Battle of the Tardenois

The Battle of the Tardenois is the name under which British historiography knows the part played by two divisions of the British XXII Corps in the French counter-offensive during the Second Battle of the Marne. When on 18 July 1918 General Mangin’s Tenth Army struck the western flank of the German salient between Soissons and Reims, General Henri Berthelot’s French Fifth Army was to press its eastern flank so that the Germans could not shift troops from there against Mangin. The task fell largely on the Scottish 51st (Highland) Division and the 62nd (West Riding) Division from Yorkshire, which General Alexander Godley threw into battle straight off the march on the morning of 20 July, in place of a bled-out Italian corps. For twelve days the British fought their way up the valley of the Ardre, through dense woods and villages turned into machine-gun nests. They took Marfaux, Chaumuzy and Bligny, and on 28 July the Montagne de Bligny, at a cost of about 7,000 killed, wounded and missing.

Name and dates

The name “Battle of the Tardenois” and the dates 20–31 July 1918 were fixed after the war by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee. The Tardenois is a historical region on the border of the Aisne and Marne departments, between the Marne and the Vesle, with its capital at Fère-en-Tardenois. The committee applied the name only to the fighting of XXII Corps as part of the French Fifth Army, that is, of the 51st and 62nd Divisions in the Ardre valley. The corps’ other two divisions, the 15th (Scottish) and the 34th, fought from 23 July on the other flank of the salient, near Soissons, as part of the French Tenth Army, and the committee counts their share as a separate battle, the Battle of the Soissonnais and of the Ourcq. Both belong to the British “Battles of the Marne 1918”, that is, to the part of the Second Battle of the Marne in which British troops took part. The French divided the Second Battle of the Marne differently, and in their lists the name “Tardenois” usually refers to the fighting on the plateaux around Fère-en-Tardenois from the end of July. We give facts, figures and times after the British official history (James Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. III, 1939), which also draws on the French official history and the German monograph on the battle. Times are Allied time.

Background

After the Third Battle of the Aisne the Germans stood on the Marne in a deep salient whose eastern flank rested on the hills of the Montagne de Reims west of Reims. Through this sector flows the Ardre, which runs north-west from the Montagne de Reims and joins the Vesle at Fismes. In early June the British 19th Division fought here and on 6 June retook the hill at Bligny; afterwards the sector was taken over by General Alberico Albricci’s Italian II Corps. On 15 July, in the last German offensive, the Italians bore one of the main blows. They gave way several kilometres, so that Bligny and the hill above it ended up deep inside the German position, but they did not let the Germans through to Épernay. According to Colonel Mario Caracciolo, author of the Italian history of the corps, it numbered about 24,000 men and lost over 9,300 in those days, and its 8th Division nearly all its guns.

Foch had obtained the British XXII Corps, made up of the 51st, 62nd, 15th and 34th Divisions, from Haig in July in case of a German attack in Champagne. The 51st and 62nd Divisions, two experienced Territorial divisions that had fought side by side at Cambrai in the autumn of 1917, were waiting in reserve south of the Marne. On 18 July General Paul Maistre, commander of the Centre Army Group, warned that the Italians’ position was dangerous and that without immediate relief Reims might fall. That evening Godley was ordered to concentrate both divisions behind the Italians. During the night of 18–19 July they crossed the Marne at Épernay and after a hard march halted in the woods of the Montagne de Reims. On 19 July Berthelot, encouraged by Mangin’s success, ordered the British to attack through the Italian lines the next morning instead of carrying out the planned relief. The plan assumed that the Germans were already withdrawing. Godley and the divisional commanders, Generals Walter Braithwaite (62nd) and George Carter-Campbell (51st), accepted it without objection, although the orders reached the divisions only at 4.45 p.m. and the barrage map at three in the morning.

The ground favoured the defender. The Ardre valley, less than three kilometres wide, was open and covered with knee-high corn in which German posts were hidden. On both sides rose wooded ridges 60–90 metres high with dense undergrowth: to the north the Bois de Reims, to the south the great Bois de Courton and the narrower Bois d’Eclisse. Their projecting spurs allowed machine guns to enfilade the valley. The centres of resistance were the villages of Marfaux and Chaumuzy in the valley, whose houses were still standing, with machine guns in their cellars, and the bare hill of the Montagne de Bligny, which dominated the whole area. There were almost no trenches. The British, used to trench fighting, had to wage a war of movement in woods, without their own corps’ heavy artillery, with French and Italian batteries, French maps and French orders.

Course

20 July. After a night march along crowded, dusty roads the infantry reached its jumping-off positions only in daylight. At 8 a.m. 39 French and Italian batteries of 75 mm guns and 14 batteries of 155 mm opened fire, but no one knew exactly where the front line was, so the barrage fell too far ahead and missed many German machine-gun nests. North of the Ardre the 62nd Division took Courmas, just by the line, but beyond the village came under murderous fire from the Château de Commetreuil, whose windows and cellars the Germans had turned into a fortress. The 2/4th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment took the château but could not hold it. The 185th Brigade could not cross the eight hundred metres of open ground before the villages of Cuitron and Marfaux and was stopped at 11 a.m. South of the river the 51st Division at first made good progress through the Bois de Courton, but lost direction in the thicket, and on the edge of the wood Marfaux was mistaken for Chaumuzy. Fire from Espilly and the Bullin farm halted the Scots, and when the neighbouring French 9th Division of General Maurice Gamelin failed to take nearby Paradis and fell back, the Scots had to give up part of their gains. In the evening both divisions dug in between a few hundred metres and a kilometre in front of their starting line. They had taken about five hundred prisoners and many machine guns, but suffered heavy losses. The French official history dismisses the day with a sentence about “stubborn resistance” in the Bois de Courton and before Marfaux.

21–22 July. Godley changed his method. He ordered strongpoints to be occupied one after another, machine-gun nests to be kept under fire, and the advance to go where resistance was weakest. His staff concluded that, as in mountain warfare, the wooded ridges on both sides of the valley had to be taken first, and only then could the troops advance along its floor. In the following days the divisions attacked with single, ever weaker battalions. On 21 July haste took its revenge once again: in both divisions the starting line was wrongly marked, and the battalions went into the attack several hundred metres from the place from which they were to follow the barrage. On 22 July the 5th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment broke into the Bois du Petit Champ, a projecting spur of the Bois de Reims above Marfaux, took several fortified posts and over two hundred prisoners. The Scots of the Black Watch advanced less than a hundred metres in the Bois de Courton.

23 July. This time the attack was carefully prepared. At 6 a.m. both divisions advanced behind an accurate barrage, with five French light tanks. The 62nd Division was on its first objective at 6.50 a.m. and on its second at 8 a.m., taking Cuitron and Marfaux, and in the evening it cleared the Bois du Petit Champ. It took nearly two hundred prisoners and 12 guns, which turned out to be French guns earlier captured by the Germans. The 152nd Brigade of the 51st Division took the Bois d’Aulnay at 8.20 a.m. Espilly itself could not be taken. In Marfaux the British found their wounded from 20 July, whose wounds the Germans had dressed and whom they had given water, but they had had no food for them. That day XXII Corps advanced about 1,100 metres on a front of four kilometres. According to the history of the German regiment that defended Espilly, the Scottish infantry came on in long waves behind the tanks and lost so many men that it reached the main line with no punch left, but the Bois d’Aulnay and Marfaux were lost.

24–26 July. The corps front was shortened to about five kilometres. On 25 July the Germans, still hoping to regain the initiative at Reims, counter-attacked from Vrigny to Marfaux, but after initial success were driven back. On 26 July, however, the German command decided to withdraw from the southern part of the salient. During the night of 26–27 July, in the rain, the Germans slipped away unnoticed to a new line running from Ville-en-Tardenois through Romigny and on along the upper Ourcq.

27 July. In the morning the 51st Division and one brigade of the 62nd, with the French 14th Division on the left flank, advanced on the ridge of the Bois de Courton and met no resistance at all. That day the corps took a single prisoner. The divisional commanders ordered the pursuit on their own initiative. In the afternoon the Scots entered Chaumuzy, and during the night patrols found the Bois d’Eclisse empty. The corps mounted detachment, made up of two squadrons of the Australian 4th Light Horse Regiment and a squadron of the New Zealand Otago Mounted Rifles, was to seize Bligny and the hill off the march, but was held up by machine-gun fire five hundred metres short of its objective.

28 July. In rain and cold mist the 62nd Division attacked Bligny and the Montagne de Bligny, the 19th Division’s old position from June. The 186th Brigade at once came under fire from the Bois des Dix Hommes on the right flank, where the French 77th Division advanced later. Bligny was taken by small groups throughout the day and fully occupied only at 4 p.m., when the French arrived. The 185th Brigade did better. The 8th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, without a barrage and before dawn, approached the hill, surprised the Germans and drove them off the summit with a charge. For this the battalion received the French Croix de Guerre. On the left flank the 6th Battalion, Black Watch broke into Chambrecy and held on there in isolation, while the 7th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders reached the western slopes of the hill. The French 14th Division failed to take Ville-en-Tardenois. That day, at the other end of the Tardenois, the French entered Fère-en-Tardenois. General Émile Fayolle, commander of the Reserve Army Group, telegraphed to his army commanders that whatever the fatigue of the troops, the plateaux of the Tardenois must be taken and the Germans must not be allowed to withdraw in peace.

29–31 July. The British divisions were exhausted. On 29 July the 2/5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment took the rest of Bligny hill at the cost of heavy losses. The French command admitted that the Fifth Army no longer had the strength for new attacks. During the night of 30–31 July the French 77th Division relieved the 62nd Division. On the evening of 30 July the Germans, after a day-long bombardment, attacked the Montagne de Bligny, but artillery fire and the 7th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders repulsed the attack. After dark on 31 July the 51st Division was relieved by the French 14th Division, and both divisions left by rail for the north, to the British zone of the front.

Losses

According to the British official history the 51st Division lost 115 officers and 2,950 other ranks and the 62nd Division 118 officers and 3,865 other ranks, together about 7,050 killed, wounded and missing. In twelve days XXII Corps took prisoner 21 officers and 1,148 other ranks from seven German divisions, captured 135 machine guns and recovered 32 French and Italian guns. German losses in this sector cannot be separated out, but Edmonds notes that British soldiers had never seen as many German dead as they found in the woods above the Ardre. The German regiments defending here melted away: on 23 July one of them had only 27 officers and 785 men in its three battalions, a little over a third of its establishment.

Significance

The Battle of the Tardenois was a minor part of the great French counter-offensive, but on the eastern flank of the salient it was the British who formed the spearhead of the attack. In twelve days they advanced about 6 kilometres on a front that narrowed from over six to under four kilometres. The gains were modest compared with Mangin’s attack, but the fighting in the Ardre valley pinned down German reserves at the hinge of the salient, the holding of which was the Germans’ condition for a safe withdrawal. When the Germans withdrew from the southern part of the salient, their eastern flank had to fall back together with the rest of the front. General Berthelot thanked both divisions in an order of the day for the success achieved on exceptionally difficult ground.

The British official history judges harshly the way these divisions were thrown into battle: without reconnaissance, without knowledge of the ground, with a barrage that in the woods fell behind the infantry, and with no plan for dealing with individual strongpoints. Edmonds compares the first attacks with the futile attempts of the Germans who in October 1914 stormed fortified French villages near Arras. The lesson was not wasted, however. From 23 July the British attacked methodically, in limited bounds behind accurate artillery fire, and achieved success with far smaller losses. The memory of this fighting is kept by the British war cemeteries at Marfaux and Chambrecy, and by the Italian cemetery at Bligny, where the soldiers of Albricci’s corps lie.