The Battle of Havrincourt was a small, one-day attack by General Julian Byng’s British Third Army, but it opened the last great chapter of the war on the Western Front. On 12 September 1918 three British divisions and the New Zealand Division attacked the ridges near the village of Havrincourt, where the Germans held outposts in front of the Hindenburg Line and in places its front line itself. By evening the British had taken Havrincourt and Trescault and beaten off counter-attacks by fresh German divisions. The British Battles Nomenclature Committee recognised the day as the first of the battles of the Hindenburg Line, which ended in October with the breaking of the entire German position.

Name and dates

The name “Battle of Havrincourt” (Battle of Havrincourt) and the date of 12 September 1918 were fixed after the war by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee. Together with the Battle of Épehy of 18 September, it was counted among the battles of the Hindenburg Line, reckoned from 12 September to 12 October. The author of the British official history, James Edmonds, notes that the fighting of the Third and Fourth Armies between 12 and 26 September was preparatory in character: the aim was to capture the outworks of the Hindenburg position and observation points before the great attack. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, in his despatch of December 1918, combined the two actions into a single “Battle of Havrincourt and Épehy” (12–18 September). Fighting for the Trescault ridge continued on 13 and 14 September, but we follow the committee’s date. The main sources for this page are the British official history (Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. IV), the history of the New Zealand Division and Haig’s despatches.

Background

After the Second Battle of Bapaume and the breaking of the Drocourt–Quéant line, at the beginning of September the Germans fell back to the positions from which they had launched their great offensive in March. The German Seventeenth Army of General Otto von Below, facing the Third Army, rested its northern wing on the Hindenburg Line and the Canal du Nord as early as the night of 3–4 September. To the south of it the Second Army withdrew obliquely until the night of 5–6 September, pivoting on Havrincourt. The Hindenburg Line, which the Germans called the Siegfriedstellung, was built in the autumn and winter of 1916, and in the spring of 1917 the Germans withdrew to it, shortening their front.

Havrincourt had a history. The village lay on the northern slope of the valley of the Grand Ravin stream, right next to the Hindenburg Line, which here crossed the valley, ran in front of the village and then along the Havrincourt ridge to the Canal du Nord. On 20 November 1917, on the first day of the Battle of Cambrai, it was taken by the 62nd (West Riding) Division from Yorkshire. Havrincourt then remained in the British Flesquières salient, which Byng gave up only on the second day of the German March offensive. In September 1918 the same 62nd Division again faced the village, and the operation order of its commander, General Robert Whigham, stated that the division would “recapture the village of Havrincourt”.

At the beginning of September Haig preferred to follow the Germans steadily, to give his troops a rest and the French and Americans time to prepare the offensives planned by Marshal Ferdinand Foch. On 1 September he also received a confidential telegram from the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Henry Wilson, warning against heavy losses in attacks on the Hindenburg Line itself, since the War Cabinet would be disturbed by a failed assault. The army commanders were therefore merely to submit proposals for further operations. Byng replied on 9 September that the German divisions were fighting for time and were in poor condition: each new division fought well for two days and then broke. This demoralisation, he wrote, would pass if the Germans were given a respite, so they had to be attacked continuously. He proposed seizing the front line of the Hindenburg position as soon as possible.

On 6–9 September the right wing of the Third Army reached Havrincourt Wood, and the New Zealand Division and the divisions of V Corps took Gouzeaucourt Wood in an attack in darkness on 9 September. Beyond lay the Trescault ridge, the highest ground in the area, from which the Germans overlooked the British rear. On the ridge their exhausted 44th Reserve and 225th Divisions were relieved by the fresh 118th Division and the Jäger Division (Jäger-Division), regarded as one of the best in the German army. The weather broke, and on the night of 9–10 September it poured so hard that units lost their way. On the evening of 11 September the 2nd Division of VI Corps won a small strip of ground by the Canal du Nord, and the 37th Division took up positions on the eastern edge of Havrincourt Wood.

The plan

The attack was to be made by General George Harper’s IV Corps and General Aylmer Haldane’s VI Corps, with help from the left wing of V Corps. The objectives were two ridges parallel to the front: Trescault, running north from Gouzeaucourt Wood, and Havrincourt, beyond the Grand Ravin valley. Four brigades attacked: General Herbert Hart’s New Zealand 3rd Rifle Brigade, the 111th Brigade of the 37th Division, and the 186th and 187th Brigades of the 62nd Division. They were supported by eighteen field artillery brigades and nine heavy brigades, which shelled villages and approach roads through the night.

Whigham decided not to attack Havrincourt frontally. South of Havrincourt Wood IV Corps was already across the canal, and the wood gave cover for assembly, so the 62nd Division was to emerge from it to the north-east, pass the village on both sides, since it was screened from the south by the château moat, then turn east behind the front line of the Hindenburg Line and only then clear the village from the west.

Course of the battle

At 5.25 a.m. on 12 September the barrage began. The morning was fine and cool. In the 62nd Division two battalions of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment from the 186th Brigade went first north, then turned east along the southern edge of the village and by 7.30 a.m. had taken the front line of the Hindenburg position. At 7.15 a.m., when the heavy artillery lifted its fire from Havrincourt, the 2/4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment entered the village. It took the château without difficulty, but fought hard for the rest of the village and only at 11.30 a.m. stood on its eastern edge. In the 187th Brigade the 5th Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and the 2/4th Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment were briefly held up by flanking fire from a strongpoint south of the village. Sergeant Laurence Calvert of the 5th KOYLI rushed two machine guns single-handed, killed their crews and captured both. For this he received the Victoria Cross. By 7.30 a.m. the objective had been reached here too.

To their right the 111th Brigade of the 37th Division at first met almost no resistance, but Trescault, lying below the ridge to the west, and a strongpoint east of the village held out stubbornly. At about 8 a.m. the brigade reached its objective on the right wing and in the centre.

The heaviest fighting fell to the New Zealanders on the Trescault ridge, opposite the Jäger Division. They took the first trench line, about 550 metres ahead of them, fairly easily, but beyond it a storm of machine-gun fire from the trenches on the ridge and from Beaucamp hill made any advance across the open impossible. A unit of the 38th Division that was to cover the right flank was thrown back by a counter-attack. On the right wing Sergeant Harry Laurent of the 2nd Battalion, leading a patrol of twelve men, went past the actual objective in a ruined trench, pushed some 700 yards further and stumbled on the German support line near Gouzeaucourt. With the seven men he had left he attacked it and brought back 111 prisoners. He too received the Victoria Cross. The Germans counter-attacked throughout the day, and in the afternoon pushed the New Zealanders’ right wing back a little. Only at 7 p.m., with artillery support, did the left wing take the trench on the ridge. The right wing and centre halted close to the objective, and at 10.30 p.m. another counter-attack took some ground from them in the centre.

At 6.30 p.m. the Germans made a determined attempt to retake Havrincourt. After a violent bombardment, supported by low-flying aircraft, part of the fresh 20th Division, brought up as a counter-attack division, struck at the village. According to the history of one of its regiments, holding Havrincourt was of “particular importance for holding the Hindenburg position”. The counter-attack fell mainly on the Hampshire and KOYLI battalions and broke down under rifle and artillery fire. At the same time some fifty Germans broke into the trenches of the 37th Division, but they too were driven out. In the evening the 62nd Division held the village and the front line of the Hindenburg position to the north and south of it. 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.

Fighting for the Trescault ridge

On the night of 12–13 September, in a downpour, the New Zealanders of the 3rd Brigade were relieved by the 1st Brigade. On the afternoon of 13 September its battalions tried to recover the lost part of the trenches on the ridge, but made little progress. In the evening the Jäger Division attacked several times, and at 1.45 a.m. on 14 September, using flamethrowers, it retook the whole of African Trench on the crest of the ridge. The New Zealand history admits that the Jäger were “worthy opponents” and that the balance of those days did not come out decisively in the New Zealanders’ favour. On the evening of 14 September the division was relieved by the 5th Division, which took that trench only on 28 September.

Losses

The British official history does not give total losses for the battle. According to it the New Zealand 3rd Brigade took 490 prisoners, and according to the New Zealand history nearly 400. Its three battalions that went into the attack lost about 55 killed and about 190 wounded and missing on 12 September. The Germans lost considerably more. The New Zealanders later found in captured cemeteries rows of crosses of Jäger Division soldiers dated 12 September. Haig stated in aggregate that in the fighting from 12 to 18 September, including the Battle of Épehy, fifteen British divisions defeated twenty German ones and took nearly 12,000 prisoners and 100 guns.

Significance

The battle was not spectacular and is often overshadowed by the American offensive at Saint-Mihiel, which began the same day. The English Wikipedia even says that at Havrincourt the Hindenburg Line was breached for the first time, which is not true, since that had already been done at Cambrai in 1917. The British did, however, gain outposts from which the main Hindenburg position could be seen, and jumping-off positions for the later attack on the Canal du Nord. On 13 September Haig wrote to 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 out. The same day he agreed to Rawlinson’s proposal that the Fourth Army should attack the outworks at Épehy.

Byng himself regarded the day as the most important of his command of the Third Army. According to the diary of Charles Repington, who spoke with him in 1919, Byng said that the Germans had thrown against him two old divisions of the Brandenburg III and Hanoverian X Corps, which had fought at Vionville in 1870, and held two more in reserve: “they were well beaten, and after that the enemy lost heart”. Repington also wrote, wrongly, that the village was taken by the 56th Division rather than the 62nd.

Battle of Havrincourt