British take Lens

On 3 October 1918 units of the British First Army found that the Germans had abandoned Lens, the mining town in the Pas-de-Calais department that they had taken in October 1914. For four years it had lain just behind the German front line, an important supply centre of the German army and a target of constant shelling. The British entered it without a fight, because the Germans had withdrawn during the night to new positions further east.

The British chronology of the war places the capture of Lens under 3 September 1918, but that is a month out. At the beginning of September, after the withdrawal from the Lys salient, the British merely drew closer to the town, and as late as 13 September British GHQ intelligence reported that the Germans were defending in depth around Lens and expecting an attack. According to the British official history (James Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. V), the town was empty only on 3 October. French sources often give 4 October as the date of liberation.

Lens had hard years behind it. In 1915 the Battle of Loos was fought north-west of the town, and in August 1917 the Canadians took Hill 70 above the town and tried in vain to break into its ruins. At the beginning of 1917 the Germans removed the civilian population from Lens, and the mines and houses were turned into fortified strongpoints with deep cellars. The town lay in a salient of the German front, surrounded by the British on three sides.

The withdrawal was forced by German defeats further south and north. On 2 September the Canadians broke through the Drocourt–Quéant Line near Arras, and at the end of September the Allies attacked the Hindenburg Line and in Flanders. The British official history writes that the loss of the Hindenburg Line on the front of the British Third and Fourth Armies forced the Germans to withdraw between Lens and Armentières as well. During the night of 1–2 October the German 6th Army abandoned Armentières and began to fall back on a front of about 27 kilometres, from Armentières to Lens.

On 2 October, as soon as the withdrawal was discovered, two brigades of the British 58th (London) Division of VIII Corps advanced together with the right wing of the neighbouring British Fifth Army and found the German front line empty. The division’s third brigade, facing Lens itself, was ordered not to enter the town, because it had recently been drenched with gas shells. By evening the Londoners, after a short fight, had taken the miners’ estate of Cité Saint-Auguste and reached the deep cutting of the railway from Lens to Pont-à-Vendin, and after midnight they went on until they ran into fire from a German switch line near Annay. On 3 October Lens was empty. South of it the 20th Division closed up to Méricourt.

Only ruins remained of the town. Before leaving, the Germans had flooded and destroyed the mines, which were the basis of life in Lens and one of the most important sources of coal in France, and the streets and rubble were full of unexploded shells. According to French sources, on 5 October the reporter Albert Londres headlined his report from the town on the front page of Le Petit Journal simply: “There is nothing left – this is Lens”. The inhabitants began to return as early as the end of 1918, but the rebuilding of the town and the mines took many years.