Battle of the Ancre, 1918

The Battle of the Ancre was the last act of Operation Michael, the great German offensive which from 21 March 1918 had pushed the British back several dozen kilometres to the west, but had not taken Amiens. The day after the failed attack south of the Somme, in the Battle of the Avre, the German Second Army of General Georg von der Marwitz and the left wing of the Seventeenth Army of General Otto von Below attacked on 5 April the front of General Julian Byng’s British Third Army north of the Somme, along the valley of the river Ancre and further towards Hébuterne and Bucquoy. After a full day of fighting, begun in mist and drizzle, the Germans took only a narrow strip of the slope above the village of Dernancourt, scraps of the wood near Aveluy, La Signy Farm and the eastern half of the village of Bucquoy. The heaviest attack fell on the Australian 4th Division at Dernancourt. The Australians lost the railway line at the foot of the hill, but with an evening counter-attack they stopped the Germans on the ridge. In the evening Erich Ludendorff ordered the attack to be halted and finally gave up the drive on Amiens.

Name and dates

The name “Battle of the Ancre, 1918” and the date of 5 April 1918 were given after the war by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee. It was the last of the six battles into which the committee divided the “First Battles of the Somme, 1918”, that is, Operation Michael, coming after the Battle of the Avre of 4 April. The year 1918 in the name distinguishes it from the Battle of the Ancre of November 1916, which was fought over the same ground and which closed the Battle of the Somme. The Australians call the main part of the fighting the Second Battle of Dernancourt (the first was fought there on 28 March). The Australian official historian Charles Bean devoted a separate chapter to it. According to German sources cited by Bean, the attack on Dernancourt bore the code name “Sonnenschein” (“Sunshine”) and was originally to have started on 31 March, but was put off from day to day until enough ammunition had been gathered. Ludendorff later wrote that the battle “ended on 4 April”, but both the British official history and the war diaries of the German commanders also count the fighting of 5 April. Times are given after the British official history (James Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. II, 1937) and after Bean (The A.I.F. in France during the Main German Offensive, 1918, 1937).

Background

At the beginning of April the offensive was clearly losing strength. On 28 March the British had repulsed Operation Mars at Arras, and Ludendorff turned the rest of his forces on Amiens, the railway junction linking the British and French armies. North of the Somme the front had settled after 26 March, when the Germans took the small town of Albert. The British held the heights west of the Ancre, while the Germans had only a shallow bridgehead across the river from Buire to the village of Hamel, in the marshy valley, overlooked from the British heights. North of them the Third Army held a line through Hébuterne to Bucquoy, from where it had a good view over the Artois plateau.

Two Australian divisions had been brought down from Flanders to the Ancre sector. General John Monash’s 3rd Australian Division stood between the Somme and the Ancre, and General Ewen Sinclair-Maclagan’s 4th Australian Division west of the Ancre, from Buire to the outskirts of Albert. Each of them had only two brigades at hand. The 4th Brigade of the 4th Division was fighting separately, at Hébuterne. Both divisions belonged to General Walter Congreve’s VII Corps. Further north General Edward Fanshawe’s V Corps defended the front from Albert to Hamel with three tired and weakened divisions (the 12th, 47th (London) and 63rd (Royal Naval) Divisions), with the 38th Division in reserve, while General George Harper’s IV Corps held the sector from near La Signy Farm by Hébuterne to Bucquoy with the New Zealand Division and the 37th and 42nd Divisions.

The Germans had planned a general attack on Amiens on both sides of the Somme for 5 April. The Second Army was to strike along its whole front from Moreuil to Beaumont-Hamel, supported by the wings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Armies. North of the Somme the attack was to widen the bridgehead on the Ancre, break in south of Hébuterne as far as Colincamps and take Bucquoy. On the evening of 4 April, however, it turned out that on the Avre the Allies had put up “particularly stubborn resistance”, and Crown Prince Wilhelm reported that the enemy could no longer be thrown back across the river Noye. The Eighteenth Army therefore took no part in the attack, and south of the Somme the Second Army confined itself to a few assaults. According to Rupprecht’s army group, the attack was at least to prevent the Allies from shifting troops north, where a new offensive in Flanders was being prepared. The British had been warned. On 4 April prisoners and deserters announced the attack, and French headquarters, according to Bean on the basis of a report from a trusted spy, warned that the next day there would be a concentric attack on Amiens from the direction of Albert and Roye. Congreve ordered the places where the Germans might be assembling to be shelled at 7.30 a.m.

Course

The bombardment. After a rainy night, in mist and drizzle, at 7 a.m. the German artillery opened fire along the whole front of the Third Army, beginning with gas shells on the battery positions. According to some German accounts the British artillery replied with heavy fire, although at Albert its response was judged weak. On the New Zealand front the bombardment had begun as early as 5 a.m. and went on without a break for three hours, reaching as far as Bus-les-Artois. The New Zealand divisional historian called it perhaps the heaviest bombardment the division experienced during the war. According to Crown Prince Rupprecht, the infantry of the Second Army set off at 8 a.m. and that of the Seventeenth Army at 9 a.m. In many places the Germans advanced even before the bombardment ended.

Dernancourt. The main attack fell on the 4th Australian Division. Its 12th Brigade under General John Gellibrand and 13th Brigade under General Glasgow were defending along the railway embankment, which curved at the foot of the hill below Laviéville, right by the buildings of Dernancourt, which was held by the Germans. The corps commander regarded this position as untenable in the event of a strong attack, and the order to defend it, rather than a line on the slope, had only recently been changed. The attack of the German XXIII Reserve Corps was led by the 50th Reserve Division, supported on the right by the 79th Reserve Division, which was to outflank the Australians along the road from Albert to Amiens, and on the left by the 13th Division. After a short, violent bombardment, in mist limiting visibility to about 150 metres, at about 9–9.30 a.m. the Germans struck from the village at the 47th Battalion. Mortars hidden in the houses of Dernancourt smashed a stretch of the embankment, and after about half an hour of fighting the Germans broke through the line there. The curve of the track allowed them to fire into the backs of the defenders on both sides of the breach. Before 10 a.m. the embankment was in their hands, and at 10.30 a.m. they reached the ridge, because the Australian machine-gun posts had failed. The companies on the flanks held out until about 4 p.m., and by evening the Australians had occupied a new line at the top of the slope, 500–1,000 yards (about half a kilometre to a kilometre) behind the morning front. The mist and the bombardment cut communications so effectively that in the first hour it proved impossible to concentrate artillery fire on Dernancourt, which according to Bean might have broken up the German preparations.

The attack, however, went no further. The 79th Reserve Division was driven back by the 48th Battalion and the British on the road from Albert to Millencourt, and the 13th Division gained nothing at Buire and Treux, where its weak attacks were beaten off by machine-gun fire from the 13th Brigade and the 3rd Australian Division. The 50th Reserve Division thus stood on the slope with no cover on its flanks, and its reserves were crowded into a gravel pit below the ridge. Sinclair-Maclagan prepared a counter-attack. In doing so he argued with his brigadiers, who did not want to rely on unreliable tanks or to go all the way down to the embankment across the open slope. At 5.15 p.m., after a six-minute bombardment, Lieutenant-Colonel Denton’s 49th Battalion, with the remnants of the 45th and 47th Battalions, advanced over the ridge under murderous machine-gun fire. About two hundred yards from the Germans the Australians broke into a charge, and the German reserves in the gravel pit, at the cry “Tommy is coming!”, began to flee. Bean called this counter-attack one of the finest ever carried out by Australians. In view of heavy losses the attempt to retake the embankment was abandoned, and after 6 p.m. the units dug in along the road from Buire to Albert. The German command no longer thought of another assault on the ridge. Bean judged this attack the strongest that Australian troops ever faced.

Albert and Aveluy Wood. On the V Corps front the attack was carried out by the German XIII Corps with the 107th, 27th and 3rd Naval Divisions and parts of the 79th and 21st Reserve Divisions, most of which had been fighting since 21 March. As early as 8.30 a.m. the Germans drove the centre of the 47th Division from the southern edge of Aveluy Wood. The 12th Division north of Albert threw the attackers out of its trenches and held its front until noon, but then lost a small orchard half a mile north of Albert station. Three counter-attacks took the rest of their gains back from the Germans. In Aveluy Wood the fighting went on until noon. The Germans worked forward from shell hole to shell hole, making plentiful use of rifle grenades (PL), broke into a gap in the line of the 1/23rd Battalion of the London Regiment and set up machine guns in its rear, but the Londoners held their front. In the late afternoon the 190th Brigade of the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division on the left wing fell back, and the right-hand battalion in the wood was driven out after hand-to-hand fighting. On the morning of 6 April counter-attacks by the pioneers of the 4th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, and the 1st and 2nd Royal Marine battalions recovered the old line, taking 55 prisoners and 10 machine guns. According to German accounts the 79th Reserve Division and the 3rd Naval Division did not advance even a hundred metres.

Hébuterne and Bucquoy. According to the British official history, the Germans threw more than six divisions against IV Corps. At 5.30 a.m., before they moved, the 63rd Brigade of the 37th Division attacked Rossignol Wood east of Hébuterne. Of the eleven tanks of the 10th Tank Battalion, ten got stuck in the wide, overgrown trenches of the old battlefield, and only one reached its objective. A battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment took the planned sunken road, but when the Germans received reinforcements and bad news came from Bucquoy, both attacking units returned to their starting positions. They had, however, taken, according to different sources, from about 140 to almost 200 prisoners and broken up the German preparations. On the New Zealand front a regiment of the German 26th Infantry Division came to within 30 metres of the trenches of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade just after 8 a.m. and was driven back, but at 10 a.m. it took a forward post of fourteen riflemen and La Signy Farm. Further attacks broke down under machine-gun fire, and by noon the New Zealand sector was quiet. That day the 4th Australian Brigade at Hébuterne repulsed the Bavarian 10th Reserve Infantry Regiment, which lost 190 men. Only at Bucquoy did the Germans achieve anything more. At 9 a.m., after a four-hour bombardment, storm troops of the 17th Infantry Division struck the salient in the village, defended by the flanks of the 37th and 42nd Divisions, and by 10.40 a.m. had taken its north-eastern and eastern part. Despite counter-attacks, one of which at 4.30 p.m. recovered the north-eastern corner, they held the eastern half of the village, up to the street running from north to south. Their reinforcements, coming up over the hills from the south, were scattered by artillery.

South of the Somme. Here too the fighting of 5 April brought little. At 11 a.m. the German 1st and 228th Divisions attacked the 6th Cavalry Brigade and the 15th Australian Brigade near Villers-Bretonneux and were stopped not far from their starting positions. In the afternoon the Germans took the front line of a British battalion and the cemetery near Hangard, at the junction with the French, but a joint counter-attack at 7.20 p.m. took everything back from them. That day the French First Army carried out three counter-attacks between Montdidier and Moreuil, which, after a night downpour, in the mud, broke down under the fire of the German infantry.

Losses

The British official history gives no separate tally of losses for 5 April, which it included in the overall balance of Operation Michael. According to Bean, the 12th Australian Brigade lost 580 men, the 13th Brigade about 500 (including several previous days), and the artillery supporting the 4th Division 153. Bean estimates the losses of the three German divisions attacking Dernancourt at 1,300–1,600 men. The two battalions of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade lost about 150 men in all, while German losses in front of them were estimated at no fewer than 500. All accounts, British and German, agree that the Germans suffered heavy losses while gaining almost nothing. According to the British official history their gains were “too small to show on a map”.

Significance

The Battle of the Ancre closed Operation Michael. The British official history writes that, despite its early successes, the offensive ended as many Allied offensives had: in a few isolated, spasmodic attacks, “sure signs of a failing effort”. The new British line was already strong, and the French one even stronger, with powerful artillery and reserves freed by the American divisions that had taken over quiet sectors of the front. Without a new, carefully prepared attack it could not be broken. Rupprecht summed up the day in his war diary as “the unpleasant fact that our offensive has come to a complete standstill”. In the evening Ludendorff, in agreement with the commanders of the army groups and armies, ordered the attacks to be broken off and continued only where an improvement of the position required it. As he later wrote, “the enemy’s resistance was beyond our strength”, and they must not allow themselves to be drawn into a battle of attrition.

In sixteen days the offensive had moved the front forward by more than 60 kilometres, but its strategic aim had not been achieved. General Hermann von Kuhl, chief of staff of Rupprecht’s army group, observed that the great tactical success had cost heavy sacrifices and the commitment of about ninety divisions, and that the end of the fighting left the German troops, especially on the Avre, in very unfavourable positions where they suffered constant losses. Amiens remained within range of the German guns, but not in German hands. The Allies gained time to unify their command: two days earlier, at Beauvais, Ferdinand Foch had been given the strategic direction of operations. Ludendorff now turned to Flanders, where on 9 April the Battle of the Lys began. For the Australians the defence of the heights above Dernancourt remained one of the hardest fights of the war. Amiens, however, was not yet safe: on 24 and 25 April the Germans tried again at Villers-Bretonneux.