ABSTRACT
The last two and a half months of the war produced, initially, the development of what can be called semi-traditional warfare. This meant set-piece offensives, with very heavy reliance on artillery, and to a lesser extent on machine guns and mortars, and occasionally the use of tanks, to get the BEF infantry forward. Innovative ideas emerged at corps, divisional and lower levels, while GHQ became less relevant. Nevertheless, BEF casualties were very high due to German firepower defences, while on the other hand German casualties of around 1 1/2 million (mostly deserters and prisoners of war) in the second half of 1918, showed that the German army could stay in existence only by relying on machine gunners and the artillery. Then in the last 30 days or so, mobility returned to the battlefield, mostly because German units retreated to a new line of defence almost every day. Set-piece attacks were still used by the BEF, as well as open warfare tactics, while GHQ gave carte blanche to the army commanders. The war ended not with any decisive offensive or breakthrough, but gradually, through the wearing-down strategy that Haig and GHQQ had applied since 1916, and through the use of ever larger amounts of traditional or semi-traditional technology.
