Canadians capture Arleux

At 4.25 a.m. on 28 April 1917 the British and Canadians once again went into the attack near Arras. Six divisions attacked on a front about 10 km long, from Monchy-le-Preux on the Scarpe to the village of Arleux-en-Gohelle at the foot of Vimy Ridge. Almost everywhere the attack broke down. The exception was the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Canadian Division, which in less than two hours went through the German loop of trenches, took the ruins of Arleux and held them against counter-attacks. The British official history called this “the only tangible success of the whole operation”.

An attack for the sake of an ally

From the outset the Battle of Arras had been a subsidiary attack. It was meant to draw in German reserves before the main French offensive on the Aisne, and Douglas Haig would never have undertaken it on his own. Meanwhile General Robert Nivelle’s offensive, launched on 16 April, had failed, and its fate was being weighed in Paris. On 26 April the war minister Paul Painlevé spoke to Haig of the situation on the Aisne as a defeat. The British commander-in-chief feared that the French would break off operations just when the British had exhausted themselves in fighting conducted chiefly for their sake, and asked that the French minister be warned that this would be regarded as a breach of faith. In his report after the battle Haig wrote that he had continued the attack at Arras only in order to help Nivelle until the results of the French offensive became clear.

So the decision was taken to make a subsidiary attack on 28 April, ahead of the great three-army attack planned for the beginning of May. General Henry Horne’s First Army was to take the villages of Oppy and Arleux, which it had failed to do on 23 April, and General Edmund Allenby’s Third Army was to try once more for Rœux and Greenland Hill. The British divisions, in action for three weeks, were, however, greatly weakened. According to the British official history the battalions of the 37th Division went into the attack little more than 200 strong, while in the 34th Division recruits predominated who had had at most three months’ training before reaching the front. On the same day, according to the Canadian official history, General Otto von Below took command of the German Sixth Army, although other sources say this happened as early as 23 April.

The Arleux Loop

North of Gavrelle the Germans still held their old third position. In front of the village of Arleux it formed a large loop, which the British called the Arleux Loop and the Germans “the Nose”. Behind it, in front of the village of Fresnoy-en-Gohelle, ran the next line of defence. The loop was held by battalions of the 73rd Fusilier Regiment and the 76th Infantry Regiment of the German 111th Division. The Canadians, who had taken Vimy Ridge on 9 April, knew the task would not be easy. On 27 April patrols reported that the wire was only partly cut, that the defenders had an unusually large number of machine guns and that they were digging a new line behind the loop. It was also known from recent fighting that the Germans counter-attacked in strength soon after the attackers reached their objective. The artillery therefore prepared barrages against such counter-attacks, the 1st Brigade in reserve reconnoitred covered approaches, and the airmen of No. 16 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, were to watch for Germans assembling.

The assault

The attack was made by three battalions of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Canadian Division, all from western Canada: on the right the 8th Battalion (the 90th Rifles from Winnipeg), in the centre the 10th Battalion, and on the left the 5th Battalion (Western Cavalry). The left flank was to be covered by the 25th Battalion (Nova Scotia Rifles) of the 2nd Canadian Division. They moved off at 4.25 a.m. on a front about 2.4 km wide.

The 8th Battalion, advancing over a slight rise straight at the village, came under heavy machine-gun fire from Arleux and from a copse south of it. The centre company was held up in front of the wire and lost all its officers, but the flank companies reached their objective on time. After several further attempts the centre company, reinforced by men from the battalion reserve and a company of the 7th Battalion, cleared the southern part of the village and took about a hundred Germans prisoner. The 10th Battalion was stopped at first by two machine guns hidden by the wire. Their crews were wiped out with bombs from the flank, and the next nest was silenced with rifle grenades. The battalion went through the ruins of the village and less than two hours after the attack began, only three minutes behind time, stood on its objective. Coming out of the ruins, the Canadians saw Germans withdrawing in such good order that in the half-light they at first took them for British troops.

It was hardest on the left. The 5th Battalion took a German trench and the ground north of the village, but its left company was held up by uncut wire, and only the support company, clearing the trench with bombs, opened the way for it. Meanwhile the 25th Battalion, which had also run into uncut wire, mistook a sunken road only about 270 metres from its start line for its objective, which lay more than half a kilometre further on, and halted. The exposed left company of the 5th Battalion, enfiladed by two machine guns, had to fall back to the captured trench. Otherwise, by about six in the morning the 2nd Brigade had reached all its objectives.

During the day the Canadians consolidated the ground won, and companies from the support battalions came up to the front line. German movements were clearly visible to the artillery observers, and two attempted counter-attacks were broken up by gun and rifle fire. The commander of the German 111th Division then decided that the projecting loop was not worth further casualties, since he still held the line in front of Fresnoy, and called off further counter-attacks. The forward battalion of the 73rd Fusilier Regiment alone had 400 missing.

Failures along the rest of the front

On the other sectors the day ended badly. At Rœux the 34th Division broke into the village, and some of its men got as far as the ridge in front of Plouvain, but there they were surrounded and taken prisoner, and at eight in the morning a counter-attack drove the division back to its start line. A party of the 37th Division pushed almost 1.6 km beyond its objective, to trenches in front of Fresnes, where it saw the Germans bringing up teams to save their guns, but no one at headquarters knew how far it had got, and after a few hours it was surrounded. At Gavrelle two battalions of the Royal Marines of the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division took the windmill on the rise beyond the village, but one of them was almost completely destroyed, and at dusk the other fell back almost to its start line, leaving only a handful of defenders at the windmill. The 2nd Division broke into the wood in front of Oppy, but the Germans struck its exposed flank and by evening it was back on its start line. Its left flank, however, held on by the Oppy–Arleux road, covering the Canadians from the south.

What came next

The next day, 29 April, the British renewed their attacks at Oppy and Rœux, achieving little. In the afternoon the 25th Battalion and the left flank of the 5th Battalion, after an artillery preparation, at last occupied the line set for them, and the Canadians stood about 350 metres from the German position in front of Fresnoy. According to the Canadian official history their losses approached 1,000 men (other accounts give 1,255), and they took about 450 prisoners (the British official history gives 372). It was a local success, but, as the British official history admits, in this phase of the battle even local successes were hard to achieve, and it must be counted “a fine feat of arms”. The captured salient served the Canadians as the base for their next attack, which went in against Fresnoy on 3 May.