French retake Noyon

On 29 August 1918 the French Third Army of General Georges Humbert retook Noyon on the Oise. The town, which the German Eighteenth Army had taken on 25 March during Operation Michael, had lain on the front line for five months, and French artillery on the surrounding hills had reduced it to ruins. The British official history, summarising the French one, notes briefly that the Third Army “had heavy fighting and did not advance much, but Noyon was captured”. This date is also given by a British chronology of the war and by the captions of French military photographs of those days. Some French sources, however, including the state website on places of remembrance, regard 30 August, when the French took the heights overlooking the town, as the day of its final liberation. On the same day the French considered the Second Battle of Noyon closed, and with it the Third Battle of Picardy, begun on 8 August at Amiens.

The German retreat

Since 20 August, when the Tenth Army of General Charles Mangin had broken the German position between the Oise and the Aisne and reached the river Ailette, the Germans at Noyon had been threatened from the south and the east. Humbert’s army had meanwhile taken the Lassigny massif and reached the little river Divette, which flows west of the town into the Oise. On 26 August, under French and British pressure along the whole front from the Scarpe to the Oise, the German command ordered the Eighteenth and Second Armies to fall back to a shorter line, from Noyon along the Canal du Nord to Nesle, and then along the Somme. Erich Ludendorff wrote that between Ham and Noyon the course of the line was decided by the canal, which was a good obstacle to tanks. In the south the new line rested on the heights north-east of Noyon. On 27 August the French First Army of General Debeney entered Roye, and General Émile Fayolle, commander of the Reserve Army Group, ordered the First and Third Armies to follow the Germans “without giving them respite”, but without needless losses. The Third Army’s XV Corps was to advance along the Oise valley and try to take Noyon.

On 28 August Humbert’s army made considerable progress, and its XV and XXXIV Corps surrounded Noyon from the south and the north-west. Humbert ordered the attack to resume the next day at 5 a.m., after a short artillery preparation. XV Corps was to outflank the town together with the French 38th Division, on the left wing of Mangin’s army, rather than attack it frontally. XXXIV Corps was to advance as fast as possible on Guiscard, north of Noyon, which would put the Germans in a difficult position if they delayed leaving the town.

29 August

The Germans did not give up Noyon without a fight. The French met strong resistance and advanced slowly, but in the course of the day the town passed into their hands. East of the Oise, at 9.15 a.m., the Tenth Army attacked with three corps north of Soissons. The Germans brought up reinforcements there, and the fire of their machine guns and anti-tank guns inflicted heavy losses on the attackers. By evening the gains were small, although Mangin’s left wing helped Humbert’s army at Noyon. The American 32nd Division, which had entered the line west of the village of Juvigny the day before, fought in this attack. Supported by French tanks, it gained little on 29 August, but the next day it took Juvigny after fierce street fighting. On the same day, far to the north, the New Zealanders retook Bapaume, and along the whole front from the Scarpe to the Oise the Germans were falling back to new positions.

The French found Noyon about 80 per cent destroyed. According to French studies, before leaving the Germans had mined many streets and public buildings to delay the occupation of the town. The Gothic cathedral was also damaged; shells destroyed, among other things, its organ. Its rebuilding dragged on for many years after the war.

Balance

According to the French official history, cited by the British one, the First, Third and Tenth Armies lost more than 85,000 men from 8 to 29 August, including 9,533 killed, 68,435 wounded and 7,428 missing. In the same period they took more than 31,000 Germans prisoner, including 633 officers, and captured 890 guns. These figures cover the whole Third Battle of Picardy, from Montdidier and Roye to the Ailette. The recapture of Noyon was its final chord. On 30 August the French took the hill of Mont-Saint-Siméon above the town, and in the first days of September, following the retreating Germans, the armies of Humbert and Mangin set off towards the Hindenburg Line.