End of the Battle of the Transloy Ridges

On 18 October 1916 the British Fourth Army made its last large attack on the Somme in the fighting the British later called the Battle of the Transloy Ridges, part of the Battle of the Somme. Since the beginning of the month, after the capture of Eaucourt l’Abbaye and of the village of Le Sars, its attacks on the new German trenches before Le Transloy and on the chalk mound of the Butte de Warlencourt by the Bapaume road had ended in failure. General Henry Rawlinson judged that the Germans had had time to recover, and in an order issued late on the evening of 13 October he called this time for a careful, methodical bombardment. Zero hour was set for 3.40 a.m., almost two hours before dawn, because the Germans had grown used to afternoon attacks.

After a few drier days it began to rain again on the evening of 17 October. Rain clouds hid the moon, and the infantry set off in complete darkness. The British official history describes how the men struggled through a maze of flooded shell holes and trenches, slipping and falling in the mud, which clogged their rifles and Lewis guns until they were left with only bombs and bayonets. On the right wing the 4th Division took a mere few dozen metres of Spectrum Trench, and the 6th Division part of Mild Trench, which it held in the evening against a counter-attack. North-east of Gueudecourt two battalions of the 12th Division quickly took Grease Trench, but suffered heavy losses when they tried to go further. The 30th Division’s attack on Bayonet and Gird Trenches broke down before uncut wire and enfilade fire. At about eight in the morning a single tank drove up alone to Gird Trench and for twenty minutes fired at fleeing Germans. Its commander got out of the machine and signalled to the infantry, but the exhausted men, who had lost most of their officers, could not follow him.

Things went best on the left wing, in front of the Butte de Warlencourt. Battalions of the 9th (Scottish) Division took most of Snag Trench, which had been fought over since 7 October. A battalion of the Cameron Highlanders occupied its eastern section, and the 1st South African Regiment even went beyond the trench before machine-gun fire from the Butte killed almost all who had pushed forward. By evening only about a hundred metres of the trench on either side of the junction the British called the Nose remained in German hands. Further to the right, the French Sixth Army moved off only before noon. Its IX Corps halted before the German trenches at Le Transloy, while XXXII Corps improved its position in the northern part of Sailly-Saillisel, which the French had broken into three days earlier.

The Germans too suffered in the mud. The Bavarian regiment facing the 4th Division lost half the men of one battalion. The history of the infantry regiment defending the trenches facing the 30th Division admitted, however, that the mud was the enemy of the British: it weakened the effect of their bombardment and prevented a swift surprise attack. According to the British official history, hardly any battalion of the Fourth Army could put more than 400 men into an attack at this time. Many of them were poorly trained.

Officially the Battle of the Transloy Ridges ended on 18 October, although Snag Trench was fought over for two more days, amid German counter-attacks with flamethrowers. After this failure Haig, Rawlinson and the French army group commander Ferdinand Foch scaled down their intentions. The great attack by three armies, planned at the end of September, had been washed away by the rains. In the following weeks the Fourth Army attacked several more times at Le Transloy and the Butte de Warlencourt, in ever worse mud and with similar results. Haig now pinned growing hopes on the attack by General Hubert Gough’s Reserve Army on the Ancre.