First Battle of the Scarpe (1917)

The First Battle of the Scarpe was the first and most successful stage of the Battle of Arras. On Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, General Edmund Allenby’s British Third Army attacked east of Arras, on both sides of the river Scarpe. At the same time the Canadians were storming the neighbouring Vimy Ridge. After a massive artillery bombardment and behind a creeping barrage, the infantry went through two German positions in a few hours, and on part of the front through three. North of the river it advanced about 3.5 miles, more than five kilometres, the furthest in a single day since the start of trench warfare on the Western Front. The German reserves, however, stood too far back to intervene, and the British were unable to exploit the breach before they arrived. On 11 April infantry and cavalry took the village of Monchy-le-Preux, which dominated the surrounding country, but further attacks broke against fresh German divisions. On 14 April the battle came to an end.

Name and dates

The name “First Battle of the Scarpe” and the dates 9–14 April 1917 were laid down after the war by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee. It covers the operations of the Third Army in the first stage of the Battle of Arras. The Canadian Corps’ attack in the north has its own name, the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The boundary between them ran along the line Écurie – Willerval. The British official history (Cyril Falls, Military Operations France and Belgium 1917, vol. I), the main source for this page, notes that the objective of XVII Corps north of the Scarpe also lay on the slopes of Vimy Ridge, which runs all the way down to the river. This battle was followed by the Second (23–24 April) and Third (3–4 May) Battles of the Scarpe.

Background

The attack at Arras was meant to draw in the German reserves ahead of the great French offensive on the Aisne. After the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line the main weight of this task fell on the Third Army, which was given 18 divisions. The army’s right wing, General Thomas Snow’s VII Corps, now faced the Hindenburg Line itself, which ended at Telegraph Hill between Neuville-Vitasse and Tilloy. North of it, up to the Scarpe and beyond, stretched the old, deep German positions. Behind the first position and its support line lay the heavily wired Wancourt – Feuchy line, with a strongpoint at Feuchy Chapel on the road to Cambrai, about five kilometres from the front. North of the river its continuation, the Oppy – Méricourt line, swung far to the east, and nearer lay the intermediate Point du Jour line on the eastern slopes of Vimy Ridge. A few kilometres further still, the Germans were digging a new position, the Drocourt – Quéant Switch.

The whole area was dominated by the hill with the village of Monchy-le-Preux between the valleys of the Scarpe and the Cojeul. From the outskirts of Arras it blocked the entire eastern horizon, and from the hill itself, as the official history puts it, the view over the plain of Douai seemed endless.

The front from Lens to Quéant was held by the German Sixth Army of Colonel-General Ludwig von Falkenhausen, part of the army group of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. At Arras the defence was conducted by the divisions of Group “Arras”. Falkenhausen did not expect an attack until mid-April. He kept the five reserve divisions intended for counter-attack 15–20 miles (about 25–30 km) behind the front so as not to expose them to shellfire, and expected them to relieve the front-line divisions only in the course of a long defensive battle, as on the Somme. Rupprecht later noted in his diary that the Sixth Army, against his express wish, had not moved its reserves closer.

Plan

Allenby divided the attack into four stages, marked in colours on the maps. The Black Line, the first position, was to be taken by VI and XVII Corps in 36 minutes. The Blue Line, the second position, within a few hours. The Brown Line, the Wancourt – Feuchy position and the Point du Jour line, after about eight hours. Finally, the Green Line took in Monchy-le-Preux, Guémappe and Fampoux. For the first time in the British Army on the Western Front, fresh divisions were to pass through the ranks of those that had taken the Brown Line and go on to attack the next objective themselves. The Cavalry Corps with two divisions stood in reserve, ready to move out into open country beyond the Green Line. VII Corps, which was already level with the Black Line, was to attack later, starting from its left flank, in the hope that the earlier successes of its neighbours would shake the Germans on the Hindenburg Line.

The Third Army had more than 1,700 guns and howitzers, including 858 18-pounder field guns, one gun for every 12 yards (about 11 metres) of front. The preliminary bombardment lasted from 4 April, and in the final hours the artillery drenched the German battery positions with gas shells. The attack was supported by 40 tanks. The soldiers waited for zero hour in the trenches and also beneath Arras: in the cellars of the old town and in the old quarries under the suburbs of Ronville and Saint-Sauveur, linked by tunnels to no man’s land. According to the official history they could shelter 24,500 men. At the request of the French the attack was put back by one day, from 8 to 9 April.

Course: 9 April

The attack went in at 5.30 a.m., in squalls of sleet and snow. According to the official history, ten divisions of the Third Army stood in the front line, three of them Scottish, and 44 of the 120 battalions of the first wave came from Scotland. North of the Scarpe, General Charles Fergusson’s XVII Corps achieved complete success. The 9th (Scottish) Division, with the South African Brigade, took Athies and the Point du Jour line. At 3.15 p.m. the 4th Division passed through it, broke the Oppy – Méricourt line, took Fampoux and captured redoubts in which the Germans put up hardly any resistance. One platoon began its attack on the Hyderabad Redoubt by kicking a football towards it. The 34th and 51st (Highland) Divisions took the first positions on the slopes of the ridge, but reached the Point du Jour line only in part.

South of the river VI Corps took Tilloy, crossed Observation Ridge and descended into Battery Valley, where German batteries fired on the infantry over open sights at a range of a few hundred metres before their crews fell or fled. Only the 15th (Scottish) Division, however, reached the Brown Line, at about 5.30 p.m., with the help of the only tank that got there. The neighbouring divisions were stopped by machine-gun fire from Feuchy Chapel. In VII Corps the 56th (London) and 14th Divisions went through the defences of Neuville-Vitasse and Telegraph Hill, advancing 2–3 km, but the two divisions on the right flank were held up in front of the uncut wire of the Hindenburg Line.

In the evening the Third Army reported the capture of 5,600 prisoners and 36 guns, while its own losses were, as the official history says, certainly less than half of the German ones. The cavalry waited for orders near Arras, but south of the river, where it was to go forward, the Brown Line fell too late. Officers of the 4th and 9th Divisions were convinced that individual squadrons could have got through on the northern bank that day. Brigadier-General Adrian Carton de Wiart told a cavalry liaison officer that “tomorrow will be too late”. The British official history judges that the success was decided above all by superior artillery and better ammunition, and by the mistakes of the German defence. The tanks, split into too many small groups, mostly got stuck in the mud or were hit.

Course: 10–11 April

On 10 April Allenby ordered the rest of the Brown Line to be taken and an advance to the Green Line, but the weather was even worse and the artillery could not keep up on the churned-up roads. The Londoners of the 56th Division spent the whole night and the whole day clearing the trenches of the Hindenburg Line with grenades. South of the Scarpe the British took the redoubt at Feuchy Chapel and most of the remaining stretch of the Wancourt – Feuchy line, and the 37th Division set off towards Monchy, but was stopped by fire from the village and from Greenland Hill across the river. Two cavalry divisions came up to the Wancourt – Feuchy line but could go no further, and in the evening returned to their bivouacs. Meanwhile the first German reserve divisions were already arriving.

On 11 April Allenby sent out a message that the Third Army was “pursuing a defeated enemy” and must take risks. At five in the morning the 37th Division, helped by four tanks and units of the 15th Division, attacked Monchy-le-Preux and after heavy fighting broke into the village. All the tanks were knocked out. Behind the infantry galloped squadrons of the 8th Cavalry Brigade, the Essex Yeomanry and the 10th Hussars, which burst into the market square. The German artillery deluged the village with fire so heavy that, according to the official history, few of the observers had ever seen anything like it. A great many horses were killed, and the brigade commander, Brigadier-General Charles Bulkeley-Johnson, was killed. By then, however, there were only a few handfuls of exhausted infantry in the village, so it was the cavalrymen, fighting dismounted, who held Monchy until reinforcements arrived. The official history counts the capture of the village among the most outstanding achievements of the whole battle. Elsewhere the attacks failed: at Guémappe, in front of Wancourt, at Rœux on the Scarpe and on part of the Hindenburg Line. On the same day the neighbouring Fifth Army attacked the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt without success.

Course: 12–14 April

By 11 April the Third Army had lost 8,238 killed, wounded and missing, and by 12 April its corps had taken 7,587 prisoners and more than 100 guns. Most of the first-wave divisions, however, were exhausted, while the Germans had brought new divisions into the battle, brought up artillery and were preparing the Drocourt – Quéant Switch for defence. Allenby decided that the time had come for methodical attacks and for “substituting shells for infantry”. On 12 April the Germans abandoned Wancourt and Héninel, but the 9th Division’s attack on Rœux and the railway station in front of the chemical works collapsed with heavy losses. On 13 April an attack on Guémappe ended in failure.

On 14 April, the first fine day of the battle, the 29th Division attacked from Monchy towards Hill 100 (Infantry Hill) to the east. Two battalions, the 1st Royal Newfoundland and the 1st Essex, took the slope, but a Bavarian division struck them from the nearby woods and almost wiped them out. The two battalions together lost more than a thousand men. For several hours Monchy was defended only by a handful of soldiers with the commander of the Newfoundlanders, Lieutenant-Colonel James Forbes-Robertson. The Germans did not seize the chance, and by evening the situation was back to what it had been in the morning. The next day three divisional commanders put in a protest against further isolated attacks, and Haig decided to halt the offensive and prepare a new, coordinated blow by three armies.

German defence

The British official history considers that the German defence “fell between two stools”. The new principles of defence in depth, issued by the Supreme Army Command at the end of 1916, called for a lightly held forward zone and a rapid counter-attack by reserve divisions. At Arras, however, the front lines were densely manned and ordered to hold at all costs, while the counter-attack divisions stood a day’s march to the rear. As a result each front-line division lost about a third of its infantry, and the reserves came into action only on 10 and 11 April. A German commission investigating the causes of the defeat later concluded that the artillery, too, had been brought into action too late and in too little strength. The Supreme Army Command quickly drew its conclusions. Colonel Fritz von Loßberg, an advocate of elastic defence, became chief of staff of the Sixth Army, and at the end of April Falkenhausen himself was removed. As early as 14 April at Monchy the Bavarians fell back before the attack and smashed the enemy with a counter-attack from three sides. The official history regards this as the first use at Arras of the new tactics, which in the following weeks cost the British very dearly.

Significance

The First Battle of the Scarpe gained the British Army more ground, strongly fortified ground at that, and more prisoners than any of its earlier offensives on the Western Front. The official history compares its first three days with the first day of the Battle of the Somme: with the same number of divisions in the front line, the losses of the Third and First Armies were more than four times smaller. The battle showed how much the artillery, staff preparation and infantry training had improved. It also showed what happens when an attack goes beyond the reach of carefully planned fire: the command could not move reserves and guns forward quickly, the infantry lost its way in open fighting, and the cavalry found no gap. After a few days the battle took on, as Falls writes, a “painfully familiar” appearance. Because Haig was bound to support Nivelle’s offensive, whose start had been set for 16 April, he could not end the attack at Arras. The pause lasted only a few days.