It was
automobile transportation that enabled Haig to send the British
Canadians and Australians in full cry after the retreating Germans when
the backbone of the German resistance was broken before Lens, Cambrai,
and Ostend.
America's railway transportation system in France was one of the marvels
of the war. Stretching from the sector of seacoast set apart for America
by the French Government, it radiated far into the interior, delivering
men, munitions and food in a steady stream. American engineers worked
with their brothers-in-arms with the Allies to construct an
inter-weaving system of wide-gauge and narrow-gauge roads that served to
victual and munition the entire front and further serve to deliver at
top speed whole army corps. It was this network of strategic railways
that enabled the French to send an avalanche clad in horizon-blue to the
relief of Amiens when Hindenburg made his final tremendous effort of
1918.
In its essentials, military effort in the great conflict may be roughly
divided into
Open warfare,
Trench warfare,
Crater warfare.
The first battle of the Marne was almost wholly open warfare; so also
were the battles of the Masurian Lakes, Allenstein, and Dunajec in the
eastern theater of war, and most of the warfare on the Italian front
between the Piave River and Gorizia.
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