Battle of Valenciennes

The Battle of Valenciennes was the last great set-piece attack of the Canadian Corps in the First World War. Valenciennes, a town on the Scheldt in northern France which the Germans had occupied in August 1914, was in the last days of October 1918 a key point of the German Hermann Position. To the west and north it was protected by the Scheldt Canal and floods, and to the south by the wooded hill of Mont Houy. After a failed attack by the Scottish 51st Division on 28 October, at 5.15 a.m. on 1 November a single Canadian brigade struck the hill under cover of artillery fire heavier than any other single infantry brigade received in the whole war. Mont Houy fell in less than an hour, and on the morning of 2 November the Canadians cleared Valenciennes of Germans. The last Victoria Cross of the war won by a Canadian was earned here by Sergeant Hugh Cairns.

Name and dates

The British Battles Nomenclature Committee designated the “Battle of Valenciennes” as 1–2 November 1918. The same dates are given by the British chronology of the war and by the Canadian battle honour “Valenciennes”. The British official history (James Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, volume V) headed its chapter on the battle “1–3 November”, because only on the morning of 3 November did it become clear that the Germans had gone. The English-language Wikipedia extends the battle back to 28 October, counting the first, failed attack on Mont Houy as part of it. The Germans called a much longer period of fighting by the 17th Army, from 24 October to 4 November, the “Battle of Valenciennes”. The British chronology gives the capture of the town as 3 November, but according to the official histories, both British and Canadian, the Canadians had cleared it on the morning of 2 November. Times are given according to British and Canadian sources.

Background

After the Battle of the Selle General Henry Horne’s British First Army halted before Valenciennes. The Canadian Corps of General Arthur Currie, which after the capture of Cambrai had followed the retreating Germans through Douai and Denain, liberating on the way, according to the Canadian official history, about 70,000 French civilians, reached the Scheldt Canal west and north of the town in the last days of October. There it stuck. The Germans had cut the dykes and opened the sluices, flooding the meadows on both sides of the canal to a width of several hundred metres, and in the north, between the Scheldt and the Condé–Mons canal, over many square kilometres. The east bank of the canal was laced with barbed wire, and the walls of houses and factories by the water had been turned into machine-gun nests.

On top of that, the British command forbade the shelling of Valenciennes. It was a French town in which, despite German evacuations, many inhabitants and refugees from the surrounding area still remained. An attack from the west, across the canal, was therefore out of the question. Horne decided to outflank the town from the south, where General Alexander Godley’s British XXII Corps had already crossed the Scheldt. There, however, the way was barred by Mont Houy, a wooded hill rising several dozen metres above the canal, about two kilometres south of the town. It commanded all the southern approaches to Valenciennes, and behind it ran a ridge above the valley of the Rhonelle stream, fortified with trenches and wire.

The sector was held by General Bruno von Mudra’s German 17th Army, part of the army group of the Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht. According to the Canadian official history (Gerald Nicholson, Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914–1919) the Germans had concentrated their main strength precisely at Mont Houy, where three weakened divisions stood between the southern edge of the town and the village of Aulnoy. Edmonds reckons that there were six German divisions along the whole front of the attack on 1 November, with two more in reserve.

The first attack on Mont Houy

On 27 October Horne summoned the commanders of XXII Corps and the Canadian Corps to his advanced headquarters at Auberchicourt. The plan had three stages. On 28 October the 51st (Highland) Division of XXII Corps was to take Mont Houy and the road from Aulnoy to Le Poirier station on the canal. Its sector was then to be taken over by the 4th Canadian Division, which was to advance between the Scheldt and the Rhonelle and finally outflank Valenciennes from the east.

At 5.15 a.m. on 28 October a battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders of the 51st Division attacked behind a creeping barrage. The Scots crossed the hill, took about 190 prisoners and held Le Poirier station, but they never fully cleared the trenches on Mont Houy. Around midday or in the afternoon a counter-attack drove them back over the crest onto the southern slope. Since the hill was still in German hands, the Canadians postponed the relief of the Scots and the whole plan was put back. On 29 October the exhausted Highlanders beat off further counter-attacks, and on the night of 29/30 October they were relieved by the British 49th Division and the Canadian 10th Brigade.

The dispute over whether the Canadians should have taken over the sector at once continued after the war. The First Army’s chief of staff wrote that excessive rigidity on the part of both headquarters had cost a day. The commander of the Canadian heavy artillery, Andrew McNaughton, replied that the delay had given his guns time to prepare the attack carefully, instead of improvising in the middle of a battle.

The plan and the artillery

Meanwhile Haig’s General Headquarters had fixed a great combined attack by three British armies and the French First Army for the beginning of November, and Valenciennes had to be taken first to cover its left flank. The new plan, adopted on Currie’s advice, combined the last two stages into a single attack on 1 November. General J. M. Ross’s 10th Canadian Brigade was to take Mont Houy, the village of Aulnoy, the suburb of Marly and the southern suburbs of the town, and General J. H. MacBrien’s 12th Brigade was to cross the canal from the west and enter Valenciennes. To the right of the Canadians the British 49th and 4th Divisions of XXII Corps and the 61st Division of XVII Corps of General Julian Byng’s Third Army were to attack towards Préseau and Maresches.

The Canadian gunners exploited the fact that the corps’ left wing stood far to the north-west, beyond the canal. The attack of a single brigade was supported by eight field and six heavy artillery brigades, according to Canadian sources more than 300 guns in all. Three field brigades laid a barrage from the front, from the south, one fired obliquely from the area of Trith-Saint-Léger, and two from the side, along the German lines. The heavy guns, which could not cross the canal, fired from the west bank into the flank and even into the backs of the defenders, deliberately, to break their spirit. Howitzers laid a smoke screen, and the artillery fire was supplemented by twelve machine-gun batteries. Nicholson writes that no single infantry brigade in the whole war had such firepower behind it. McNaughton later compared the 2,149 tons of shells fired from noon on 31 October to noon on 2 November with the roughly 2,800 tons expended by both sides in the whole Second Boer War. The town itself was not shelled. Heavy fire was directed only at places known to be full of Germans, above all the steelworks at Marly.

Course of the battle

1 November. The night was rainy, and the Germans shelled the Canadian positions with gas and high explosive. Without a preliminary bombardment, at 5.15 a.m., the 44th and 47th Battalions of the 10th Brigade moved off behind the creeping barrage. The fire was so dense that the 44th Battalion crossed Mont Houy without much difficulty, and the 47th took Le Poirier station. The stunned Germans surrendered in droves. The 46th and 47th Battalions reached the next line, on the outskirts of Valenciennes, at about 10.20 a.m. Then resistance stiffened. Machine guns fired from the southern edge of the town and from the steelworks at Marly, and when around midday the left wing of the British 49th Division fell back, Ross had to commit the 50th Battalion and turn six machine-gun batteries to face east. In this fighting Sergeant Hugh Cairns of the 46th Battalion several times rushed German positions single-handed with a Lewis gun. Severely wounded while disarming prisoners in Marly, he died the following day.

To the right of the Canadians the British made good progress until 9.30 a.m. The 61st Division took Maresches, and the 4th Division broke into Préseau. Then the fresh German 28th Reserve Division counter-attacked with four captured British tanks and pushed back the 61st, the 4th and part of the 49th Division. Two tanks were destroyed by British field artillery which had already crossed the Rhonelle. A further counter-attack, at 4.30 p.m., was repulsed with the help of Canadian guns. In the evening the British stood a few hundred metres short of their objective line, in front of Préseau.

Meanwhile the 12th Canadian Brigade crossed the Scheldt Canal in collapsible boats and on footbridges with cork floats. Three companies of the 38th Battalion crossed in the morning at the south-western corner of the town, and a platoon of the 72nd Battalion at the north-western corner. By midday both battalions were on the east bank, but resistance held them up at the railway line in the western part of Valenciennes. In the north the 3rd Canadian Division got only a small party across the canal and could seize most of the crossings only after dark, because from a tall mine spoil heap the Germans could see every movement by the water. At about 10 p.m. Canadian patrols entered Marly. Prisoners said they belonged to the rearguard and that the main body had left in the evening.

2 November. At 5.30 a.m., on a cloudy, rainy day, all the divisions resumed the attack. In Valenciennes the Germans had withdrawn during the night, and the battalions of the 12th Brigade passed through the town without much resistance. According to Edmonds it was cleared by 7.20 a.m.; according to Nicholson the Canadians reported reaching its eastern edge at 8.30 a.m. There they met the 11th Brigade, which had relieved the 10th Brigade and taken Marly, and before evening they reached Saint-Saulve on the road to Mons. The British 61st Division went a kilometre beyond its objective, past Saint-Hubert, capturing two tanks and 620 prisoners, and the 4th Division reached the ridge beyond Préseau. The steelworks at Marly held out longest; its garrison from the German 6th Division was reputed to be veterans. A battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment of the 49th Division stormed it only at about 3 p.m., after a hurricane bombardment, taking more than two hundred prisoners. In the afternoon German heavy artillery shelled Valenciennes and Saint-Saulve, and airmen reported German troop movements opposite the Canadians. The British expected a counter-attack that same night.

There was no counter-attack. On the morning of 3 November patrols found that the Germans had abandoned the Scheldt line at Valenciennes. Haig called off the great attack planned for the next day on the First Army’s front and ordered a pursuit. That day the Canadians reached Estreux and Onnaing, and the whole First Army took only 59 prisoners.

Casualties

According to Nicholson the Canadians took almost 1,800 prisoners in this battle, and more than 800 German dead were counted on the battlefield. Edmonds gives 1,400 prisoners and seven guns captured by the Canadians on 1 November alone. The British divisions of XXII and XVII Corps took several thousand more prisoners on 1 and 2 November: the 49th Division alone more than 800 on 1 November, and the 61st Division almost 1,400 in two days. Canadian losses according to Nicholson were 80 killed and about 300 wounded, a very low figure for such a result. The official history does not give the total losses of the British divisions.

Nicholson also admits that most of the German losses were caused by artillery fire, but that according to some accounts some Canadians in the heat of battle killed Germans who wanted to surrender. He explains this by the growing hostility of soldiers who had seen in the liberated towns the conditions in which the population had lived under occupation.

Significance

On 2 November Currie wrote in his diary that it was one of the most successful operations his corps had carried out. Nicholson considered the battle a model of a carefully planned attack, in which a huge mass of artillery in close support of a minimum number of infantry brought victory at small cost. The fall of Valenciennes, an important road and rail junction, exposed the left flank of the German defence on the Sambre, where on 4 November the British army’s last great offensive began.

It was the Canadians’ last great battle of the war. In the following days the Canadian Corps advanced only in pursuit, across the Belgian border towards Mons, from where in August 1914 the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force had begun. Hugh Cairns, born in 1896 in Ashington in England and brought up in Saskatoon in Canada, who had already received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for Vimy Ridge in April 1917, became the last of more than seventy Canadians awarded the Victoria Cross in this war. He was buried in the British military cemetery at Auberchicourt, and in 1936 Valenciennes named an avenue after him near the place where he fought.