The Western Front 1917–1918

From Vimy Ridge to Amiens and the Armistice

Andrew Wiest

• Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781908273116
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The History of World War I series recounts the battles and campaigns that took place during the 'Great War'. From the Falkland Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the World War I series provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns that raged on land, at sea and in the air. Following the climactic battles of Verdun and the Somme the previous year, the Allies sought to finish the war on the Western Front in 1917 through a major French offensive designed to rupture the German front and roll up their position. This attack was to be supported by a diversionary British offensive at Arras in the north, which would draw off both German attention and their reserves. In the event, the French offensive in Champagne failed to deliver the promised breakthrough, leaving the French Army in a state of open mutiny. While French discipline recovered, the British Expeditionary Force took on the burden of the bulk of the fighting for the rest of the year. The need for an Allied offensive to take the pressure off the French resulted in the Third Battle of Ypres, more commonly known as Passchendaele. The battle degenerated into a slaughter in the Flanders mud thanks to heavy rain, and the only rays of light for the Allies at the end of 1917 were the arrival of fresh American troops on the Western Front, and the potential for a decisive victory shown by the use of armour at the Battle of Cambrai. However the Russian Revolution brought the fighting on the Eastern Front to an end, releasing numerous battle-hardened divisions to reinforce the Germans in the west. The year 1918 saw Germany launch her Spring Offensives, desperate attempts to defeat the Allies before the Americans could arrive in force. Although these assaults came close to breaking the Allied line, they eventually petered out in the face of determined resistance and over-extended supply lines. Following the Battle of Amiens in August, the Allies pressed onwards: the British in Flanders, the French and the Americans in the Meuse-Argonne region. By September it was obvious that Germany was losing the war, and the decision was made to sue for peace before Allied troops reached German soil. The Armistice came into force at 11am on the morning of 11 November 1918, although the war did not officially end until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. With the aid of over 300 black and white and colour photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, The Western Front 1917–1918 provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of the conflict on the Western Front in the final years of World War I.

French soldiers work to prepare barbed-wire defences on the Chemin des Dames. It was bitter fighting around the heavily fortified German defences on the dominating ridge that caused the failure of the Nivelle Offensive.

CHAPTER 1

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Nivelle’s Folly

Having secured governmental approval for his scheme for a war-winning offensive, General Robert Nivelle raised the hopes of the French people and military to heights not seen since 1914. Instead of delivering a quick victory, though, his offensive produced only futility, driving the French Army into mutiny and changing the strategic balance on the Western Front.

The main British effort as part of Nivelle’s overall offensive scheme for 1917 involved an attack on German lines near Arras, where six divisions of the German Sixth Army, commanded by General von Falkenhausen, faced 14 divisions of the British First Army, under the command of General Sir Henry Horne, Third Army, under the command of General Sir Edmund Allenby, and the Fifth Army, under the command of General Sir Hubert Gough. South of the river Scarpe, which bisected the battlefield, the Germans held the important high ground of the Monchy Spur, which formed part of the vaunted Hindenburg Line. North of the Scarpe were the imposing heights of the Vimy Ridge, which was six kilometres (four miles) long, running from northwest to southeast, and honeycombed with German defences.

General William Birdwood, commander of I ANZAC Corps, which bore the brunt of the brutal fighting around Bullecourt in the Battle of Arras.

The most important feature of the battlefield, though, was the historic fortress town of Arras, the centre of which was only 1829m (2000 yards) from the front-line trenches. The proximity of the town offered Allenby and the Third Army a distinct advantage, for underneath Arras ran a network of tunnels, from which stone had once been quarried, and an extensive sewer system. Allenby’s men expanded and linked the tunnels and sewers, even adding electric lighting and an underground light railway. The extensive labyrinth was capable of enabling 30,000 men to move up to their jumping-off points for the attack in safety and secrecy. North of Arras, near the Vimy Ridge, the First Army and Canadian Corps achieved similar results by digging 12 massive tunnels, the longest stretching 1722m (1883 yards) into the chalky soil, which allowed assault forces to assemble free from German observation.

South of the Scarpe, the Hindenburg Line relied on new defence-in-depth techniques perfected in the later stages of the Battle of the Somme. Wherever possible the Germans situated their defences on the reverse slopes of hills, thus denying observation to the attacker. Bristling with machine-gun nests, the frontline defences were only thinly manned, and were made up of a system of mutually supporting strongpoints designed to cause maximum carnage to the attacker, while exposing the least number of defending troops to artillery fire. After exacting a heavy toll, the defending forces would then fall back and draw the attackers, bloodied and exhausted, forwards to their doom in the form of massive counterattacks from the second line of defences, known as the battle zone. The German defensive advancements, though, were only unevenly applied, and, as a result, to the north of the Scarpe and on Vimy Ridge, the German trenches were located on the forward slope, heavily manned and well within range of the coming British bombardment. Additionally, in this region German reserve formations were located too far to the rear to have an immediate effect on the battle.

The French artillery piece Canon de 105mm Schneider, also known by its designation L 13 S. Although little used at the outbreak of the war, the L 13 S proved to be much more effective than the lighter French 75mm in trench warfare.

The British offensive at Arras, with its dramatic seizure of the Vimy Ridge, demonstrated the effectiveness of limited, bite-and-hold tactics. The British Third Army, under General Sir Edmund Allenby, attacked in the centre, whilst the First Army, spearheaded by the Canadian Corps under General Sir Julian Byng, attacked to the north. Fifth Army, under General Sir Hubert Gough, held the southern end of the line.

A Canadian artillery team in action at Vimy Ridge during the Battle of Arras. The artillery barrage that accompanied the British attack at Arras was three times stronger than that utilized on the disastrous first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

The preparation for the Battle of Arras, which fell mainly to Horne and Allenby, demonstrated that the BEF had learned much in its trials during the Somme, especially in artillery planning. British artillerists were now technologically adept professionals instead of gentlemen amateurs who, though there remained a certain amount of trial and error, took great care in their planning, especially against the defences of Vimy Ridge. The exact length of trench to be assailed had been calculated, and the appropriate artillery assigned to the task at hand. Heavy guns concentrated on German rear positions, bombarding the German artillery and any attempts at reinforcement, while medium guns dealt with German wire and trenches. At the moment of attack, the artillery would provide a creeping barrage augmented by a secondary barrage of machine-gun bullets and light howitzer shells, which gave the advancing infantry such effective protection that one sergeant informed his men:

‘All you have got to do is to hang on to the back wheel of the barrage, just as if you were biking down the Strand behind a motor bus; carefully like, and not in too much of a hurry; and then when you come to Fritz, and he holds up his hands, you send him back to the rear.’

Scientific advances in gunnery also improved counterbattery work, while industrial advances on the home front meant that the quality of British munitions had risen markedly since the Somme, which provided the artillerists with much more sensitive and effective fuses and many fewer dud rounds. Finally, though, sheer numbers told the true story of artillery success at Arras. The attacking forces had 2827 guns, of which 963 were of heavy calibre, to cover an attack frontage of 21km (13 miles). At Vimy Ridge, the Canadian Corps had 377 heavy guns on a front of just over six kilometres (four miles), or one heavy gun for every 18m (20 yards) of front. Because of the military and industrial advances, the artillery barrage that accompanied the Arras attack was three times as strong as that employed on the first day of the Somme, in addition to being much more accurate and lethal.

Artillery

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The artillery of World War I was prodigiously strong, with the largest pieces, including the British 12in siege howitzer, firing shells that weighed nearly 456kg (1000lb) to a range of 14km (nine miles). However, at first artillerymen did not know how the conditions around them could affect the flight of their shell. Later studies, as artillerists learned their craft, indicated the price paid through such ignorance. If a gun utilizing indirect fire in 1916 fired 100 shells at a stationary target, 50 of those shells would miss the target entirely. The remaining ‘hits’ would fall into a zone 37m (40 yards) long and five metres (five yards) wide. The value of such ‘hits’, though, was quite limited, considering the fact that trenches were only a metre in width and machine-gun nests only a bit larger. Thus, even the vast majority of ‘hits’ had but little effect on entrenched defenders. Of the 100 shells fired, only two would be direct hits on such a small target, and only a very tiny percentage of those direct hits would be so accurate as to penetrate the trench and destroy a bunker under it. Add to this the fact that one of those direct hits was likely to be a dud round, and the ineffectiveness of artillery from 1915 to 1917 becomes easier to understand.

The British attack at Arras not only had to be powerful enough to draw German attention away from the French preparations further south, but also, as part of a wider Allied plan to achieve ultimate victory, had to aim at a breakthrough that would augment and complement Nivelle’s own planned rupture of the German defences along the Chemin des Dames. The resulting plan called for the First Army to guard the flank of the offensive by seizing Vimy Ridge, while the Third Army attacked towards Cambrai. Haig held an infantry corps and cavalry units in reserve to exploit any success.

Defensive works at Vimy Ridge. Unlike other areas of the Arras battlefield, where the main defences were positioned to the rear, the German defences at Vimy Ridge were located too far forwards and did not rely on defence-in-depth techniques, making them vulnerable to attack.

Although Horne and Allenby advocated a whirlwind bombardment, Haig intervened in favour of a longer artillery barrage, which, in five days, fired over two and a half million shells into the German lines. Although the steady bombardment indicated that a major British offensive was in the offing, due to the massing of attacking forces under cover of the tunnel networks at Arras and near Vimy Ridge, the Germans remained unaware of the timing of zero hour until the British and Canadian infantry were nearly across no man’s land.

Men of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) advance to the attack. Although losses remained high, the success of the BEF in the early stages of the Battle of Arras indicated that the infantry was returning to a prominent place on the World War I battlefield.

ATTACK AT ARRAS

In the north, the Canadian Corps, under the capable command of General Sir Julian Byng, achieved one of the most notable successes to date of the entire war. Backed by devastating support from nine heavy artillery groups and covered by an effective machine-gun barrage, the Canadians burst forth from their concealment and assaulted Vimy Ridge, which had withstood multiple French attacks in 1915 and had been the site of some of the war’s most bitter fighting.

Royal Aircraft Factory SE 5a. One of Britain’s most successful fighter aircraft of the Great War, the SE 5a was powered by a 150hp engine, and carried a Vickers machine gun that was timed to fire through the whirling blades of the propeller.

Having rehearsed their assault in painstaking detail, the Canadians surged forward, unperturbed by a late season snowstorm. The 3rd and 4th divisions on the Canadian left advanced so quickly that the attacking soldiers were into the German trenches before the German machine-gunners had even manned their weapons. Surprise was so complete that the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles captured 150 Germans who were only half dressed, and many still had their shaving cream on their faces. Many Canadian soldiers actually advanced beyond their final objective, because the German trench line that marked their halt point had been so thoroughly obliterated by the artillery barrage as to be unrecognizable.

On the Canadian right flank, surviving German strongpoints, including an especially troubling German machine-gun nest that cut down the Canadians even as they emerged from the exit of the Tottenham Tunnel, slowed the advance of the 1st and 2nd divisions. Demonstrating tactical flexibility, Byng’s men utilized combined infantry and artillery attacks to neutralize the troublesome defensive emplacements and captured the German defensive redoubt of Hill 135 in heavy and sometimes hand-to-hand fighting. Gathering momentum, the Canadians burst forward into the German artillery lines, and in one case men of the Canadian 1st Brigade captured German guns that had been abandoned so quickly that the luncheons in the officers’ dugout were still warm and untouched on the table. On another occasion the City of Winnipeg Battalion came across a German artillery battery that opened fire when the Canadians were only 46m (50 yards) from it. Raising a cheer, the Winnipeggers charged down the slope and either bayoneted or captured the German gunners.

Strategic Bombing

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On 31 May 1915, a new era of modern warfare had begun when the German Zeppelin LZ38 flew over London and dropped its cargo of high explosive. In total Germany mounted 53 Zeppelin raids on Great Britain, dropping over 5700 bombs and killing 556 civilians. However, the Zeppelins were slow moving, carried few bombs and proved extremely vulnerable to anti-aircraft defences. By 1917, though, the Germans had developed the Gotha bomber, which was capable of carrying a heavier bomb load to strike at the United Kingdom. The first Gotha raid took place on 13 June 1917, in which 20 bombers dropped 72 bombs near Liverpool Street Station in London. Casualties in the raid reached 162 dead (including 18 children when a bomb struck a school) and 432 wounded. The raids continued through August 1917, dropping a total of 33,112kg (73,000lb) of bombs and causing 1364 casualties before British anti-aircraft defences forced the Germans to bomb only at night. Although the raids were limited in character, the panic that they caused led many inter-war thinkers to believe that more effective and numerous bombers might well prove decisive in war.

A British 18-pounder field gun in action at Arras. The standard field gun of the BEF during the Great War, the 18-pounder had a range of 5966m (6525 yards). As denoted by the stockpile of ammunition to the left, by 1917 British industry had made possible the lavish use of firepower.

On the Canadian left, at 3.15pm, men of the Nova Scotia Highlanders moved to attack the last German holdout positions atop Hill 145, the highest point of Vimy Ridge, hoping to seize the dominating position before nightfall. Due to communications problems, the Highlanders never received word that their brigadie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Futher Reading
• Index
• Picture Credits