Fighting on the Avre

On 4 April 1918 the Germans tried for the last time during Operation Michael to break through to Amiens. After three days of preparation two armies, General Oskar von Hutier’s 18th Army and General Georg von der Marwitz’s 2nd Army, attacked on a front about 24 km long, from Grivesnes south of Moreuil to the Somme. It rained all day. The French on the Avre fell back several kilometres and lost several villages, and the British gave up ground on the Somme. In the afternoon the Germans came within a few hundred metres of Villers-Bretonneux, the last high ground before Amiens. An evening counter-attack by the Australian 36th Battalion and several British battalions threw them back from the town. It was the last day on which the German drive on Amiens had a real chance of success.

Before dawn

From 1 to 3 April the front before Amiens was relatively quiet. The Germans brought up fresh divisions, artillery and ammunition, and the Allies put their defences in order. On the orders of General Ferdinand Foch, issued on 1 April, the French took over the front from the British up to and including the village of Hangard. The day before the battle, at Beauvais, the Allies entrusted Foch with the strategic direction of operations. Between Hangard and the Somme stood the British XIX Corps of General Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, called the Fifth Army until 2 April: the 18th Division in the south, the Australian 35th Battalion in the middle, on both sides of the railway to Amiens, and the 14th Division north of the Roman road from Amiens to Saint-Quentin. Both British divisions had been fighting since 21 March and were full of untrained recruits. The 14th Division took over its positions only on the night of 3–4 April, in the dark, without seeing the ground.

Heavy rain fell during the night. On the evening of 3 April German aircraft circled low over the lines, and the commander of the 35th Battalion’s front line, Major Carr, insisted to his officers that an attack would come in the morning. Towards dawn men of the British Buffs battalion, to the right of the Australians, took a prisoner who confirmed it. The warning did not reach everyone in time, but when at about five in the morning a hurricane bombardment of the villages in the rear and of the front line began, the attack came as no surprise. The Germans drenched the British batteries mainly with gas shells. British sources say the bombardment began at about 5.15–5.30 a.m. and the infantry advanced at about 6.30. The French official history gives four o’clock and 7.30.

Morning: “until they come within forty yards”

In front of the Australian 35th Battalion the fresh 9th Bavarian Reserve Division was emerging by platoons from the gardens of the villages of Marcelcave and Warfusée. Captain Coghill, commanding the company on the right wing, judged that with so thin a line the only chance was to let the Germans come very close and deal them such a blow that they would not begin creeping up to the posts one by one. He forbade anyone to fire until he raised his hand, and stood on the railway embankment, where both flanks of the company could see him. When the nearest Germans were forty yards from the trench he raised his hand with his map case and was at once shot in the shoulder, but the fire of the Lewis guns and rifles broke the attackers. German officers several times turned back those who fled and led them into the attack again, and each time it ended the same way. According to the British official history the Bavarians tried three times to attack the 35th Battalion and never got far beyond their starting positions.

Things went worse on the flanks. In the north the Germans of the 228th Division and the 4th Guard Division broke into the line of the tired 14th Division. Its 41st Brigade fell back in disorder and at about 10 halted on a ridge nearly 3 km to the rear. The 42nd Brigade, threatened from the flank and rear, also withdrew. Its commander, General George Forster, did not want to spread alarm by withdrawing his headquarters prematurely and stayed in the village of Le Hamel to the end. At about noon he was taken prisoner and soon afterwards was killed by a stray bullet. The Germans then outflanked the Australians, who fell back fighting to a position about one and a half kilometres in front of Villers-Bretonneux. The gap was plugged by dismounted regiments of the 6th Cavalry Brigade. North of the Roman road the Germans were stopped above all by the artillery. The batteries kept firing although the enemy came within one and a half kilometres of them, and several guns were run up onto the ridge, from where they fired over open sights. At 2 p.m. the commander of the Third Army, General Julian Byng, sent two battalions of the 15th Australian Brigade from across the Somme.

On the Avre

South of Hangard the weight of the attack fell on General Marie-Eugène Debeney’s French First Army, which had only just taken over the sector. Five fresh German divisions struck the front from Sauvillers to the wood near Moreuil, held by only two divisions of XXXVI Corps. The French fell back more than 3 km behind the Avre, and the Germans took the villages of Mailly-Raineval, Morisel and Castel and the woods around them. The French 415th Infantry Regiment, which had come out of the line to rest during the night, at about 10 saw Germans in front of its reserve trenches. Its fire held them long enough for the broken units to be rallied, and around noon the regiment repulsed further attacks along its whole front. In the evening reinforcements arrived from two reserve divisions and the dent in the front on the Avre stopped growing. The German historian Georg Goes admitted that the attack, “which had begun so well”, had broken down and could not be set in motion again.

At Haig’s headquarters there were fears that the British would run out of reserves. That day Generals Herbert Lawrence and John Davidson asked Foch’s chief of staff, General Maxime Weygand, who had come to the headquarters, for the French to counter-attack or take over part of the British front. Weygand could only refer them to Foch’s directive already issued. General Philippe Pétain, for his part, ordered the Reserve Army Group to throw the Germans back across the Avre as quickly as possible, and Debeney set a counter-attack for the next day.

Afternoon: crisis at Villers-Bretonneux

At about 4 p.m., after an hour’s bombardment, the Guard Ersatz Division and the 9th Bavarian Reserve Division attacked in the rain from the south-east, towards Cachy and Villers-Bretonneux. Mud clogged the rifles. The British 55th Brigade was driven from its positions, and the neighbouring 53rd Brigade, after a counter-attack by a Royal Berkshire battalion in which its commanding officer was killed, fell back more than one and a half kilometres. A gap opened between the British and the Australians, through which the road to the town from the south-east seemed open. The Australian 35th Battalion, exposed on its flank, withdrew to Villers-Bretonneux. Five Canadian motor machine-gun batteries with six armoured cars took up positions near the town, sent with orders to defend it to the last. By about 5 p.m. the Germans were not far from the Démuin road and were firing on the last withdrawing British battery from less than 400 metres.

The defence of the town was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Goddard, commanding officer of the 35th Battalion, to whom the commander of the 9th Australian Brigade, General Charles Rosenthal, had given command of all the units on the spot. When word reached his headquarters that it had become the most advanced point of the defence, Goddard turned to the commanding officer of the 36th Battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel John Milne, a former private of the British Army: “Colonel, you must counter-attack at once.” Milne saluted and went out. At about 5.45 p.m. his battalion advanced in one long line south of the railway, with the reserve company of the 35th Battalion, led straight out of the town’s cellars, on its left, and on its right a British battalion of the Queen’s, led in person by the commander of the 55th Brigade, General Wood. Companies of the London 6th Battalion followed in the second line. The Australians advanced under heavy fire from the orchards and buildings of the farm by the memorial to those killed in the battle of 1870 and lost many officers, but the Germans, outflanked, began to flee. The British official history writes that these few fresh troops, thrown in “at exactly the right moment”, drove the attackers back with great dash. By about 7 p.m. the line east of Villers-Bretonneux was secure again.

Evening

By evening the Germans had pushed the Allies back 2–3 km along the whole front, but had not reached the day’s objective, the line from which heavy guns could bombard the railway junction at Amiens. During the night the front on the Somme was taken over by the 3rd Cavalry Division with the 15th Australian Brigade, and the 5th Australian Brigade arrived from the general reserve. At one in the morning two battalions of the 9th Brigade advanced 200–300 metres in total darkness and recovered a trench lost in the afternoon. According to the Australian official history the brigade lost 665 men out of about 2,250 in the fighting of 4 and 5 April. The German command ordered the attack to continue the next day, but Crown Prince Wilhelm was already reporting that the enemy could not be pushed back beyond the river Noye and that the only gain was a slight widening of the bridgehead on the Avre. Ludendorff later wrote that the battle ended on 4 April. The attempts of 5 April achieved nothing more, and that evening Operation Michael was called off.