Germans take Montdidier

On 27 March 1918, while the British XIX Corps was holding out in front of Rosières, the most dangerous breach opened further south, on the French sector of the front. The German 18th Army of General Oskar von Hutier, which had taken Noyon two days earlier, pushed back the French corps there and towards evening entered without a fight Montdidier, a small town and railway junction in Picardy, about 35 km south-east of Amiens. Since 1915 the town had lain immediately behind the front, which ran between it and Roye.

Between the Oise and the Somme the front was now held by General Émile Fayolle’s French Reserve Army Group. The French divisions, however, were arriving in haste, often without artillery or transport, and were thrown into the fighting as they came up. In the morning General Robillot’s corps of the Third Army repulsed an attack by the German 10th Division and 10th Reserve Division, but at about 10 a.m. its centre was broken. At noon the 22nd Division and the 1st Cavalry Division were falling back westwards, and the 62nd Division swung back its flank, resting it on the village of Canny. In the evening the corps’ front ran from Canny to Rollot, facing north instead of east. Next to it, closer to the British, General de Mitry’s weak VI Corps of the arriving First Army, made up of the 56th Division and the 5th Cavalry Division, also fell back westwards, drawing with it the right flank of the British XVIII Corps. The British official history likens this to opening the door to the Germans, in defiance of the instruction of General Ferdinand Foch, who after the Doullens conference had forbidden the surrender of even a scrap of ground.

Montdidier fell undefended, and the gap around the town stayed open through the night. At 9.15 p.m. General Philippe Pétain ordered the 162nd Division to be carried by lorry from the Sixth Army to Rollot, and towards morning a thin covering line was formed by the leading units of the arriving French 36th and 12th Divisions. Most of the inhabitants managed to flee. Those who stayed endured a harsh occupation: the town was looted and people lived in cellars. The next day the commander of the French First Army, General Debeney, asked Foch whether, if necessary, he should keep contact with the British or with the French, and was told: with the French.

For the Germans the capture of Montdidier was one of the last clear successes of Operation Michael. The 18th Army had orders to halt on the Avre and await a decision from the Supreme Army Command, and the offensive was losing momentum for lack of artillery and supplies. Georg Wetzell, in 1918 head of the operations section of the German Supreme Army Command, later concluded that the failure to recognise in time and exploit the breach in the French front at Montdidier was one of the main causes of the failure of the whole offensive. The town remained in German hands for more than four months, until 10 August 1918, when during the Battle of Amiens it was retaken by General Debeney’s French First Army. The fighting of 1918 destroyed it almost completely.