, but the main commemorative priority should be on what happened at the Western Front, especially in 1918.It was during the second half of 1918, when the AIF spearheaded a prolonged offensive that shortened the war, that the “hundred years of mateship” began. But the way these allies interacted in 1918 was a conspicuous contrast to the nature of the relationship after the Second World War.

In 1918, whereas the Australians were experienced and highly capable, the Americans were keen but green. In their first battle together, at Hamel in July 1918, the AIF was very much the senior partner.This was again evident on September 29, 1918, when a combined Australian-American leapfrog operation attacked the formidable Hindenburg Line. The Americans had the easier initial role but did not consolidate properly at their objective, with the result that General Pompey Elliott’s 15th Brigade suffered avoidable casualties and then had to complete the Americans’ task as well as their own more difficult assignment. Afterwards, Elliott learned that the 15th Brigade lieutenants he had loaned to help the Americans with mopping-up and other frontline techniques had not carried out this important task because an American general had kept them at his headquarters to show him how to run the battle.Similar incidents occurred elsewhere. AIF photographer George Wilkins, obtaining images and war records in advanced positions with astonishing bravery, ended up in a trench with Americans who, he realised, were unaware they were being bombed by nearby Germans. Although a non-combatant, Wilkins alerted them, grabbed someone’s rifle, and enabled the situation to be retrieved with such inspiring effectiveness that he received an award for gallantry.The Americans’ reliance on the Australians in 1918 could hardly have been more unlike the relationship between the two nations familiar to present-day generations. When the American soldiers did eventually enter the frontline, they relied on the AIF to show them how.A century later, with Australia still too subservient — and, when deciding on military involvements, still too inclined to curry favour with America — Malcolm Turnbull was hardly likely to emphasise the real story of the start of his hundred years of mateship."