End of the Battle of Thiepval Ridge

On 28 September 1916, the third day of the attack by General Hubert Gough’s Reserve Army on Thiepval Ridge, the British 18th Division attacked the Schwaben Redoubt, the last great German stronghold on the ridge. According to British nomenclature, this day marks the end of the Battle of Thiepval Ridge. The fighting for the crest of the ridge went on, however, because neither the Schwaben Redoubt nor the neighbouring Stuff Redoubt could be taken entirely that day.

The Schwaben Redoubt lay about a kilometre north of the village of Thiepval, on the crest of the ridge above the Ancre valley. On 1 July the 36th (Ulster) Division had broken into it, but had to give it up in the evening. After Thiepval was taken on 26 and 27 September, the commander of the 18th Division, General Ivor Maxse, judged that an assault on the redoubt had no chance as long as the Germans held the Stuff Redoubt to its right, and postponed it by a day. At 1 p.m. on 28 September the 53rd Brigade attacked from the south and two companies of a Bedfordshire battalion from the west. Bulgar Trench fell quickly, but in Midway Trench the Germans resisted fiercely. A Suffolk battalion came up to the eastern end of the redoubt at 2.30 p.m., and the 7th Battalion, the Queen’s, which lost its way in unfamiliar ground and veered to the left, broke into its southern face and by 5 p.m. had taken all of it. The Bedfords and a West Yorkshire battalion cleared the western face of the redoubt after heavy fighting by 8 p.m. The northern part of the redoubt was held by defenders of the 66th Infantry Regiment, reinforced by companies from other regiments, and bombing fights went on there all night. Second Lieutenant Tom Adlam of the Bedfordshire battalion, who the day before had led the assault on the last corner of Thiepval, was wounded for the second time that day. He later received the Victoria Cross.

To the right of the 18th Division, in the Stuff Redoubt, a mixed group of soldiers from two Yorkshire battalions had been holding on since the previous afternoon. In the evening, under the command of Captain Archie White, they bombed their way along most of the northern face of the redoubt, but lacked the men and the grenades to beat off German counter-attacks and had to fall back. White too received the Victoria Cross for the defence of the redoubt over several days. Further east still, the Canadians attacked Regina Trench beyond the ridge all day, in rain and mud. A New Brunswick battalion attacked three times, in the morning, afternoon and evening, and each time was driven back by machine-gun fire from behind uncut wire. It lost about 200 men.

At 1 p.m. Reserve Army headquarters issued an order that the Stuff and Schwaben redoubts were to be taken by 29 September, and Stuff Trench, the western extension of Regina Trench, by 1 October. These deadlines proved unrealistic. According to the British official history, which describes this battle up to 30 September, the soldiers of both sides fought in mud-filled trenches to the point of complete exhaustion, and in the maze of trenches, craters and dugouts the artillery was often no longer able to support the infantry. At the end of September the British held Thiepval, Mouquet Farm, the Zollern Redoubt, almost all of Hessian Trench, the southern part of the Stuff Redoubt and a considerable part of the Schwaben Redoubt, but not the whole crest of the ridge.

The fighting passed without a break into the Battle of the Ancre Heights, which British nomenclature dates from 1 October. The northern face of the Stuff Redoubt was taken on 9 October by the British 25th Division, and the rest of the Schwaben Redoubt on 14 October by the 39th Division. The Canadians completed the capture of Regina Trench only on 11 November. The 18th Division, relieved on 5 October, lost 3,344 men from 26 September according to the official history, and the 11th Division 3,615 on 26–30 September.