Germans retake Craonne

On 27 May 1918, in the first hours of the Third Battle of the Aisne, German troops took the ruins of Craonne and the Californie plateau that towers over them at the eastern end of the Chemin des Dames ridge. According to the German monograph of the battle, as summarised by the British official history, the village fell as early as about 5.10 a.m., an hour and a half after the assault began. It was a place of exceptional significance. The Germans had taken Craonne in September 1914 and held it for more than two and a half years, and the French had retaken its ruins on 4 May 1917, in one of the last attacks of the Nivelle offensive, at the cost of heavy losses. Now the Allies lost it in a single morning.

This time, however, Craonne was not defended by the French army. Since the beginning of May 1918 the sector from the Californie plateau eastwards, towards Berry-au-Bac and Reims, had been held by the British IX Corps, sent to the Aisne to rest after the heavy fighting of March and April. The plateau, which the Germans called the Winterberg because from afar its white limestone slopes looked as if covered in snow, was defended by soldiers of the 150th Brigade of the 50th (Northumbrian) Division, mainly of the East Yorkshire Regiment and the Green Howards. The commander of the 5th Battalion of the Green Howards, Lieutenant-Colonel J. A. R. Thomson, had his headquarters in the ruins of Craonne. On the narrow, shell-torn summit three lines of trenches had to be fitted into a belt less than half a kilometre deep, and the French defence plan required them to be held at all costs.

The Germans regarded the plateau as the key to the whole Chemin des Dames position and threw three regiments of the 28th Division against it. After a bombardment of two hours and forty minutes, in which the slopes and summit were deluged with gas and high-explosive shells and the entrances to the dugouts and tunnels caved in, the infantry bypassed the steepest, northern slope. It attacked the north-eastern corner of the plateau and the village of Chevreux at its foot, and at about 4.30 a.m. began to climb the eastern slope. German soldiers recalled that the wire was strung between all the trees and that they covered the last few metres on all fours. At the same time units that had broken through the French 22nd Division west of the plateau took the defenders from the other side. In Craonne itself the Germans were helped by trench mortars, whose bombs blew up a grenade store. Of the two battalions on the plateau only small groups survived.

At about 6 a.m. Thomson saw Germans on the southern edge of the plateau. With his headquarters staff and the reserve company he led a counter-attack uphill, but the slope was steep and the fire too heavy. The attack broke down and Thomson was killed. A company of the reserve 4th Battalion of the Green Howards from La Hutte, about one and a half kilometres south of Craonne, tried to come to the rescue but was swept away by shellfire. The remnants of the battalion, attacked from both sides and from the rear, fell back to the neighbouring village of Craonnelle and defended themselves in its ruins until by 8 a.m. almost all had been killed or captured. The brigade commander, General Hubert Rees, was taken prisoner while trying to get across the Aisne. By about 8 a.m. the 150th Brigade had ceased to exist.

Craonne remained in German hands until the autumn. The French 320th Infantry Regiment recovered the ruins on 14 October 1918, during the offensive that drove the Germans off the Chemin des Dames for good. The village was so devastated that after the war it was rebuilt lower down, at the foot of the hill, and on the site of old Craonne an arboretum was planted, in which shell craters can still be seen today.