British retake Albert

On 22 August 1918, the second day of the Battle of Albert, the left wing of the British Fourth Army of General Henry Rawlinson went into the attack. The day before, the Third Army had struck north of the Ancre, but its right wing could not cross the flooded river valley as long as the Germans held the town of Albert and the ridge between the Ancre and the Somme. The task was given to III Corps, commanded in place of the sick General Butler by General Alexander Godley. At 4.45 a.m., without a preliminary bombardment, behind a creeping barrage mixed with smoke shells, the 47th (London) and 12th (Eastern) Divisions moved off, covered on the right by the Australian 3rd Division near Bray-sur-Somme and on the left by the 18th (Eastern) Division of General Richard Lee, which was to retake Albert itself.

The town had been in German hands since 26 March, when during Operation Michael the British had given up its ruins without a fight. Here the Ancre was about 4 metres wide and 2 metres deep, and its marshy banks were churned up by shells. During the night patrols of the 54th Brigade crossed to the far bank despite constant fire, and sappers threw light bridges across. By 4.45 a.m. sixteen footbridges led over the river south of the town. The 6th Northamptonshire and 11th Royal Fusiliers battalions crossed them almost without loss and advanced on the heights east of Albert, outflanking the town from the south-east. At 5.45 a.m. the 8th East Surrey battalion of the 55th Brigade began clearing the eastern, strongly held part of the ruins. In the fog it surprised many German posts, and after 9 a.m. it was already on its assigned line beyond the town. According to the British official history, by 10 a.m. there were hardly any Germans left in Albert. The attack went more easily than expected, because the German 233rd Division defending the town had been in the line since 6 July, and the 13th Division supporting it had been badly mauled at Amiens.

On the ridge south of the town the 12th Division took the village of Méaulte, helped by fifty drums of burning oil which sappers fired from projectors onto the German trench in front of the village, and by 8.30 a.m. its brigades stood on their objective. The 47th Division, made up largely of young, poorly trained soldiers, lost its way in the fog and smoke and halted far short of its objective, and its second brigade lost the barrage. Two squadrons of the Northumberland Hussars, which were to exploit success, rode into the valley the British called Happy Valley straight into the fire of German machine guns, and the first of them dwindled to twenty-odd men. The Australians reached their objective north of Bray at about 8.15 a.m. When the fog lifted the day turned hot, the soldiers ran short of water, and German gunners fired over open sights from the higher hills. In the afternoon the fresh German 25th Division counter-attacked at the junction of the 47th and 12th Divisions and pushed back part of the Londoners’ line, but it was stopped by British and Australian reserves and withdrew during the night, losing many men.

According to the despatches of Douglas Haig, the Fourth Army took more than 2,400 prisoners and several guns that day. The German salient between the Somme and the Ancre ceased to exist, and the Fourth Army’s front moved far east of the Bray–Albert road. The way to further attacks, however, was still closed by the Tara and Usna hills east of the town, from which the Germans fired on every movement out of Albert. The commanders of the 18th Division and the neighbouring 38th (Welsh) Division of the Third Army agreed to attack them together the next morning, and the Welsh were to use the crossings through the retaken town instead of wading through the Ancre marshes.

The retaken town was utterly destroyed. Of the neo-Byzantine basilica of Notre-Dame de Brebières, whose tower with its gilded statue of the Virgin was known to the whole British army, only ruins were left. The “Leaning Virgin”, which since 1915 had hung almost horizontally over the street, had fallen according to most sources as early as 16 April 1918, when the basilica was shelled by British artillery so that the Germans could not use the tower for observation. The basilica was rebuilt to the old plans only in 1927–1931.