End of the Battle of the Ancre Heights

On the night of 10–11 November 1916 the 4th Canadian Division took the last German stretch of Regina Trench on the Somme, about a kilometre of trench east of the road from Courcelette to Pys. With this attack, according to British nomenclature, the Battle of the Ancre Heights came to an end, which the Reserve Army, called the Fifth Army from the end of October, had begun on 1 October with an unsuccessful Canadian attack on the same trench. The western part of Regina Trench and the neighbouring Stuff Trench had already been taken by the British and Canadians on 21 October. The eastern stretch held out longer. On 25 October a lone attack by the 44th Battalion broke down in mud and machine-gun fire, and then downpours halted all larger operations for two weeks.

This time the Canadians did not attack blindly. The command decided that the attack would go in only when the heavy howitzers had had two successful days of bombarding the trench and the wire. According to the British official history, it had not rained since 8 November, and on 9 and 10 November, in good visibility, the artillery was at last able to fire accurately. Each of the two attacking brigades was supported by the entire field artillery of one of the other Canadian divisions, the 1st and 3rd, whose infantry had already left the Somme. At midnight, under a full moon and a cloudless sky, the 46th (South Saskatchewan) Battalion and the 47th (British Columbia) Battalion of the 10th Brigade, together with a company of the 102nd Battalion of the 11th Brigade, went forward from a jumping-off line pushed out about 140 metres in front of their own trenches. Thanks to this they were out of reach of the German barrage, which came down behind them. The infantry later reported that their own barrage had been “excellent”.

The surprised defenders, according to the Canadian official history soldiers of the German 58th Division and 1st Guard Reserve Division, and according to the British mainly of the 107th Infantry Regiment, put up little resistance. Only the 47th Battalion ran into machine-gun fire. The company of the 102nd Battalion beat off two counter-attacks, and at 2.20 a.m. the Canadians reported that the captured trench had already been consolidated. They also pushed posts forward along the trenches running north-east, towards the German line in front of Pys. The Germans left about fifty dead, nearly ninety prisoners and four machine guns. The British official history estimates the Canadian losses at about two hundred men; the Canadian calls them light. The divisional commander, General David Watson, thanked the gunners in a separate letter for their “splendid” co-operation with the infantry.

The Canadian official history closes its account of the Battle of the Ancre Heights with this night attack. Apart from a spur west of Pys, all the ground overlooking Grandcourt and Miraumont from the south was in British hands. Regina Trench itself, for which one division after another had fought since the beginning of October, no longer resembled a defensive line. After repeated bombardments it was, as Nicholson writes, merely a depression in the chalk, in places torn open to a width of six metres and over long stretches filled with debris and the bodies of the fallen. Here the Canadians learned that with careful artillery preparation, surprise and an attack close behind the barrage, a strong position could be taken at little cost even in autumn mud.

The capture of the trench was a prelude to the last attack of the year. General Hubert Gough, commander of the Fifth Army, taking advantage of the dry days, was preparing a great blow on both banks of the Ancre, against Beaumont-Hamel and Saint-Pierre-Divion, repeatedly postponed since October. It went in two days later, on 13 November, and opened the Battle of the Ancre, the last phase of the Battle of the Somme. The 4th Canadian Division fought one more action in it: on 18 November, in a snowstorm, it attacked from the line of Regina Trench the next German trenches, named by the British Desire and Desire Support.