End of the Battle of Morval

On 28 September 1916 the Battle of Morval, the third September attack by the British Fourth Army on the Somme, came to an end. In four days the British and French had taken the villages of Morval, Lesbœufs, Gueudecourt and Combles, the last German strongpoints on the main ridge above the Somme. The last day brought no more major infantry fighting. The cloudy day with passing showers was spent in an artillery duel and in reliefs on the front, as the British were handing part of their sector over to the French.

The greatest success of the battle came on its first day, when Morval and Lesbœufs fell within three hours. On 26 September the Germans abandoned Combles, and Gueudecourt was taken after an action in which a tank, an aircraft, artillery and infantry forced about 370 defenders of a trench in front of the village to surrender. The last attack was made by XV Corps on the afternoon of 27 September against the remaining German trenches north-west of Gueudecourt. The Liverpool Irish battalion of the 55th Division took its objective with light losses, and the New Zealand battalions from Canterbury and Auckland advanced despite uncut wire. Three companies of the Otago battalion, however, were almost destroyed by artillery and machine-gun fire on an open slope, and the Germans held the trench junctions that had sheltered them.

On 28 September it was intended to finish the job in the morning, but the attack was called off because the tank did not arrive and the New Zealand Wellington battalion, moving up to its positions, came under heavy fire. Reconnaissance showed that the junctions lay in a hollow and could not be held as long as the Germans sat on the higher ground behind them. On the army’s left flank a company of the 70th Brigade attacked the buildings of Destremont Farm by the Bapaume road, but at close range it was met by machine-gun fire and a hail of grenades. The British artillery, on the other hand, now had excellent observation from the newly won heights and shelled German working parties, communication trenches and roads in the rear. German batteries replied with fire on the ruins of Morval, Lesbœufs and Gueudecourt.

On the night of 27–28 September XIV Corps began handing over the right-hand sector of the front, including Morval, to the French. This had been agreed on 26 September by Generals Henry Rawlinson and Émile Fayolle, because the French Sixth Army needed room to outflank the Saint-Pierre-Vaast wood from the west and strike at Sailly-Saillisel. The British official history praises this complicated relief for having gone off in complete harmony and almost without interference from the German artillery. It was completed on the morning of 29 September. After unsuccessful attempts to advance on 26 and 27 September, General Fayolle concluded that he could not get any further without careful artillery preparation.

The official history summed up that the attack of 25 September had been the Fourth Army’s most successful operation since 14 July, but after the first day the army, with no fresh divisions and with tired troops, could only keep contact with the enemy. The Germans were badly shaken but managed to withdraw their artillery almost intact, and the British captured only two field guns. Ahead of them, on the lower ridges towards Le Transloy and Le Sars, the Germans were already digging new lines of defence, and the German command sent further divisions to the Somme. At the same time, on the western flank, the Reserve Army was fighting hard for Thiepval Ridge. On 1 October the Fourth Army was to begin a new attack, which in rain and mud turned into the gruelling fighting for the Transloy Ridges.