British attack Aubers Ridge

On 9 May 1915, on a sunny Sunday morning, General Douglas Haig’s British First Army attacked the German positions in front of the Aubers ridge in French Flanders. The attack was meant to support the great French offensive that began the same day a few dozen kilometres to the south, in Artois. The British hoped to repeat the success of the first day of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March. It ended as one of the bloodiest defeats of the British army in 1915: by the evening the First Army had lost more than 11,000 killed, wounded and missing and had not held a single metre of German trench.

Forty minutes of bombardment

Haig planned two attacks that were to meet on the ridge. South of Neuve Chapelle, along the road known as the Rue du Bois, the British 1st Division and the Indian Meerut Division attacked. North of the village, on the road to Fromelles, the 8th Division struck. At 5 a.m. some six hundred British guns opened fire. The bombardment was to last only 40 minutes, because the British wanted to surprise the enemy and, besides, they lacked heavy guns and high-explosive shells. Many shells were defective, and worn barrels caused some of them to fall short, even on the British trenches.

The Germans, meanwhile, had made use of the two months since the March battle. Instead of shallow trenches they had built thick sandbag breastworks, widened the wire and placed machine-gun posts every few dozen feet, firing just above the ground. The short bombardment barely touched them. The defenders, forewarned by the preparations, were waiting at the ready.

Rue du Bois

At 5.30 a.m. the first waves of infantry left their trenches to get closer to the German line and at once came under fire. At 5.40 the artillery lifted its fire deeper, and the soldiers went in to the assault. On the 1st Division’s front only a handful of men from the Northamptonshire Regiment and the Royal Munster Fusiliers got through the wire into the German trench. None of them came back. The rest lay down in no man’s land, in front of the uncut wire. Indians, Gurkhas and Scottish Highlanders of the Dehra Dun Brigade got at most halfway across no man’s land. A second attack, after an additional bombardment, ended the same way. At about 7.20 a.m. the commander of the 1st Division reported that the attack had stalled.

Haig already knew that the French in Artois were advancing, and he did not want to break off operations that were meant to tie down German reserves. He ordered the attack to be renewed. At about 4 p.m. the battalions of the Black Watch and the Cameron Highlanders and the Indian Bareilly Brigade went in. The leading companies of the Black Watch broke into the German trenches but were surrounded and almost entirely wiped out. The Bareilly Brigade lost more than a thousand men within a few minutes. Two soldiers of the Black Watch, Corporal John Ripley and Lance-Corporal David Finlay, received the Victoria Cross for that day.

At Fromelles

In the north the attack began better. At 5.40 a.m. sappers fired two mines under the German line, and soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade, the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles and the Territorial Kensington battalion of the London Regiment broke into the German trenches at several points. They were, however, cut off. Anyone who tried to cross no man’s land with reinforcements or ammunition fell to machine-gun fire. In the confusion in the British trenches the commander of the 25th Brigade, General Arthur Lowry Cole, was mortally wounded when he stood on the parapet to stop soldiers falling back. The afternoon attack could not come to their aid. The Germans counter-attacked all day, and during the night the last survivors returned to their starting lines.

The day’s toll

According to the British official history, on 9 May the First Army lost 458 officers and 11,161 other ranks. German losses were many times smaller. The defenders managed without reserves, and the German command was able that same night to send two divisions from this sector against the French. On the morning of 10 May Haig called off further attacks, because there was ammunition for at most one more attack. The shortage of shells revealed by this battle reached the newspapers a few days later and became a political issue in Britain.