End of the Battle of the Ancre

On 18 November 1916 the British Fifth Army of General Hubert Gough made the last attack of the Battle of the Ancre. Five days earlier its divisions had taken Beaumont-Hamel and Saint-Pierre-Divion, and on 14 November the village of Beaucourt, but further attacks on the trenches on Redan Ridge in front of Serre had failed. Gough therefore gave up on Serre. The main objective now was an attack by II Corps on the south bank of the Ancre towards the village of Grandcourt, while on the north bank V Corps was to cover its flank and take Munich and Frankfort Trenches. On 17 November airmen reported that the Germans had abandoned some of their trenches, and Gough widened the objectives at the last moment, against the objections of the commander of II Corps, General Claud Jacob. During the night patrols found that the trenches were in fact occupied.

In the night of 17–18 November the first snow of the winter fell. At 6.10 a.m. the infantry set off in a blizzard that later turned to rain. The British official history writes that it is hard to imagine worse conditions for fighting. The soldiers, dark figures visible against the white background only at close range, floundered through half-frozen mud that soon softened into a chalky slime. They lost direction and lost the barrage, and objectives covered with snow were hard to recognise. The airmen could see nothing, so the artillery fired according to plan, regardless of what was happening to the infantry.

The most was achieved by the 4th Canadian Division, which had been fighting for Regina Trench since October and was the only Canadian division to remain on the Somme to the end. Its 11th Brigade took, in the snowstorm, most of the new German Desire and Desire Support Trenches on the slope beyond Regina Trench, and a German detachment that came out to counter-attack threw down its weapons and surrendered. Canadian patrols even reached Grandcourt Trench, where they found few Germans. On the right flank, however, by the road to Pys, machine-gun fire from both sides forced companies of two battalions to fall back. The division took more than 600 prisoners and lost 1,250 men. Alongside, battalions of the 18th Division took part of Desire Trench, and from the 19th Division a Gloucestershire battalion broke into the south-western part of Grandcourt, while a South Lancashire battalion reached the western edge of the village. Another battalion lost its way in the snowstorm, pushed deep into the German lines and was surrounded. Only about 70 of its men got back to their own lines.

On the north bank the 37th Division took Puisieux Trench as far as the river, but the 32nd Division’s attack on Munich and Frankfort Trenches in front of Serre collapsed. Small groups of men who had got through both trenches, and even reached Serre, were cut off and destroyed. Several dozen men of the Highland Light Infantry and Border Regiment battalions, most of them wounded, took shelter in a dugout in Frankfort Trench and held out there for several more days before they were taken prisoner. By 24 November the 32nd Division had lost more than 2,500 men, most of them missing.

On 19 November a cold rain fell. None of Gough’s corps was capable of further attacks, and the British gave up Grandcourt and Puisieux Trench, which were overlooked by German positions, during the night. So ended the Battle of the Ancre, and with it the Battle of the Somme. Between 11 and 24 November the Fifth Army lost more than 23,000 men and took more than 7,000 prisoners. It had captured Beaumont-Hamel and Beaucourt, objectives of 1 July, but Serre remained in German hands. The British entered it only in February 1917, when the Germans began to withdraw from that sector of the front.