The
Battle of Hamel (4 July 1918) was a successful attack by
Australian Army and
US Army infantry, supported by
British tanks, against
German positions in and around the town of
Le Hamel, in northern
France, during
World War I. The attack was planned and commanded by
Lieutenant General John Monash, commander of the
Australian Corps and
Australian Imperial Force.
Many of the tactics employed, such as the use of
combined arms, illustrated the evolution of military tactics, from the
massed attacks mounted earlier in the war. All of the Allies' objectives were achieved within 93 minutes, just three minutes longer than Monash's calculated battle time.
To give the newly arrived
American Expeditionary Force (AEF) combat experience, the five Australian infantry
brigades involved were augmented by 10
companies from US Army battalions. However, six of these US infantry companies were withdrawn from the front line before seeing action. Hamel was the first time during World War I that elements of the AEF were commanded operationally by non-American officers.
While small in scale, the Battle of Hamel was to have far-reaching consequences for
trench warfare, because, like the
Battle of Cambrai in 1917, it provided a practical demonstration of tactics for attacking an entrenched enemy using combined arms tactics.[SUP]
[10][/SUP] The strategy employed at Hamel was then successful on a much larger scale in the
Battle of Amiens and was a major factor in Allied successes later in the war. The result received strong praise from French Premier
Georges Clemenceau, who later toured the battlefield and addressed the troops that had taken part.[SUP]
[8][/SUP] Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery, the World War II British army commander, later described Monash as the best World War I general on the Western Front in Europe.[SUP]
[71][/SUP]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamel#Analysis
