The Battle of the Lys, 1918: South

Objective Hazebrouck

Chris Baker

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781526716965
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526716989
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The German offensive in Flanders in April 1918 came close to catastrophe for the British Armies, but ultimately ended in strategic defeat for the Kaisers men. Following closely on the heels of the devastating Operation Michael attack in March on the Somme and around Arras, named as Operation Georgette, the offensive was aimed at strangling the vital railways and roads that supplied the British at Ypres.Having assembled an overwhelming numerical advantage, the Germans attacked in thick fog on 9 April 1918. They faced tired British formations that had just been relieved from the earlier battle and which were receiving replacements, mainly in the form of 18 year-old conscripts. By the days end, the Germans had succeeded in gaining a crossing of the River Lys and were well on their way to the vital railway junctions at Hazebrouck. Several British divisions were deployed to stop the advance, only to be effectively destroyed in the attempt over the next few days. Gradually, fresher British, Australian and French reserves arrived and held their ground. With disappointing results, mounting casualties and a diminishing return for their efforts, the Germans abandoned the offensive and turned their attention further south.What the British call The Battle of the Lys 1918 is a fascinating yet curiously neglected period of military history. Chris Baker examines this major battle from the strategic down to the platoon level, highlighting the key events, characters and acts of enormous bravery on both sides, both in a historical narrative and in a series of tours of the area.This volume, one of two on the battle, concentrates on the southern half of the battlefield.

Chapter One

The Background to the Battle

The Great War in French Flanders.

The area in which the Battle of the Lys took place is in the ancient region of Flanders, spanning areas on both sides of the Franco-Belgian border that was established when Belgium became an independent state in 1830. The region had, and in many ways retains to this day, a common cultural tradition despite the influence of two national characteristics, political and economic structures. Flemish was spoken in French Flanders to a greater extent than it is today. It is said, for example, that more than half of the children in the French town of Hazebrouck were Flemish speakers in 1914. The place names are revealing in this regard: Hazebrouck stems from the old Flemish for ‘hare’s marsh’, and many of the names of towns and villages on the French side of the border have clear Flemish roots.

A present-day map of the area. Fundamentally, it is little changed from 1918 but for post-1945 economic growth.

War came to French and Belgian West Flanders in October 1914. German forces advanced across Belgium seeking to outflank the French and British Entente allies on their northern side, and encountered the allies as they too advanced with the same intention. With the remnant of the Belgian army also coming into the area having evacuated besieged Antwerp, fighting developed and took place all the way along the line from the North Sea, down past Ypres and Armentières and into the industrial coalfield area of Béthune and Lens. It was in effect one, single, climactic battle; but is officially recognised as, north to south, the Battle of the Yser, the First Battle of Ypres, and the Battles of Messines, Armentières and La Bassée. By mid-November 1914 the German gambit of attacking France with the intention of rapid victory had been defeated, and the two sides had dug in. In French Flanders, the line created at this time would scarcely move until the start of the Battle of the Lys on 9 April 1918.

During December 1914 the allies went on to the offensive. In Flanders, urged by French Commander-in-Chief, Joffre, the British carried out a series of small-scale, piecemeal attacks that achieved nothing but long casualty lists. I have described them in The Truce (Amberley, 2014). Sadly, they set a pattern for years to come. Much larger attacks, at Neuve Chapelle (March 1915), Aubers and Festubert (April and May 1915); diversions for the Battle of Loos (September 1915) and at Fromelles (July 1916), all came to nothing. Between these sporadic periods of fighting, the day to day grind of static trench warfare continued. In places - notoriously at Givenchy but also at Neuve Chapelle and Mauquissart - underground mine warfare added a particular form of tension and horror. The German command in French Flanders was generally content to strengthen its defences and to sit and wait while the British, Indian and Dominion forces spilled blood in tragically large quantities.

The static nature of the war in French Flanders up to April 1918 confined the concentrated destructive effect of fighting to a narrow ribbon of land – perhaps two miles deep on either side of the entrenched front. Long range shell fire and aerial bombardment certainly took a toll in deeper areas, but in comparison with Ypres, Somme and other battlefields the rear was comparatively unscathed. Villages and towns remained largely intact; roads, bridges and railways were still in place, or repaired by the army. On the allied side many of the local people, the population swelled by refugees from Belgium, decided to stay rather than flee to the west. The whole panoply of war built up behind the fighting front, in and around the villages: bivouac and hutted camps; stores and dumps; headquarters and billets; water supply facilities; airfields; motor transport parks; medical units; artillery battery positions and ammunition stores.

German plans and intentions.

After the decisive defeat of their attack on France in 1914, continuous fighting on Germany’s Western Front had achieved nothing of strategic significance. The years of trench warfare and the epic battles at Ypres, Artois, the Somme, the Chemin des Dames, in the Champagne, the Argonne and at Verdun had greatly worn down both sides in manpower and economically. The war had gone on much longer and on a much greater scale than any pre-war military planner, politician or financier could have predicted, yet such was the depth and ingenuity of the ‘Great Powers’ that there was still much in reserve. It would be events elsewhere that provided fresh impetus.

On 7 November 1917 the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee directed the commencement of armed revolution in Russia, overthrowing the Provisional Government. Next day, the new leadership passed the ‘Decree of Peace’, calling for the end of war with Germany and Austria-Hungary and for a just and democratic peace. Russia was in effect withdrawing from the war, although it would take some months of bitter wrangling before Germany imposed the crushing terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on the new Russian Government. Four days later – and ironically exactly a year before the Armistice of 11 November 1918 - Germany’s de facto military commander General Erich Ludendorff met with Generals von Kuhl and von der Schulenberg (chiefs of staff to the Crown Princes Rupprecht and Wilhelm’s Groups of Armies respectively) in a pre-planned meeting at Mons to consider their strategy.

Ludendorff was already inclined to take the offensive:

Crown Prince Rupprecht commanded the Group of Armies that conceived and carried out ‘Georgette’. (Author)

‘The Army had come victoriously through 1917; but it had become apparent that the holding of the Western Front purely by a defensive could no longer be counted on, in view of the enormous quantity of material of all kinds which the Entente had now at their disposal. Even where tactical conditions had been absolutely normal, and by no means so unfavourable as in the struggle for the Wytschaete salient or Laffaux Corner, we had lost ground and suffered heavily. These losses had indeed been greater than we had incurred in well-conducted attacks. The enormous material resources of the enemy had given his attack a considerable preponderance over our defence, and this condition would become more and more apparent as our best men became casualties, our infantry approximated more nearly in character to a militia, and discipline declined.’

Ludendorff, My War Memories.

Developments in Russia added a new dimension as revolution led to the end of fighting on what had been Germany’s Eastern Front. The possibility, soon to become certainty, of being able to move large forces from there to the Western Front gave the Germans a potentially decisive advantage in terms of manpower and artillery. Opinions were divided on the best approach for exploiting this advantage, and the planners were sent away to devise options and alternatives. The Mons meeting was the genesis of what would become the Battle of the Lys, for von Kuhl proposed a strike against the British in Flanders.

The United States of America had entered the war on the allied side on 6 April 1917 but its military presence in Europe was taking time to build. Drawing upon vast resources, however, it was only a matter of when the continued arrival of the ‘Doughboys’ in France would tip the scale back in the allies favour. The German General Staff at the Oberste Heeres Leitung (OHL: General Headquarters) recognised this and concluded that their offensive operations were urgent: there was an opportunity of a few months in the spring of 1918, no more.

The general situation on the Western Front after Operation ‘Michael’. The Lys offensive would be undertaken by the German Sixth and Fourth Armies.

The approach that emerged was that the German Armies in France and Flanders would seize the initiative and launch a series of offensives aimed squarely at the defeat of the British. The first, Operation ‘Michael’, was launched on 21 March 1918. It had an important effect on planning for future operations in Flanders in that it consumed much greater military resources than had initially been foreseen. In consequence the Flanders operation was scaled down and orders to this effect given on 23 March. Five days later, the Germans launched Operation ‘Mars’ in the Arras area; a costly failure. Had Flanders been given precedence and resources, the whole pattern of events described in this book might have been very much different to the way things worked out – and it remains one of the intriguing ‘what ifs’ of the Great War. Ludendorff met with the staffs of the Fourth and Sixth Armies of Rupprecht’s Group on 3 April, finalising the scale and objectives of the offensive now known as Operation ‘Georgette’. That the attack began just six days later is a reflection of the prodigious logistical effort of assembling the huge forces involved.

Objectives.

The ‘Georgette’ attack was to be carried out by the Sixth Army (von Quast) and part of the Fourth (Sixt von Arnim), employing a total of nineteen divisions on a frontage of some twenty-three miles (thirty-seven kilometres). Its primary objective was to reach Hazebrouck and to seize the complex of railways by which the British Second Army in Flanders was supplied. A little further east, it would also reach the main supply road that ran from Steenvoorde to Poperinge and which fed the same army in the Ypres area. The advance would also seize the summits of the chain of low hills, the most important of which was Kemmelberg, from which the rear of the Second Army area could be dominated. In other words, success in these objectives would strangle supply into the Ypres sector and begin to force the Second Army into a pocket. If all went well, further advances could isolate that Army and destroy it in detail. The Channel ports of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne – only a hundred kilometres at most from the present front -might also be reached, with devastating consequences for the rest of the British Expeditionary Force and for the allies in total. On the left of the Sixth Army’s attack, a wheeling movement would bring German forces in behind Béthune and the British First Army. Possibilities might then develop for further offensive operations to destroy that Army as well.

Hazebrouck was a railway bottleneck, with lines coming in from the Channel ports and going out to Ypres and Armentières, and an obvious choice as a German objective. (Author).

The objectives set for Operation ‘Georgette’ included: the railways at Hazebrouck; the high ground of the Flemish hills; and the La Bassée Canal, allowing a sweep behind Béthune.

General Ferdinand von Quast commanded Sixth Army. He was he was awarded the oak leaves to his Pour le Mérite in recognition of his breakthrough on the Lys; but by mid-month he was suggesting...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Introduction by the Series Editor
• List of Maps
• Chapter One The Background to the Battle
• Chapter Two The Battles of the Lys
• Chapter Three The First Phase: Breakthrough and Bridgehead
• Chapter Four The Second Phase: Into the Mixer
• Chapter Five The Third Phase: The Hardening Crust
• Tours Introduction
• Appendix I Haig’s Special Order of the Day, 12 April 1918
• Appendix II Selected Citations
• Appendix III The Phases of the Battles of the Lys 1918
• Acknowledgements
• Selective Bibliography