The Kaiserschlacht Commences. March 21, 1918. Operation Michael

Afternoon edition of Cheyenne's Wyoming Tribune, March 21, 1918.

It was a momentous day, to be sure.

Excellent map showing all five expressions of the Kaiserschlacht, the massive German campaign to end the war in 1918.  Every single part of the offensive was a tactical success for the Germans. . . but not enough of a success to win the war.

And so, on this day, the German Army began its last great, and nearly successful, offensive the Great War.  An offensive, however, whose result was foreordained by the lack of German horsepower.

 What the Germans were lacking by this point of World War One.

There will be a lot of "100 Year Ago" type history venues on this event, as it is a big one.  It was, truly, the German's last big gasp of World War One.  It wrecked the offensive abilities of the German Army for the duration of the war, but it was something they had to try. After the Kaiserschlacht the Germans could only defend and their strategy changed to that.  It wouldn't work long as the home front crumbled behind the German front, to include the crumbling in moral of the German Army and Navy at home.

The offensive, made up of a series of operations that would take place over the next two months, commenced with Operation Michael, a massive offensive against the British Expeditionary Force.

Operation Michael

 

Repeat of the map above.  Operation Michael is the "First German Drive" of the mpa.

The Kaiserschlacht, it not Operation Michael, was somewhat obvious in that it had been known for months that the Germans would try a giant 1918 offensive.  As early as February the American soldier's newspaper Wadsworth Gas Attack and Rio Grand Rattler had published an issue was a drunk Mars "waiting for spring".  It was coming, and everyone knew it.

Everyone with any military savvy also knew that with Russia having now surrendered to the Germans, and the Germans having been sensible enough to accept a negotiated peace, something they failed to do in World War Two, millions of German troops should have now been available to fight in the West.  However, what hadn't been counted on with Trotsky's blundering, which delayed the onset of peace by a month, and German avarice, which caused t he German's to use Trotsky's error to absorb huge areas of Russian territory and former Imperial territory they were now left garrisoning as if they had the spare manpower to do it.

The Germans should have poured out of the East, taking every horse they could "conscript" with them.  German troops did come, but not in the numbers they could have.

So the Allies braced for an offensive they knew was coming.  They were not idle.  The British, operating partially on intelligence gathered from two German deserters, not only anticipated the attack, but placed the probable date of the attack on this very day, although they anticipated it could be slightly earlier.  As a result, the British had been engaged in nightly artillery strikes on German positions since March 18.

On this day, the offensive commenced with the assault on the BEF.

A closer view of the successful German drive on the Somme.  Over a three week period the Germans wiped out British gains on the Somme and seriously threatened the position of the BEF in Europe.

The Battle of St. Quentin, the Somme Crossings and the First Battle of Bapaume

It commenced with an artillery barraged at 0435 on British positions near St. Quentin (and it also saw the commencement of German artillery strikes on Paris). While our memory of it has become skewed due to the intense British focus on World War One, the British were a small army compared to the French, but they were also in much better fighting shape than the French overall.  While the bombardment was massive, it did not leave the British incapable of resisting.  Nonetheless, after extremely intense infantry combat, which started with a German assault at 0940, the British had yielded in some places and began to retreat. Already on March 21 the British had lost ground.  This continued to be the case through March 23.

British artillery in retreat.

The British broke at St. Quentin, but their resistance had already worked a toll on the German forces which had begun to slow down. Nonetheless the British lost their lines on the Somme on March 24.  The same day the British lost the town of Bapaume and the French began to be concerned that the British had been irretrievably beaten.  Ironically the German capture of British supplies caused despondency in the German rank as German troops realized, from what they captured, that the British were very well supplied and even had stocks of Champagne in their stores.  The French, however, began plans for an offensive operation against the Germans out of a fear that the British situation could not be restored.

By the 25th the French were in fact engaged, but in defensive operations, and the overall situation was confused. Fighting was occurring everywhere but what was occurring was not clear to anyone.  British cavalry was in action in rearguard operations slowing German advances and the RAF was busy as well, as both the oldest and newest forms of mobile warfare combined against the Germans.

 British 6 Inch Gun firing on March 26 near Ancre.

Nonetheless a council of war was held on the 26th with the result that General Foch of the French Army was made the supreme Allied commander.

The Battle of Rosieres and the Battle of Arrars

On the 26th and 27th the British fought the Battle of Rosieres in which the British committed tanks. Nonetheless the Allies continued to lose ground and lost the town of Albert during the night.  Throughout the retreat phase that went  through the 27th Tommies occasionally panicked and took up defense positions at the report of German cavalry being just over the horizon.  Still, while they retreated continually they did not disintegrate and both the British and the French remained in action throughout.  On the 28th a German assault only a handful of miles, showing that the Germans were slowing.  A primary factor was that the German cavalry that was needed to exploit the breakthroughs in the Allied lines that continually occurred simply didn't exit.

There wasn't any. The Germans were now, in terms of fighting at the front, an infantry force only.  They'd lose the war as a result.  The could exploit gaps in the British lines no quicker than a man could advance, and with each days advance the German troops became more and more fatigued until, at last, they simply refused to move, even under threat of death.

The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

On March 30 the Germans none the less tried again, launching an assault south of the new Somme salient towards Amiens.  The Germans gained some ground but it was slight, and German troops lost discipline when they hit Allied supply depots.  This phase of the German offensive saw the remarkable Canadian cavalry charge in the Battle of Moreuil Wood in which the Canadian Cavalry Brigade conducted a mounted assault near the village of Moreuil, taking the wood against the prediction of failure of a nearby French unit, receiving assistance from the RFC in the assault.  The Germans retook the wood the following day, March 31, but the Canadians then took it back. The Germans ultimately retook the wood, showing the intense nature of the fighting, but the overall offensive was called off shortly after that.  Operation Michael had gained a lot of ground, but it had ground to a halt.  By April 5 the Germans were exhausted and an effort to resume the offensive against the British failed.

 The charge at Moreuil Wood.

The initial German advance had been significant, but equally significant is that the  Germans had failed to take any of their objectives and by April 5 they were halted.  The German advance was impressive, but far short of achieving a knockout blow.  German and British losses were nearly equal at 250,000 men but the British were able to make up material shortages so rapidly that loss of material turned out to be relatively inconsequential.  German manpower losses, however, were catastrophic as it had lost a significant number of elite troops in the effort, which it would not be able to replace.

Many of the German troops lost were Stoßtruppen

 German Stoßtrup, Spring 1918.  Trained in individual and small unit combat, this soldier is carrying a MP18 and a P08.  Submachineguns were a brand new weapon at the time.

Stoßtruppen were a late war German innovation created to attempt to restore mobility to the battlefield.  Highly trained light infantrymen, these "Storm Troops" were in some ways the first of their kind. Predecessors of units like the later American Rangers and other similar elite infantry units, they were trained to storm enemy positions and overwhelm them in violent rapidly moving assaults.  They were equipped accordingly, carrying pistols, K98a's, and as seen above, submachineguns.

They were also a bit of a desperate effort on the part of the Germans to make up for the lack of cavalry, something which is evident but rarely discussed.  Unable to take a concentrated enemy position by a mounted charge, the Germans had to resort to infantry, something that had proven to be a failure since 1914.  They sought to overcome this through highly trained specialized infantry.  It worked in part, but only in part.  Stoßtruppen could penetrate. . . but they really couldn't advance.  And by April 5, the Germans weren't advancing.

But they couldn't stop.  To do so was to conceded an inevitable defeat. So, ground to a halt against the British though they were, they determined to renew the offensive elsewhere.  

The Battle of Beersheba (Be'er Sheva, בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע, بئر السبع,) October 31, 1917

Today in the centennial of one of the most dramatic events of the Great War, the Battle of Beersheba (or as it is sometimes called Be'er Sheva), culminating the Charge of the Australian Light Horse that took the town.

CC BY-SA 3.0 au.  File:Palestine Gallery at the Australian War Memorial (MG 9693).jpg.  Creative Commons on Wikipedia.

The mounted assault by the 4th and 12th Australian Light Horse is one of the seminal events of Australian history and, by any measure, one of the most dramatic events of the Great War.  What it is not, however, is the "last" charge by a body of mounted men (the Light Horse were not cavalry, but mounted infantry), nor even the "last great charge" or "last full scale charge".  It wasn't even the last big charge of cavalry during World War One.  It was, however, a spectacular and successful use of mounted men in a very skillfully orchestrated Commonwealth battle in the desert.

Beersheba in 1917.

The battle came about as part of British Empire's advance north into Palestine, towards Jerusalem, during World War One.   As part of their war against the Ottoman Turks the British had decided to continually advance north, a decision that would ultimately take them all the way to Damascus during the course of the war in the desert.

 Edmund Allenby, the commander of British forces in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in 1917.

Their problem in doing this is that the straight road to Jerusalem lead to Gaza and Gaza was heavily defended.  Therefore, the British, under the command of Edmund Allenby, determined to make a flanking move and that made Beersheba a goal of their flaking advance.

Map of the area in which the British were operating.  Note the importance of wells, which are marked on the map, including those at Beersheba.

The town of Beersheba is an ancient one, and was once quite isolated in the desert.  Always associated with well,  the name itself may mean the Well of the Oath as it is where the oath of Abraham and Abimelech was taken. Some claim, however, that the name means Seven Wells, which may refer to the multiple wells associated with the town, or it may be a way of signifying the importance of the town given the Bible emphasis on the number seven.  Some Arabic translations come across different yet, as Lion's Wells.  At any rate, the town has been there for an extremely long time.

 Abraham's Well at Beersheba, 1855.

The British plan called for a large right flaking move by mounted elements of the British expeditionary force.  Mounted troops were, contrary to widespread myth, used on every front during World War One, but as the war in the desert remained fairly mobile, they were particularly important there.  Allenby was, moreover, a cavalryman and well acquainted with mounted warfare.  In this instance the British committed The Desert Mounted Corps under the command of Australian Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel which consisted of Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division (1st Light Horse, 2nd Light Horse and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigades), The Australian Mounted Division (3rd Light Horse, 4th Light Horse and the 5th Mounted Brigade and the Yeomanry Mounted Division (6th Mounted, 8th Mounted and the 22nd Mounted Brigades) with the 7th Mounted and the Imperial Camel Corps held in reserve.  This was augmented by the addition of mounted units transferred from other British units prior to the battle.  Rather obviously, the mounted elements were quite substantial, although they were not not the only troops committed to the effort by any means and the infantry commitment was quite substantial.

 Chauvel with his officers.

The battle itself was part of the overall Battle of Gaza and it would not be correct that the British simply showed up at Beersheba and the battle ensued.  To even contemplate an effective attack at Beersheba preliminary positions on the line of advance had to be secured which did in fact happen.  Almost all of this was accomplished through substantial mounted action in advance of the main body of advancing troops.

The British forces were in position by the night of October 29-30 and a preparatory bombardment of the grossly outnumbered Turkish forces (British forces outnumbered the Turks over ten to one in the battle), which did have the advantage however of being dug in, commenced in the early morning of October 31.  The bombardment was effective on severing elements of the Turkish forces in place.  A British infantry and yeomanry assault was launched at 8:20 that succeeded in securing important areas of the high ground.  

The Desert Mounted Corps went into action at 0800 with attacks on strategic positions around Beersheba.  Due to the movie treatment of the battle its often imagined that only Australian mounted troops were at the battle and that they were kept in reserve all day in desperate conditions until called into battle at the lat moment.  In fact, Australian, New Zealand and British mounted troops were all in action all day long in the battle but were used in a way that their mobility would contemplate, taking positions around the main town while infantry, supported by cavalry, took positions immediately next to the town in order to prepare for a final assault of it.  The mounted actions throughout the day isolated the town in an effort to keep anything from reaching it, or escaping it.  This resulted in a situation where by 15:00 the town was effectively isolated and ready for a final assault.

 Opening of the Turkish railway station in Beersheba in 1915.  The railway station still stands in the town near a monument to the  Turkish combatants who fought there.  A monument to the Australian Light Horse also exists in the city of 200,000 residents today.

That's when what is so widely remembered about the battle, the mounted charge of the Australian Light Horse, occurred.

Upon taking final positions outside of the town, the Australian Light Horse were ordered to make a dismounted attack upon the Mosque in Beersheba.

It's important to keep in mind that the Light Horse were mounted infantry, not cavalry.  They were not equipped like cavalry, and the distinction between cavalry and mounted infantry, while it had declined in the British forces since the Boer War, was a real one yet.  Mounted infantrymen were equipped identically to infantrymen, being issued a Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle, a rifle that was in the short rifle category deemed suitable for infantry and cavalry, and a bayonet. Cavalry, in contrast, also carried the SMLE but they were equipped with the traditional saber that cavalrymen had carried for generations (lance had been dispensed with for British cavalry quite some time prior, but they did remain in the cavalry of some other nations, including the Ottoman's.  Unlike American cavalry, which was more of a mixed force filing the role of mounted infantry and cavalry, British cavalrymen did not carry sidearms, although the cavalry forces of some other nations did.  Turkish cavalry in this period still carried the lance.

Mounted infantry had come in strong to British Empire forces during the Boer War where it had been found to be highly useful.  Indeed, there had been an Empire military debate on whether it was so effective that it had supplanted cavalry entirely, although that had not occurred.  The British Empire fielded both cavalry and mounted infantry during the Great War and both were present at Beersheba in the Desert Mounted Corps.

Shortly after the Australians determined to advance an order from Gen. Allenby to take Beersheba by nightfall also arrived.  The Australians soon began to contemplate a mounted assault on the town, something that they had contemplated as early as October 26, if the opportunity arose.  On that date, accordingly the order had gone out to have bayonets sharpened.

This may seem odd, but it was well known that sabers were a more effective weapon that rifles in a mounted charge.  A person can debate if sidearms were more effective yet, and the American Army felt they were, but the British retained the traditional belief that an edged weapon was superior for a cavalry charge.  The Light Horse lacked sabers but they were equipped with the British sword bayonet, an exceedingly long bayonet that in fact approached the short sword length.

British infantryman training in 1940 but still equipped with a SMLE rifle and sword bayonet.  Sword bayonets were common in World War One but the British pattern was very long even at that.

The decision was soon made to order a mounted charge by the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments.  The units had to cover four miles in order to achieve their objectives and under the circumstances, and given the terrain, a mounted charge was by far the most likely to succeed at the smallest cost to the advancing men.  To the post World War One mind, this seems to be an almost impossible conclusion, but it was the tactical reality of the day.  The men covering that four miles would be under fire from artillery, machine guns and massed rifle fire for much of it, and with no cover.  The best way to approach a problem like that was to cover the ground as quickly as possible.

Additionally it had been known for quite some time that the prospect of facing a charging mass of horses, and two regiments was a large number of horses was terrifying for the men enduring it and generally most infantry reacted poorly in that circumstance. The real difficult for mounted forces in the Great War, therefore, was not the new weaponry, such as automatic weapons.  Indeed, with the exception of aircraft and poisonous gas there wasn't anything new to the World War One battlefield that mounted troops hadn't faced before.  Rather, the real difficulty was the exceedingly decimated terrain and terrain obstacles that mooted horse mobility.  That factor wasn't present to the same extent in the desert.

The Australian Light Horse charge commenced after 16:00 with the first half mile of the charge covered at a walk. At that point the men were ordered into a trot and then, when Ottoman artillery opened up, they deployed at a gallop. The artillery proved ineffective as the Light Horse rapidly rode under the guns to where it could no longer be used. At that point Ottoman machine gun and rifle fire opened up but some of it was neutralized by British counter battery fire.  Machine gun fire and small arms fire proved less effective than might be supposed in part due to this but in part because, as has been well demonstrated, facing a mounted assault is terrifying and ground troops have rarely reacted well to it.

 4th Light Horse at Beersheba.  This photograph is often attributed to have been taken during the battle but in fact its suspected that this was taken soon after the battle when the events were reenacted for camera.  It was already appreciated how dramatic the battle had been.

Contrary to what is sometimes supposed the 4th Light Horse, upon reaching the trenches, dismounted and fought as ground skirmishers, true to their nature of being mounted infantry.  The trenches were taken by Light Horsemen fighting dismounted and their mounts were galloped off, as per the norm for such a deployment.  The 12th Light Horse, meanwhile fought at first mounted and dismounted into the town, but upon getting into it, fought dismounted.  While all of this was going on, additional mounted reserves were ordered into the battle to follow upon the 4th and 12ths success. The town was soon taken.

Most of the casualties in the overall battle were British infantry, not mounted men.  Casualties sustained in the Light Horse assault itself were light under the circumstances with more men being killed in close quarter combat on the ground rather than in the charge.  Most of the casualties in the charge were men wounded in action, rather than killed.

The battle is deservedly well remembered today and the Australian Light Horse is correctly attributed with valiant action on that day.  The emphasis on the Light Horse charge, and the somewhat inaccurate portrayal of the resulting combat, has tended however to skew the  history of the battle being accurately recalled, however.  In reality, the Light Horse combined with other mounted elements of the British forces were active throughout the entire offensive and their role was vital throughout.  The final Light Horse mounted assault took the town, but the overall effort had involved mounted troops from the onset in a highly competent and coordinated effort.

The First Battle of Passchendael, October 12, 1917.

Aftermath, morning of October 13, 2017.

The ground phase of the First Battle of Passchendaele commenced, and largely took place, on this day in 1917 after a period of artillery preparation over the prior days.  Artillery was in part in effective as the ground was waterlogged due to intense prior rain storms.

The battle was principally an Australian and New Zealand one from the Allied side, with some support by the British and the French.  The attack had limited objectives and achieved limited success as well. Today it tends to be remembered as a costly battle for New Zealand in particular and for its horrible weather conditions.

In that sense, it's come to symbolize the horrible conditions of the Great War.

New Zealand signaler.

Peter Hobbs - 300 Yards of Ground (360° Spatial Audio)

Conscription in the English Speaking World. Passing an Anniversary

We've been posting some on conscription and today is a World War One conscription anniversary.

 

The Irish Canadian Rangers, a unit raised, but not fully filled, in Quebec, drawing from Irish Canadians.  It had to be filled out by Irish recruits from Ireland, and then was folded into another Canadian unit.  In some ways, its story is emblematic of the situation in Quebec during the Great War.

Not in the United States, however. Rather, its the centennial of the Military Service Act which, ineffectively, ushered in conscription in Canada for the Great War.

Canada was a country with a population of only 8,000,000 people during the great war.  It's almost a shock to realize how small the population really was.  23% of that population was made up of the Quebecois.  During the war 400,000 Canadians, more than a few of whom were English immigrants, although the majority were not, volunteered to serve in Canadian army.  Full mobilization, for countries with universal conscription, is usually regarded as 10% of the population, all male in the traditional form of conscription.  So Canada mustered men at the rate of 5% of the population.  Pretty darned impressive really for an all volunteer force. And that doesn't include those contributions from Prince Newfoundland, and Labrador, which were not part of Canada at the time.

Royal Newfoundland Regiment crossing the Rhine, 1918. This is not the Canadian army.

By 1917 the well had somewhat run dry in Canada. And in these regards it was facing the difficult choice that other English speaking countries had already faced.

Conscription was not a strong land army tradition in any of them.  The English had never had conscription for ground troops in modern times, although it did have it for sailors in the 18th and early 19th Century.  Indeed, conscription of sailors gave rise to the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom as the Royal Navy felt free to remove Englishmen from American ships to serve in the ongoing war with Napoleonic France.  There's more to that to be said, but given as this isn't an entry on the War of 1812 of the Napoleonic Wars I'll forgo telling it.  Anyhow, that did mean that England had a bit of a tradition of conscription, but not for land armies. That came to an end with the British Military Service Act of 1916 which made men from age 18 to 40 liable for service in the English Army.

The application of that act, of course, gave rise to the Easter Rebellion in Ireland which ultimately lead to the Anglo Irish War and an independent Ireland.  Conscription in Ireland was pointless, really, as the Irish were already serving in such high numbers.  In the end, conscription was likely necessary for the British in the war, but the cost proved to be great in terms of permanently severing the UK's political ties with Ireland.  Perhaps an added element of irony in regards to that is present however as the UK would resort to conscription very early in World War Two and the Irish, now citizens of the "Free State", once again volunteered to serve in the British Army in high numbers.  Very unusually, and in recognition of the Cold War, the UK would reinstate conscription in peacetime in 1948 but would phase it back out a decade latter and official end it in 1960.

Australia put conscription up for vote twice during the Great War, and both times it was defeated, although narrowly.  Australia would contribute 416,809 men to the Australian army during World War One, a massive contribution given its also small population.

An Australian pro conscription poster.  The Australians weren't persuaded and while plenty of Australians went to help, they were all volunteers.

Australia's conscription story was more complicated for World War Two during which it first made all unmarried men of 21 years of age liable for military training.  In 1942 it introduced conscription, but it wasn't until the end of the war that Australia deployed conscripts overseas.  Australian soldiers who were conscripts stand apart ab bit, during World War Two, as they did not measure up to the same aggressive quality, at first, that Australian volunteers did.  Australia twice reintroduced conscription after the World War Two, once for the Korean War and once for the Vietnam War, but unlike other nations that kept prolonged peacetime drafts, they kept them tied to the wars themselves.

New Zealand had a friendlier view towards compulsory military training than Australia, having had a militia history that is somewhat analogous to that of the United States. While almost every English Commonwealth nation had been looking at compulsory military training prior to World War One, that movement was fairly well received in New Zealand. New Zealand, therefore, had started compulsory military training for teenagers in 1909, exempting conscientious objectors.  Conscientious objectors, however, were not well regarded.  Having already established compulsory military training and having effectively created an army reserve prior to the war, it is not surprising that New Zealand followed the UK by enacting conscription in 1916.

That brings us back to Canada.

Canada had a vigorous militia system prior to the Great War and readily adapted that enthusiastically to its army that went overseas in World War One.  It was an all volunteer system, however.  Noticeably absent amongst the volunteers were the Quebecois.

There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons for this but chief amongst them were that the Quebecois, a sizable minority of the Canadian population at 23% of that population, but concentrated in Quebec where they were a majority, did not regard the United Kingdom as the mother country and had a distance and separate history from France, having been severed from Imperial France during France's royal Bourbon period.  They did not see the war in Europe as their war and were not keen in serving in it.  Their view cannot be regarded, quite frankly, as unreasonable.  By 1917 the Canadian government was ready to attempt to force the issue which was largely unsuccessful. There was large scale opposition to conscription in Canada and in the end only 24,132 conscripts were sent to France.  The word "only" has to be used with some caution, of course, as that's over a division of men and 124,000 men were drafted and therefore added to the army.  Not everyone in a North American army in any war has made it overseas, so perhaps this contribution was more significant than supposed.

Canada would repeat this history during World War Two. Canada enacted conscription at the start of the war but it was overwhelmingly opposed in  Quebec.  As a compromise Canadian conscripts were not liable for overseas service at first but by late 1944 this was changed.  During World War Two only 12,908, contemptuously called "zombies" were sent by order overseas, although quite a few draftees volunteered for overseas service.  The repeat of conscription during World War Two, however, served to worsen relations between the Quebecois and English speaking Canadians which would have an impact after the war.  Canada has not attempted to enact conscription since the war.

Other Commonwealth nations had other experiences with conscription.  I do not believe that it was attempted in the Union of South Africa during World War One or Two, no doubt because of lingering resentment against the British amongst the Afrikaans population during that period.  In 1967 the country started to conscript white men over the age of 16, a young age for conscription by that time, and then phased it back out in 1993 after the collapse of apartheid. The country has toyed with reintroducing it in recent years.  It's neighbor to the north, Rhodesia, enacted conscription following its declaration of independence from the UK modeling it on the British system.  I don't know if Zimbabwe retains it today.

Which leaves us with the US.

We've explored that a bit in recent posts.  Conscription was not a popular concept going into World War One by any means, having only strictly existed during the Civil War.  The Wilson Administration was so concerned it would be poorly received that it attempted to camouflage its nature by calling it "Selective Service", a name it still officially retains in the United States, under the theory that the country would be fooled that the country was simply selecting volunteers, more or less.  Nobody was fooled.

 Selecting the first U.S. draftee during World War One.

Generally, Americans volunteered enthusiastically, and enthusiastically accepted the draft, during the Great War.  Nonetheless that well known story isn't as simple as it is often related to be. There were two uprising amongst southern yeoman populations against conscription during the war, one of which we've already discussed.  These were serious armed uprisings, not mere protests.  And hard left organizations, which were in some ways at the peak of their popularity in the country, were dead set against conscription.  Organizations like the IWW actively campaigned against it.

The US did have compulsory militia duty on the part of military aged males from the colonial period up until after the Civil War, and that's a type of conscription, so this story isn't quite as clear as it might at first seem.  That had passed away by the late 1800s, however, and the memory of it seems to have been largely forgotten.  So the World War One draft was an unusual event.  After the war conscription was halted, only to be reintroduced just prior to World War Two, but with very narrow support.  It went away again after World War Two but, just as in the UK, it came back in 1948 with the need to form a large Cold War Army.  It was retained in the US up until 1975, although nobody was conscripted after 1973.

Jeffrey Mellinger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1972 and who remained in the Army until he retired in 2011, making him the last American serving who entered the military as a conscript.

The Mines of the Battle of Messines, June 8, 1917

On this date, in 1917, nineteen enormous British mines were detonated at the Battle of Messines.

The detonations left 10,000 German soldiers dead.

By some accounts the explosions were the largest non nuclear explosions ever. The blast could be heard as far away as Dublin, Ireland.

The ensuing battle lasted for a week and like most World War One battles the results are debated.  The British Empire forces did advance. Contemporary German accounts regarded the battle as a devastating German defeat.

The Battle of Flers–Courcelette commences.

The Battle of Flers–Courcelette, which ran through September 22, commenced.  The battle is notable for the commitment of Canadian and New Zealand troops to the Battle of the Somme, of which this is part, and for the first British use of tanks in World War One, and hence, the first use of tanks.

Four Mark I tanks filling with petrol, Chimpanzee Valley, 15 September (Q5576).  Note the mounted soldiers.

This image was created and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence. Photographs taken, or artworks created, by a member of the forces during their active service duties are covered by Crown Copyright provisions. Faithful reproductions may be reused under that license, which is considered expired 50 years after their creation.

The Commonwealth forces did advance, but there was less achieved than had been hoped for.  Critics have focused somewhat on the ineffective use of tanks, both then and now, but then they were a new weapon.  Some, such as Winston Churchill, who was significant in the development of the tank, felt that had tanks been used en mass, a breakthrough might have occured.