Battle of Havrincourt begins

At 5.25 a.m. on 12 September 1918 the artillery of General Julian Byng’s British Third Army opened fire on a front of about 8 kilometres between Gouzeaucourt Wood and the Canal du Nord. Behind the barrage four brigades went into the attack: one New Zealand and three British. Their objectives were two ridges in front of the Hindenburg Line and the village of Havrincourt, which lay right against the German position. On the same day, more than 200 kilometres to the south-east, the Americans attacked the Saint-Mihiel salient. The British Battles Nomenclature Committee later recognised the attack at Havrincourt as the start of the battles of the Hindenburg Line, which in October brought the breaking of the whole position.

In front of the Hindenburg Line

During the first days of September the Germans fell back to the positions from which they had launched their great offensive in March. After the Second Battle of Bapaume and the breaking of the Drocourt–Quéant line, their Seventeenth Army rested on the Hindenburg Line and the Canal du Nord, while the Second Army to the south withdrew obliquely, pivoting precisely on Havrincourt. The Hindenburg Line, which the Germans called the Siegfriedstellung, was built in the winter of 1916, and in the spring of 1917 they withdrew to it from the Somme. At Havrincourt the position crossed the valley of the Grand Ravin stream, ran just in front of the village and then along the ridge towards the canal.

The British knew these places. In November 1917, on the first day of the Battle of Cambrai, Havrincourt was taken by the 62nd (West Riding) Division from Yorkshire, and the village stayed in British hands until the German March offensive. In September 1918 the same division again faced it. The operation order of its commander, General Robert Whigham, stated briefly that the division would “recapture the village of Havrincourt”.

Field Marshal Douglas Haig did not yet intend to attack the main position. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Henry Wilson, had just warned him in a confidential telegram against heavy losses in a failed assault on the Hindenburg Line. Byng, however, believed that the German divisions were exhausted and must not be given a respite. On 9 September he wrote to Haig that each new German division fought well for two days and then broke, so they had to be attacked continuously. He wanted to seize the front line of the Hindenburg position and the ridges from which the Germans overlooked his rear.

The highest was the Trescault ridge, running north from Gouzeaucourt Wood. For several days the New Zealanders had been fighting on its slopes. The Germans, determined to hold it, had relieved their exhausted divisions there with the fresh 118th Division and the Jäger Division (Jäger-Division). The history of the New Zealand Division calls it one of the best German formations, equal to the Guard, and says that its men had been ordered to hold the position at all costs. The weather was bad, and on the night of 9–10 September it poured so hard that units lost their way over the churned-up ground. By the evening of 11 September all the divisions were in their jumping-off positions, and during the night the 37th Division pushed outposts to the eastern edge of Havrincourt Wood.

Havrincourt

The morning of 12 September was fine and cool. Through the night the heavy artillery had shelled Havrincourt, Trescault and the roads behind the front, and at dawn each division had between four and eight field artillery brigades in support. General Whigham did not want to storm the village frontally, from the side of the château moat. The battalions of the 62nd Division came out of Havrincourt Wood, where tapes had been laid the day before to mark the way, went first north and then turned east, bypassing the village on both sides.

Two battalions of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment from the 186th Brigade passed along the southern edge of the village and by 7.30 a.m. had taken the front-line trenches of the Hindenburg position. At 7.15 a.m., when the heavy artillery lifted its fire beyond Havrincourt, the 2/4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment entered the village. It took the château without difficulty, but fought for the remaining houses for several hours and only at 11.30 a.m. reached the eastern edge. On the left wing the 187th Brigade was briefly held up by flanking fire from a strongpoint south of the village. Sergeant Laurence Calvert of the 5th Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, ran single-handed at two machine guns, killed their crews and captured both, for which he received the Victoria Cross. By 7.30 a.m. this brigade too had reached its objective.

To the right of the 62nd Division the 111th Brigade of the 37th Division at first met almost no resistance, but Trescault, lying at the western foot of the ridge, and a strongpoint behind it held out stubbornly. At about 8 a.m. the brigade was on its assigned line.

The Trescault ridge

The hardest task fell to the New Zealand 3rd Rifle Brigade. On the right wing the 2nd Battalion burst into African Trench right behind the barrage and, as the New Zealand history puts it, “dealt death among the Germans”. A company of the British 38th Division, which was to cover its flank, was unable to advance. Sergeant Harry Laurent was ordered to go beyond the objective with twelve men as a fighting patrol. In the shallow, battered trench he did not recognise the notorious African Trench and went about 700 yards further, up to the German support line by a sunken road near Gouzeaucourt. Although he had only seven men left, he attacked. His men killed about twenty Germans and took the rest prisoner, bringing back to their lines 111 soldiers, an officer and two messenger dogs. Laurent received the Victoria Cross for this.

In the centre and on the left wing the New Zealanders reached their first objective, Snap Reserve trench, steadily and without heavy losses, and signalled its capture with green flares. But when they pushed on uphill, a storm of machine-gun fire fell on them from the trenches on the ridge and from Beaucamp hill. An advance across the open slope proved impossible. Small groups tried to work forward along the communication trenches, fighting with grenades, but with little result. All day the German Jäger counter-attacked. In the early afternoon they drove the right wing of the 2nd Battalion back several hundred metres along African Trench, until the men ran out of grenades. The New Zealanders held the last stretch of trench thanks to a good barrage from their artillery. At 7 p.m. the 4th Battalion renewed the attack and took Snap Trench on the northern sector. It almost reached the Gouzeaucourt–Trescault road, its final objective.

The counter-attack

At 6.30 p.m., after a violent bombardment and supported by low-flying aircraft, the Germans attacked Havrincourt. The counter-attack was made by part of the fresh 20th (Hanoverian) Division, brought up in reserve near Ribécourt. According to the history of one of its regiments, the village was of “particular importance for holding the Hindenburg position”. The blow fell mainly on the Hampshire and King’s Own Yorkshire battalions and broke down under rifle and machine-gun fire, and the artillery scattered the remnants. At the same time some fifty Germans broke into the trenches of the 37th Division, but they too were driven out. At 10.30 p.m. the German Jäger retook a stretch of Snap Trench in the centre of the New Zealand line.

The day’s balance

In the evening the 62nd Division held Havrincourt and the front line of the Hindenburg position north and south of the village, and the 37th Division held Trescault. On a front of about 8 kilometres the Third Army had advanced on average almost one and a half kilometres, though it had not everywhere reached its final objective. The New Zealanders took, according to their history, nearly 400 prisoners, and according to the British official history 490, and captured about 1,400 metres of trenches. Their three battalions lost about 55 killed and about 190 wounded and missing. In German cemeteries captured later they found rows of crosses bearing the names of Jäger Division soldiers and the date 12 September.

During the night, in pouring rain, the New Zealand 3rd Brigade was relieved by the 1st Brigade. The fight for the Trescault ridge went on for two more days, and on the night of 13–14 September the German Jäger, using flamethrowers, retook the whole of African Trench. On 13 September Haig wrote to Marshal Ferdinand Foch that the Third Army had taken Trescault and Havrincourt, but resistance was serious and a carefully prepared attack would be needed to drive the Germans from the main position. As late as 1919 Byng regarded 12 September as the most important day of his command of the Third Army. He told the journalist Charles Repington that the Germans had thrown old Brandenburg and Hanoverian divisions against him, which “were well beaten, and after that the enemy lost heart”.