Fighting for Bourlon Wood

On 23 November 1917 at Cambrai General Julian Byng’s British Third Army attacked Bourlon Wood, the most important point of the whole battlefield. Three days earlier tanks and infantry had broken through the Hindenburg Line, but the wooded ridge north of the Bapaume–Cambrai road remained in German hands. From its summit, rising some 45 metres above the surrounding country, German observers could see everything that happened in the ground taken by the British. That same day church bells rang in Britain in honour of the victory at Cambrai.

Why Bourlon

On the evening of 21 November Field Marshal Douglas Haig had to decide whether to break off the offensive or fight on. The 48 hours after which German reserves were expected to arrive had passed, and the troops were exhausted. Haig judged, however, that without the Bourlon ridge the positions won at Flesquières could not be held without heavy losses, while its capture would expose the German lines as far as the river Sensée. The situation in Italy also argued for going on: pressure at Cambrai was meant to tie down German forces. On 22 November the Germans retook the village of Fontaine-Notre-Dame, captured the day before by the 51st (Highland) Division, and during the night the exhausted 62nd Division in front of the wood was relieved by the fresh 40th Division of Major-General John Ponsonby.

The attack of 23 November

The day was cold and windy, with passing showers. On the right wing the 152nd Brigade of the 51st Division advanced on Fontaine with several dozen Mark IV tanks. A dozen or so machines drove into the village, but in its barricaded lanes they came under fire from machine guns firing armour-piercing bullets from the upper floors of the houses and from guns laid for direct fire. Of one battalion’s 13 tanks only three came back. The Scottish infantry, held up by fire from the houses and from the château in nearby La Folie Wood, was unable to follow them. According to the British official history (Wilfrid Miles) at least ten German battalions were defending the village and its surroundings.

At 10.30 a.m. the 40th Division went into the attack. Brigadier-General Frank Crozier’s 119th Brigade, made up of Welsh battalions, was to clear the wood, and the 121st Brigade to take the village of Bourlon and the western arm of the ridge. The infantry of this division had never seen tanks before and there had been no time for joint training, yet it followed them well. The smoke ammunition, which was stuck in traffic jams on the roads, failed to arrive. In the dense wood, among tall trees and thick hazel undergrowth, the Welshmen took one machine-gun nest after another with fire and bayonet. At about 11.40 a.m. men of the 19th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, reached the ride crossing the wood, and less than an hour later its northern edge. In the afternoon a German counter-attack, in which according to Miles the 9th Grenadier Regiment of the 3rd Guard Division took part, pushed part of the brigade back into the wood. The situation was saved by a battalion from the brigade reserve, the 18th Battalion of the Welsh Regiment, whose commander, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Kennedy, was killed leading his men into the attack. By nightfall the British held the ridge and most of the wood, and late in the evening they beat off another attack.

Things went worse at the village. The 121st Brigade came under fire from its left flank, where the neighbouring 36th (Ulster) Division was held up in the trenches of the Hindenburg Line and at Mœuvres. Small groups of infantry and a few tanks broke into Bourlon but could not hold on there. The Ulstermen did take most of Mœuvres for a time, but towards evening they had to withdraw to its southern edge. That day the Royal Flying Corps sent 50 fighters over the battlefield in direct support of the infantry. Among other things they bombed a German battery that was holding up the tanks at Bourlon, but about 30 per cent of the machines were wrecked.

Bells in London

For a long time Third Army headquarters did not know what the situation really was. Reports from the front exaggerated the success, and in the afternoon Byng was already preparing the cavalry to go through beyond the ridge. In Britain the mood was even better. On 23 November bells were rung in London, including at St Paul’s Cathedral, and in many other towns to celebrate the breakthrough at Cambrai. It was the first time since the outbreak of war that bells had been rung to celebrate a victory, and according to many accounts the only such occasion before the Armistice in November 1918. Some accounts, among them J. F. C. Fuller in his history of the British tanks, connect it with 21 November, but the press and later studies give 23 November.

Five days in the wood

The fighting for Bourlon went on for five more days. On 24 November the Germans attacked the wood several times and drove the British out of its north-eastern corner, but a counter-attack by the Scots of the 14th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, dismounted men of the 15th Hussars and the remnants of the 119th Brigade restored the line. On the evening of 25 November the Germans regained the village of Bourlon, while a company of the 13th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment held out in its south-eastern corner, cut off for two days. The bled-white 40th Division, which had lost 172 officers and 4,017 other ranks, was relieved on the night of 25/26 November. On 27 November the Guards and the 62nd Division with tanks again broke into Fontaine and Bourlon, but German counter-attacks took both villages back from them. On 28 November Haig halted the attack. The British held the wood and the ridge in a narrow, projecting salient, and that day the Germans fired more than 16,000 shells into the wood, many of them gas shells. The German command had already concluded that the breakthrough had been stopped and was bringing divisions to Cambrai for a counter-stroke.