Battle of La Bassée

The Battle of La Bassée was the first of a series of battles that the British army fought in Flanders in the autumn of 1914, in the last stage of the race to the sea. The British II Corps of General Horace Smith-Dorrien, brought from the Aisne, was to turn the northern flank of the German Sixth Army together with the French cavalry and take La Bassée, a small town on the canal linking Aire with Lille. After a few days of slow progress the attack stalled, and from 20 October the British had to beat off increasingly strong German counter-attacks. The exhausted II Corps, supported by the first Indian units, held the front, although it lost Neuve-Chapelle, and La Bassée remained in German hands until October 1918.

Name and dates of the battle

The British Battles Nomenclature Committee adopted the dates 10 October – 2 November 1914 for this fighting, and these dates are also given by the British official history. The first day, however, still covers II Corps’ move into the Béthune area. The corps went into action on 12 October. The end of the battle is marked by the relief of II Corps by the Indian Corps at the turn of October and November. The fighting at La Bassée merged seamlessly with the simultaneous battles of Armentières, Messines and Ypres. In French and German works it usually has no name of its own and is described as part of the wider fighting in Flanders.

Background: the British return to the left wing

At the beginning of October 1914 the Western Front already stretched from Switzerland to the area of Arras and Lens. In the First Battle of Artois the French Tenth Army of General Louis de Maud’huy defended Arras but failed to turn the German flank. There was still no continuous front only north of Lens, on the plain of French Flanders between La Bassée, Lille and the coast. German cavalry corps roamed there, and it was screened by French cavalry and territorial divisions. At the end of September and in the first days of October the German cavalry ventured far to the west, as far as Hazebrouck.

At that time the British Expeditionary Force was secretly moving from the Aisne northwards, to the Allied left wing. The first to arrive was II Corps, made up of the 3rd and 5th Divisions, which detrained in the Abbeville area on 8 and 9 October. Field Marshal John French did not wait for the rest of the army and sent it east at once. General Ferdinand Foch, who coordinated the French armies in the north, provided buses that could carry almost 10,000 soldiers.

On the German side the British faced the Sixth Army of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. North of La Bassée its I and II Cavalry Corps and XIV Corps fought at first, and in the following days infantry corps transferred from other sectors of the front arrived.

Course of the fighting

10–11 October. On 10 October French and Foch agreed at Doullens on a joint advance eastwards, north of Lille. That day II Corps covered about 35 kilometres on foot and by bus, and on the evening of 11 October it took up position around Béthune, to the left of the French XXI Corps. Ahead of it, north of the La Bassée canal, stretched the screen of General Louis Conneau’s French cavalry.

12–15 October. On 12 October the French lost Vermelles, south of the canal. Smith-Dorrien, instead of heading north-east as ordered, directed the corps straight east so as not to lose contact with the French. The advance moved very slowly. The flat, marshy plain, criss-crossed by ditches, hedges and canals, favoured the defenders, and the German cavalry and Jäger defended every farmstead. On 13 October the Germans retook the village of Givenchy, and a battalion of the Dorsets lost about 400 men. On 14 October the commander of the 3rd Division, General Hubert Hamilton, was killed by shrapnel.

16–19 October. The British advanced slowly, wheeling around their right flank at Givenchy. They took Violaines, Herlies and the approaches to Aubers Ridge, and on their left flank the French cavalry entered Fromelles. On 19 October a battalion of the Royal Irish captured the village of Le Pilly on Aubers Ridge. This was the furthest point of the advance. Facing the British, however, were fresh divisions of the German VII Corps, and XIII and XIX Corps also appeared nearby.

20–23 October. On 20 October the German Sixth Army began a general attack from Arras to Armentières. The Royal Irish battalion, surrounded at Le Pilly, was almost completely destroyed. French ordered the attempts to take La Bassée to be abandoned. On 21 October the Germans struck the 3rd Division in fog, and on 22 October they drove the British out of Violaines and the French cavalry out of Fromelles. During the night of 22–23 October II Corps withdrew to a previously prepared line from Givenchy through Neuve-Chapelle to Fauquissart.

Arrival of the Indians. On 23 October the Indian Lahore Division arrived at Estaires. It was under strength, because one of its brigades had remained in Egypt and another, the Ferozepore Brigade, had been sent to help the cavalry at Messines. During the night of 23–24 October the Jullundur Brigade relieved the French cavalry on II Corps’ left flank. For the first time this created a continuous British line from Givenchy all the way to Ypres.

24–29 October. The Germans, reinforced by the 14th and 26th Divisions, attacked every day, mainly at night and at dawn, preceding their attacks with heavy bombardment by heavy artillery. The fiercest fighting was for Neuve-Chapelle. On 26 and 27 October the Germans broke into the village and, after bitter fighting among the ruins, took it. On 28 October the 47th Sikhs and two companies of Indian sappers, among others, counter-attacked. They reached the eastern edge of the village but, without support, had to withdraw. Of 289 Sikhs, 68 came back. Neuve-Chapelle remained in German hands.

30 October – 2 November. The second division of the Indian Corps, the Meerut Division, also arrived. Over two nights its brigades took over II Corps’ trenches. On 31 October the commander of the Indian Corps, General James Willcocks, took command of the sector from Givenchy to Fauquissart. The remnants of II Corps, instead of the promised rest, were immediately sent north to help the cavalry and III Corps, because at Ypres and Messines the fate of the whole battle in Flanders hung in the balance.

Casualties

According to the British official history, II Corps lost almost 14,000 men in October. The 3rd Division alone lost more than 5,800 men between 12 and 31 October, and its brigades shrank to half strength or less. On 31 October the corps numbered about 14,000 infantrymen, whereas its establishment should have been 24,000. Indian losses up to the end of October amounted, according to English-language works, to more than 1,500 men. German losses are not known exactly, but they were also very high.

Significance

The Battle of La Bassée ended British attempts to turn the German flank south of the Lys. The plan for an advance eastwards, north of Lille, collapsed because the Germans had moved more forces north than the Allies had assumed. Despite enormous losses II Corps was not broken and covered the British southern flank during the First Battle of Ypres.

This battle saw the first fighting on the Western Front by troops of the British Indian Army. Soldiers from the Punjab, Nepal and other parts of India, thrown into battle in the cold and mud of Flanders, in a country unknown to them, suffered heavy losses. The line that settled at the end of October between Givenchy and Fauquissart changed little until March 1915, when the British and Indians retook Neuve-Chapelle. La Bassée remained in German hands until October 1918.