Second Battle of Noyon

The Second Battle of Noyon was the French part of the great Allied offensive which began on 8 August 1918 at Amiens. When the attack of the British and the French First Army on the Somme stalled on the old trenches near Roye and Chaulnes, Marshal Ferdinand Foch decided to extend it to the flanks. In the south the task went to two French armies: the 10th Army of General Charles Mangin, standing between the Oise and the Aisne, and the 3rd Army of General Georges Humbert, facing the Lassigny massif and Noyon. After several days of preparatory attacks, on 20 August Mangin struck with twelve divisions on a front of about 20 kilometres, from near Soissons to the Oise, and broke the German position. Over the next three days his troops reached the Oise and the river Ailette, and Humbert’s army took the Lassigny massif. Erich Ludendorff called 20 August “another black day” of the German army. Threatened with envelopment from the south, the Germans withdrew behind the canal and the Somme in the last days of August, and on 29 August the French entered the ruins of Noyon.

Name and dates

The name comes from the French tradition. The French official history counts this fighting as part of the Third Battle of Picardy, which it dates from 8 to 29 August 1918, and calls the operations of Mangin’s and Humbert’s armies the Second Battle of Noyon, to distinguish them from the March battle in which the Germans took the town. French literature also uses the names Battle of the Oise and the Ailette, or simply Battle of the Ailette (bataille de l’Ailette), and the regiments which distinguished themselves in it bear the inscription “L’Aisne – L’Ailette 1918” on their colours. The Americans count it, together with the fighting of the following weeks, as part of the Oise–Aisne Offensive, which they date from 18 August. The British Battles Nomenclature Committee did not list it separately, because no British troops fought in it, but a British chronology of the 1920s gives the same dates: the start of the Second Battle of Noyon on 17 August, the end and the recapture of the town on 29 August. The Germans divided the fighting of their 18th Army in this period differently, into the battle on the Canal du Nord near Nesle and Noyon and the fighting on the heights near Noyon from 29 August.

The starting date is set by the 10th Army’s first preparatory attacks on 17 August, the closing one by the capture of Noyon. Some studies end the fighting on the Ailette as early as 23 August, when Mangin reached the river, and some local French sources date the liberation of Noyon to 30 August. We give the course of events and the figures after the British official history (James Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. IV, 1947), which in separate notes summarises the French official history day by day, after the memoirs of Foch and Ludendorff, and, for the Americans, after the 1938 guide of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Background

Between the Oise and the Aisne, north-west of Soissons, the front in August 1918 ran through country well known to the French. From the autumn of 1914 to March 1917 the old trench line had run here, through Tracy-le-Val and Nouvron-Vingré, until the Germans abandoned it when they fell back to the Hindenburg Line. In the spring of 1918 they came back. During Operation Michael they took Noyon, and in June, during the Battle of the Matz, they reached the Oise near Ribécourt. The Carlepont and Ourscamp forests south of Noyon were also in their hands. The country was hilly and wooded, cut by ravines and caves in which the German infantry could sit out a bombardment.

After the Second Battle of the Marne the Germans fell back behind the Vesle and the Aisne at the beginning of August, and Mangin’s 10th Army, which on 18 July had launched the counter-offensive from near Villers-Cotterêts, came to face north, between Soissons and the Oise. Opposite it stood the German 9th Army of General Johannes von Eben, and opposite Humbert’s 3rd Army the 18th Army of General Oskar von Hutier. From 12 August both, together with the 2nd Army on the Somme, were subordinated to a new army group under General Max von Boehn.

On 8 August the British and General Debeney’s French First Army broke the front at Amiens, and on 10 August Humbert’s army joined the attack. After a few days progress stopped. The Germans manned the old 1916 trenches between Roye and Chaulnes and brought up reserves, and the 3rd Army’s attempts to attack on 12 and 13 August achieved little. Foch wanted to keep striking without a pause, but where resistance was weakest. In mid-August, returning Debeney’s army to the command of General Philippe Pétain, he wrote to him to combine the operations of the 1st, 3rd and 10th Armies in order to “free the Lassigny – Noyon – Carlepont forest area” and prepare the later freeing of the Roye – Chauny – Soissons area. Pétain announced that the 3rd Army would attack on 16 August and the 10th Army on 17 August, “if the tanks arrive in time, without which starting the attack would be very difficult”. In the end Foch fixed the resumption of the whole Allied offensive, from the Aisne to the Scarpe, for 20 August at the latest.

Course

17–19 August. Mangin began with preparatory attacks. He noticed that the Germans had placed advanced detachments in front of their main position, and decided to push them back before striking with his full strength. On the morning of 17 August VII and XXX Corps, in the centre of the army, had by 8 a.m. taken the heights around Autrêches, which were to be the jumping-off base for the main attack. On 18 August, at 6 p.m. according to French studies, the 10th Army attacked on a front of about 10 kilometres and advanced roughly 2 kilometres, and on 19 August it continued the attack. According to Foch, the attacks of these days gave it the heights between Tracy-le-Val and Morsain and allowed part of the artillery to be moved forward. French studies state that they cost relatively little and brought in 2,000 to 3,000 prisoners. Ludendorff later admitted that the German advanced detachments had held out longer than they should have, and that their losses weakened several divisions more than he had assumed. In the same days Humbert’s 3rd Army, on the left wing, made only slight progress.

20 August. Mangin struck the main German position with twelve divisions, only two of which had been rested, on a front of about 20 kilometres from near Soissons to the Oise. His troops, supported by strong artillery and tanks, advanced on average more than 3 kilometres, and further in places. They took the Nouvron plateau and drove the Germans back towards the wooded heights of Mont de Choisy and the Carlepont forests. On the right wing, north-west of Soissons, the village of Tartiers fell, in the centre the French climbed onto the Audignicourt plateau, and on the left wing they took Nampcel and, in the evening, Mont de Choisy above the road to Noyon. Ludendorff described how the counter-attack divisions prepared near Cuts never came into action at all, while the French drove a deep wedge into the German line, making the position of the troops with the Oise at their backs “extremely uncomfortable”. Towards Nouvron the Germans still managed to partly throw back the attackers with a counter-attack by a Jäger division. “In some places the troops could no longer stand the powerful artillery barrages and the tank attacks,” Ludendorff wrote. “Again we suffered heavy and irreplaceable losses. 20 August was another black day.” French studies state that in these days the 10th Army took about 8,000 prisoners and about a hundred guns.

That evening Foch wrote to Douglas Haig that the enemy was shaken everywhere and that the blows had to be repeated without loss of time, and at 11 p.m. Pétain ordered the French 5th and 6th Armies on the Vesle to prepare for pursuit at the first signs of a German retreat. The next day, 21 August, General Byng’s British Third Army went forward north of the Somme.

21–23 August. The German Supreme Army Command decided that holding the line in front of the Oise and the Ailette made no sense. During the night of 21/22 August the right wing of the 9th Army crossed behind the Oise, and during the night of 22/23 August its centre fell back behind the Ailette. The Germans, however, stubbornly held the plateaus north of Soissons. On 21 August the 10th Army advanced on average nearly 5 kilometres, and almost 8 in places. Its XVIII Corps reached the Oise on the left wing, and French units took Carlepont and the forests by the river. Cuts changed hands, and Blérancourt fell after heavy fighting. Over I and XXX Corps, on the right wing, the German artillery still held sway, however, and prevented them from taking the plateaus north of Soissons. The 3rd Army followed the movement of the 10th. On 21 and 22 August its units climbed onto the Lassigny massif, took the small town and reached the little river Divette, which flows between Lassigny and Noyon into the Oise. On 22 August the French stood on the Oise as far as Quierzy, and on 23 August, after taking Quierzy and Manicamp, the 10th Army reached the Ailette near Guny. Foch considered that the first task of both armies, clearing the area of Lassigny, Noyon and the Carlepont forest, had been accomplished in three days. The same day part of the 3rd Army’s XV Corps crossed the Divette and dug in on its northern bank. A new attack by the 10th Army on its right wing, between Soissons and Pont-Saint-Mard, brought, according to the French official history, only “insignificant gains”.

24–28 August. For several days Mangin fought for the plateaus north of Soissons, between the Ailette and the Aisne, winning ground bit by bit under heavy fire. The French command, regarding this attack as a matter of first importance, kept reinforcing his army. On 23 August it was given the American 32nd Division, which had come from the Vesle. The 3rd Army meanwhile stood still and prepared for the pursuit. On 26 August, under the impression of setbacks along the whole front from the Scarpe to the Oise, the German command ordered the 18th and 2nd Armies to fall back to a shorter line, running from Noyon along the eastern bank of the Canal du Nord to Nesle, and then along the Somme. In this way the Germans gave up Roye and Chaulnes. On 27 August Debeney’s French First Army took Roye, and General Émile Fayolle, commander of the Reserve Army Group, ordered the 1st and 3rd Armies to follow the Germans “without giving them respite”, while avoiding unnecessary losses. The 3rd Army was to outflank the heights above the Divette from the north and advance on Guiscard, and XV Corps was to move down the Oise valley towards Noyon. On 27 August it did not yet move, but on 28 August it advanced considerably, and its XV and XXXIV Corps enveloped Noyon from the south and north-west. The same day the American 32nd Division entered the line about one and a half kilometres west of Juvigny and immediately began to attack.

29 August. Humbert ordered the attack resumed at 5 a.m., after a short artillery preparation. XV Corps, together with the French 38th Division from the left wing of the 10th Army, was to outflank Noyon rather than attack it frontally, and XXXIV Corps was to advance as fast as possible on Guiscard to cut off the Germans if they lingered in the town. The French met strong resistance and advanced slowly, but Noyon fell. The 10th Army attacked at 9.15 a.m. with three corps north of Soissons. The Germans brought up reinforcements, and the fire of their machine guns and anti-tank guns inflicted heavy losses on the attackers. By evening the gains were small, although the army’s left wing helped the 3rd Army at Noyon. That day the French considered the Third Battle of Picardy, and with it the Second Battle of Noyon, ended. The fighting went on. On 30 August the Americans of the 32nd Division took Juvigny, and the 3rd Army occupied the Mont-Saint-Siméon hill, which dominates Noyon.

Losses

There is no separate tally of losses for the Second Battle of Noyon. The French official history, quoted by the British one, gives the combined losses of the 1st, 3rd and 10th Armies from 8 to 29 August: 9,533 killed, 68,435 wounded and 7,428 missing, including over 2,100 officers, in all over 85,000 men. In the same period these three armies took prisoner 633 officers and 30,820 men and captured 890 guns. These figures, however, also cover the fighting near Montdidier and Roye. The American 32nd Division lost over 2,600 killed and wounded at Juvigny from 28 August to 1 September. The losses of the German 9th and 18th Armies were not given separately, but Ludendorff wrote of “irreplaceable” losses, and British intelligence reckoned that of the 18th Army’s 18 divisions only two were really rested in mid-August.

Significance

Mangin’s attack was the first step in extending the offensive begun at Amiens to the whole front from the Aisne to the Scarpe. Instead of forcing the old German position near Roye, Foch struck beside it, and the breakthrough of 20 August between the Oise and the Aisne threatened the whole German front on the Somme from the south. Together with the British attacks near Albert and Arras, this forced the Germans into another major retreat, from a line which Ludendorff, as his German critics charged, had wanted to defend “for every metre”. Noyon, taken by the Germans five months earlier, returned to France, but it was in ruins.

The battle did not, however, bring a breakthrough on the plateaus north of Soissons. The 10th Army went on attacking there with losses for several more days, and Ludendorff expected that its further advance between the Oise and the Aisne towards Laon would force the Germans to abandon their position on the Vesle. And so it happened: during the night of 3/4 September the Germans fell back from the Vesle to the Aisne, and in the first half of September the French armies reached the Hindenburg Line near Saint-Quentin and on the roads to Laon.