Battle of Valenciennes begins

On 1 November 1918 at 5.15 a.m. the Canadian 10th Brigade attacked the wooded hill of Mont Houy south of Valenciennes. Alongside it the British divisions of XXII and XVII Corps advanced on a front from the Scheldt Canal to the village of Artres on the Rhonelle. The hill, for which the Scots had fought in vain a few days earlier, fell in under an hour. By evening the Canadians stood in the suburbs of the town, and their second brigade had crossed the canal from the west and broken into Valenciennes, which the Germans had occupied since 25 August 1914.

Before dawn

General Henry Horne’s British First Army had been standing before Valenciennes for a week. After the Battle of the Selle the Germans had anchored the left wing of their new line here on the Scheldt Canal, flooded the meadows around the town and manned the houses along the water with machine guns. Shelling the town was forbidden, because many French civilians were living there. The key to Valenciennes therefore lay to the south, on Mont Houy, a hill dominating the valley of the Scheldt and the Rhonelle stream. On 28 October a battalion of the Scottish 51st (Highland) Division took it, but a German counter-attack pushed it back onto the southern slope. For the next two days the Scots beat off counter-attacks, and on the night of 29–30 October they were relieved by the British 49th Division and the 10th Brigade of General David Watson’s 4th Canadian Division.

General Arthur Currie’s Canadian Corps was now to do in one day what the original plan had spread over two stages. Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s headquarters was preparing a great attack by three British armies and the French First Army for the beginning of November, and Valenciennes had to fall first to cover its left flank. A single brigade, in practice three or four battalions, was to take Mont Houy, the village of Aulnoy and the suburb of Marly, while the 12th Brigade crossed the canal from the west.

It rained during the night. Expecting an attack, the Germans shelled the Canadian and British positions with gas and high-explosive shells. Meanwhile a mass of guns stood ready in the Canadian positions such as no single-brigade attack had yet seen: eight field artillery brigades and six heavy, according to Canadian sources more than 300 barrels. The guns stood not only south of the hill but also on the west bank of the canal, from where they could fire on the German trenches from the flank and even from the rear. The commander of the Canadian heavy artillery, Andrew McNaughton, wanted in this way to break not only the trenches but also the spirit of the defenders.

Mont Houy

The attack went in without a preliminary bombardment, punctually at 5.15. A hail of shrapnel, high-explosive shells and bullets from twelve machine-gun batteries fell on the Germans simultaneously from the front, the flank and the rear. Howitzers laid a smoke screen. The German artillery replied quickly, but its fire weakened with every minute under accurate counter-battery fire.

The 44th Battalion from Manitoba crossed Mont Houy almost unopposed. According to some accounts the Canadians had to advance in gas masks, because the Germans were replying with gas shells. On the left the 47th Battalion from British Columbia took Le Poirier station on the canal. The first objective was reached according to plan, and at 6.30 the right flank was already passing Aulnoy. Soldiers of the German 35th and 214th Divisions, stunned by the bombardment, surrendered in whole groups. One battalion recorded that it was impossible to avoid taking so many prisoners, because they surrendered twenty and fifty at a time.

Beyond Aulnoy the 46th (South Saskatchewan) Battalion leapfrogged the 44th and, together with the 47th, reached the second objective on the southern edge of Valenciennes at about 10.20. There the attack slowed. Machine guns were firing from the houses in the suburbs and from the steelworks at Marly, defended by the experienced German 6th Division. In the afternoon the brigade commander, General J. M. Ross, brought the 50th Battalion into the fight to cover the right flank and faced six machine-gun batteries to the east.

Sergeant Cairns

In the fighting for the second objective the 21-year-old Sergeant Hugh Cairns of the 46th Battalion distinguished himself. Born in England and brought up in Saskatoon in Canada, he had already been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for the fighting at Vimy in 1917. According to the citation, when his platoon came under machine-gun fire, Cairns seized a Lewis gun and attacked the post single-handed, killing its crew of five. He then rushed forward again, killed twelve Germans, captured eighteen and took two machine guns. When the advance was held up by machine-gun and field-gun fire, he, though wounded, led a small party round the flank, forced about fifty Germans to surrender and captured all the guns.

After the captured line had been consolidated, Cairns went with a patrol into Marly and forced about sixty more Germans to surrender. While he was disarming them he was badly wounded, and then about twenty soldiers rushed at him. He collapsed from exhaustion and loss of blood. He died the following day, 2 November. He was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously, the last awarded to a Canadian in this war.

The British and the German tanks

To the right of the Canadians three British divisions attacked. The 182nd Brigade of the 61st Division crossed the Rhonelle before dawn near Artres on seven footbridges laid by the sappers and at 7.15 entered Maresches. A battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers crossed the stream on ladders. The 4th Division almost reached the road from Préseau to Marly and was already clearing Préseau itself, and the 49th Division took the German second line on the road from Préseau to Aulnoy. Each of these divisions had by then taken several hundred prisoners.

At 9.30 the Germans counter-attacked. The fresh 28th Reserve Division, just arrived from the Woëvre near Verdun, struck with the support of four tanks captured earlier from the British. The counter-attack pushed back the left of the 61st Division, the 4th Division and the right of the 49th Division. Two tanks were destroyed by British field artillery that had already crossed the Rhonelle. The commander of the 4th Division preferred to wait until morning before renewing the attack, but XVII Corps headquarters ordered the 61st Division to attack regardless of its neighbours. An evening attack by one of its battalions was stopped by fire from Saint-Hubert and Préseau. At about 4.30 p.m. the Germans counter-attacked once more, under heavy fire, but this time the 49th Division, with the help of the Canadians, drove them back. By evening the British stood a few hundred metres short of Préseau.

Across the canal into the town

Meanwhile, west of the town, General J. H. MacBrien’s Canadian 12th Brigade was crossing the Scheldt Canal in collapsible boats and on footbridges on cork floats. Three companies of the 38th Battalion from Ottawa crossed in the morning at the south-western corner of Valenciennes, and a platoon of the 72nd Battalion, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, at the north-western corner. By midday both battalions were on the east bank, and their patrols had pushed deep into the town. Resistance, however, stopped them at the railway line in its western part. North of the town the 3rd Canadian Division put a detachment across the canal from the Anzin area, but it could secure most of the crossings only after dark. In the morning German aircraft attacked the Canadian batteries at low level, and during the day British bombs fell on Jenlain, Onnaing and Saint-Saulve.

Evening

At about 10 p.m. Canadian patrols entered Marly. Prisoners taken there said they belonged to the rearguard and that the main body had left in the evening. The Marly steelworks, however, was still holding out. According to the British official history, the Canadians took 1,400 prisoners and seven guns that day and counted more than 800 German dead on the battlefield. They themselves lost very few men. The British divisions took more than two thousand prisoners. Edmonds wrote that the Germans, with seven divisions against four on this sector, put up a stubborn resistance but were clearly weakening or withdrawing.

The attack was to be continued at dawn on 2 November. Haig had already postponed the great attack by four armies from 3 to 4 November. On the same day, at the other end of the front, the American First Army and the French Fourth Army began the final phase of the offensive in the Argonne and on the Meuse, driving several kilometres into the German lines.