German attack on Vimy Ridge

On the evening of Sunday 21 May 1916 German infantry attacked the British positions on Vimy Ridge, between Souchez and the village of Vimy in Artois. After a bombardment lasting several hours, the like of which, according to the British official history, the troops had never yet seen, the Germans took the British front and support lines on a sector about one and a half kilometres wide, and with them the entrances to the British mine shafts. The operation was named “Schleswig-Holstein”, after the Schleswig-Holstein 163rd Infantry Regiment, which led the attack on the northern wing.

War underground

The British had taken over this sector from the French in March 1916, when the French Tenth Army was needed at Verdun. The French had won it in the autumn of 1915 in the Third Battle of Artois, but almost the whole ridge remained in the hands of the Germans, who had an excellent view of the British trenches from it. Over the following weeks both sides waged a bitter fight underground here. Sappers dug tunnels under the enemy trenches and blew them up, and the infantry rushed to occupy the craters left by the explosions. The British brought in several tunnelling companies and gradually gained the upper hand. On 3 May they fired four mines, and on 15 May five more. The British 25th Division alone lost 70 officers and 1,200 other ranks in the five weeks before the German attack.

On the German side the sector belonged to IX Reserve Corps of the 6th Army, temporarily commanded by General Hugo von Freytag-Loringhoven, until then Deputy Chief of the General Staff. The mine explosions were undermining his soldiers’ morale. The history of the 163rd Regiment recalled that even on the quietest night they lived in fear of sudden and cruel death underground. Freytag-Loringhoven concluded that since the Germans were losing underground, the British shafts had to be captured by an attack on the surface. He assembled some 80 batteries, hidden among the houses from Liévin to Vimy, while aircraft and anti-aircraft guns drove off the British airmen. In any case, in bad weather these flew over the ridge only every few days and did not spot the preparations.

The attack

The Germans struck at the worst possible moment for the British. On the night of 19/20 May the Berthonval sector passed from the 25th Division to the 47th (London) Division, from Julian Byng’s corps to General Henry Wilson’s IV Corps, and from the Third to the First Army. The 140th Brigade had moved into the positions, and at the time of the attack artillery batteries were still being relieved. The trenches were shallow, with almost no wire and no dugouts.

On 21 May the Germans shelled the British positions from morning until 11 a.m., and at about 3 p.m. they opened a hurricane bombardment. Shells fell on the front line, the communication trenches, the artillery positions and even on billets several kilometres behind the front. The British estimated that some 70,000 shells fell on the narrow sector in four hours. At about 7.45 p.m. British time (9.45 p.m. German time) the fire lifted to the rear, the Germans fired a mine and the infantry went over. The stunned defenders of the 7th and 8th Battalions of the London Regiment had their weapons buried or destroyed. Most of their front-line companies were taken prisoner before they could leave their dugouts, though in places there was hand-to-hand fighting. The Germans stopped only when they ran into their own barrage. On the flanks the British held on in the communication trenches and prevented the breach from being widened. The surviving soldiers of the 140th Brigade took refuge in the Zouave Valley at the foot of the ridge.

Failed counter-attacks

The first counter-attack on the night of 21/22 May achieved little. The commander of the First Army, General Charles Monro, passed on Douglas Haig’s wish not to attack without careful preparation, so a larger attack was postponed. It went in on the evening of 23 May, but the Germans, probably warned by a deserter, smothered the British assembly positions with fire. Some battalions regained parts of their old trenches but could not hold them.

From 21 to 24 May the British lost 2,475 killed, wounded and missing, the Germans by their own figures 1,344, more of them in repelling the counter-attacks than in the attack itself. According to various sources, from over 200 to about 300 British soldiers were taken prisoner. Haig was dissatisfied with IV Corps’ performance, but retaking the ridge would have required several dozen additional batteries of heavy artillery, needed for the offensive being prepared on the Somme. On 27 May he therefore gave up any retaliation. Vimy Ridge was taken only by the Canadians in April 1917, in the Battle of Vimy Ridge, drawing in part on plans prepared precisely after this defeat.