End of the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge

On 25 September 1917 at 5.15 a.m. the heaviest German bombardment since the beginning of September fell on the sector of the front at Ypres between the road to Menin and Polygon Wood. British Second Army intelligence later judged it the greatest concentration of artillery on the sector of a single German division ever recorded: 44 field and 20 heavy batteries, almost four times the usual number. Half an hour later two regiments of the 50th Reserve Division advanced in the morning mist on both sides of the Reutelbeek stream to take back from the British part of the ground won on 20 September. It was the last act of the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge. The blow came at the worst possible moment for the British: the next step of General Herbert Plumer’s offensive was set for the following morning, and it was on precisely this sector that the assault battalions were to form up.

Five days after the victory

From 21 September both sides exchanged blows along the whole battle front. On 21 September a brigade of the 41st Division advanced in short bounds to the marshy Bassevillebeek stream, and in the evening repulsed a large German attack. The same evening the Germans took part of Hill 37 above Zonnebeke, but the 55th Division won it back by counter-attack that same evening. On 23 September the 20th Division, attacking from both ends, took on the northern flank the fortified Eagle Trench, against which its attack of 20 September had broken, and captured 158 prisoners. Private Reginald Inwood of the 10th Battalion, who during the night had ventured several hundred metres deep into the wood and in the morning, with one comrade, had captured a machine gun and made a prisoner carry it back to the Australian lines, was awarded the Victoria Cross for it. Lieutenant Frederick Birks, decorated for the fighting in Glencorse Wood, did not live to receive his: he was killed by a shell on 21 September.

On the captured plateau divisions were relieved. On the night of 22/23 September the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions were replaced by the 4th and 5th Divisions, and on the night of 24/25 September the British 23rd Division south of Polygon Wood was relieved by the 33rd Division. On 21 September Field Marshal Douglas Haig issued orders for the next attack: for 26 September, to take the rest of Polygon Wood and the southern part of Zonnebeke. On the German side the Crown Prince of Bavaria, Rupprecht, wrote that the British must not be left the heights at Zonnebeke and Gheluvelt, and hoped that further attacks would not follow too quickly, because he was short of reserves. He ordered a blow against the British flank, which had been pushed forward after 20 September. The attack, postponed by one day, was entrusted to the 50th Reserve Division.

The attack of 25 September

The start was unfortunate for the Germans themselves. Part of their bombardment fell on their own infantry, which had to fall back before the fire moved forward at 5.30 a.m. In the south, along the Menin road from the direction of Gheluvelt (PL), storm troops with flamethrowers shot burning oil into the dried-out trees, which at once burst into flames. They broke into the forward posts of a battalion of the Queen’s, but were stopped there after about a hundred metres. North of the Reutelbeek they did better. Led by a Major Hethey, the Germans pushed back a Middlesex battalion and the neighbouring battalion of the Scottish Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, cutting off one company of each, retook several concrete shelters of the old German line, and advanced about half a kilometre, as far as the rear of the right flank of the Australian 15th Brigade on the edge of Polygon Wood. The Australian 58th Battalion, one of whose company commanders had fired the SOS signal in the first minutes, stopped them with rifle and machine-gun fire a hundred metres from its trenches and bent back its flank along the road on which the Germans had set up machine guns. At about 11 a.m. the German attack came to a halt.

All day the area behind the front was wreathed in smoke. The first news of the loss of the line was brought to 33rd Division headquarters at 7.15 a.m. by a carrier pigeon, and runners’ messages took three hours to come back from the front. German aircraft flew low over the battlefield, strafing the infantry and directing the artillery. A forward ammunition dump of the 5th Australian Division, prepared for the next day, blew up, and wrecked lorries burned on the Menin road. The commander of the 15th Brigade, General Harold Elliott, who was to attack the next day, had to throw into the fight the companies earmarked for the attack. The Australian photographers Frank Hurley and Hubert Wilkins walked among the explosions on the Menin road to record the bombardment.

The British counter-attack, announced for 2 p.m., had no artillery support, because reports were not getting through in time. Two companies of the Argylls advanced in two lines in full view of the Germans and dug in by the ruins of Lone House, about 350 metres behind the Australian flank, but for many hours neither their own headquarters nor the Australians knew where they were. In the evening the 33rd Division reported first that it had recovered the line, and then that its brigade was back at Verbeek Farm, about 700 metres behind the old front line. An Australian company, which in the afternoon had moved out from the flank to link up with the British, had to withdraw at dusk.

Plumer’s decision

On the evening of 25 September the situation looked bad. The Germans stood level with the Australian support line, where the assault battalions were to form up on the tapes during the night. The officers of the 58th Battalion who were to lead them had been killed or wounded, the ammunition dumps had blown up, and three of the four battalions of the 15th Brigade earmarked for the attack were already engaged. It had to be assumed that prisoners had betrayed the time of the attack to the Germans. Elliott telephoned that an attack by his brigade was out of the question. The commander of X Corps, General Thomas Morland, had doubts about whether to attack at all.

Plumer decided that the attack would go ahead as planned. He changed only the tasks of the 33rd Division: one brigade was to cover the Australian flank, and the other to recover the ground lost on 25 September. The Australian division was given two battalions from the 8th Brigade in reserve. During the night the German artillery suddenly fell silent, and Australian officers laid the tapes in Polygon Wood and led the battalions out onto them. The British official historian later wrote that the “desperate” German counter-attack had not even managed to alter zero hour. It did not come without heavy losses, however: from 25 to 26 September the 33rd Division lost 2,905 men and the 5th Australian Division 3,723, to a large extent even before the attack. Rupprecht, reassured by the first reports of success, concluded that the next big British attack would not come for several days, and that same day left for Munich on private business.

The balance of the battle

According to their official history, the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge cost the British armies 20,255 killed, wounded and missing, including 3,148 killed, of which 5,013 losses were suffered by the two Australian divisions. The British took 3,243 prisoners, and the German Fourth Army lost about 25,000 men from 11 to 20 September. Plumer took the western part of the Gheluvelt plateau with Glencorse Wood and Nonne Bosschen, which throughout August had been the grave of successive British attacks, and the German counter-attack divisions, the pride of the defence in Flanders, failed to recover almost anything. Only the Tower Hamlets spur on the southern flank remained in German hands. At dawn the next day the Australians set off against the rest of Polygon Wood.