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General Sir John Monash of the Australian Imperial Force was one of the key pioneers of armoured and combined arms warfare. He was the one who led the Australians and Americans to victory in the Battle of Hamel, which served as an important tactics testing ground for the later Battle of Amiens (where he was also one of the commanders). Later, he would be described by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as "the best general on the western front in Europe" in WWI.

However, let's say that John Monash was shot or otherwise eliminated before his victory at Hamel. His combined arms and armoured warfare tactics go untested in the field, and thus the British (not to mention the rest of the Entente) contine on with their normal strategies, at least for the time being.

Would WWI have dragged on longer in this case? Could it have even led to the war being won by the Central Powers, or a peace deal based on status quo ante bellum? How long would it be before amother person with Monash's mindset and authority came along to give a practical demonstration of combined arms tactics?

And just for a snapshot of what was actually going on in that mind of his, here's one of his quotes, where he describes his frustration with British tactical thinking and how he thinks things should be done:

"The true role of infantry is not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostille bayonets, but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward."
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