New Zealanders retake Bapaume

On the morning of 29 August 1918 patrols of the New Zealand Division entered Bapaume. The Germans had abandoned the town during the night, without a fight, after several days of stubborn defence. Bapaume was changing hands for the fourth time in this war. The Germans had occupied it on 26 September 1914, in March 1917 it had been taken by the Australians when the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line, and on the night of 24 March 1918 the British Third Army had given it up without a fight during the German offensive. Now the same Third Army of General Julian Byng recovered it after eight days of attacks.

A week before the town

General Andrew Russell’s New Zealanders, fighting in IV Corps, took Grévillers on 24 August, and on 25 August reached the very edge of the town, Avesnes-lès-Bapaume and the monument to the Battle of Bapaume of the Franco-Prussian War north of the town. The Germans, however, brought up fresh divisions and filled the ruins and the surrounding villages with machine guns. Russell did not want to storm the town frontally. His brigades tried to encircle it: to the north the New Zealand Rifle Brigade reached the railway to Cambrai, but to the south the advance was held up by fire from Bapaume and from Thilloy, which the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division could not take for three days. On 27 and 28 August the command gave up a costly assault. The artillery and New Zealand mortars shelled the town and the roads leading out of it, a plan for a local attack by the 1st Battalion, Wellington Regiment was prepared, and Byng warned the corps that the Germans might withdraw during the night.

An empty fortress

That is what happened. As early as 26 August the German command had decided to shorten the front between the Oise and the Scarpe, and the left wing of the Seventeenth Army was to give up Bapaume and fall back to the Le Transloy–Vraucourt line. According to the history of the New Zealand Division, the staff expected the Germans to hold the town only as long as necessary to cover the withdrawal. The progress of the First Army in the Battle of the Scarpe, which from 26 August threatened the northern flank of the German front, hastened their decision. 28 August was overcast with passing showers, but in the evening the sky cleared and the German artillery noticeably slackened. Towards morning fewer and fewer flares went up over the western suburbs and the machine guns fired less and less often, until at last silence fell.

Both New Zealand brigades immediately sent out patrols. They occupied St. Aubin railway station and the suburbs, and at about 8.30 a.m. a company of the 3rd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade under Captain H. C. Meikle was already in the northern part of the town. Russell had earlier promised the battalion that took Bapaume a flag bearing the town’s name. Soon the British artillery stopped firing on the ruins, and patrols of the 1st Battalion, Wellington Regiment passed through the town and set off after the German rearguards. The 2nd Battalion of the Rifles reached the road to Cambrai in time to see the last Germans disappearing over the ridge towards Bancourt. Several howitzers and abandoned machine guns were captured, but there were few prisoners and own losses were very small. Booby traps left by the Germans in the ruins had to be cleared for several more days.

The same day the Germans also abandoned Thilloy and Ligny-Thilloy, through which the 42nd Division passed without a fight, and to the south the 18th Division of the Fourth Army entered Combles. Further south, beyond the Somme, the Germans fell back several kilometres by night to the far bank of the river. In the evening the New Zealanders ran into strong German rearguards with many machine guns east of the town. They then stood on German trenches by the road to Péronne and by the sugar factory on the road to Cambrai. The next day they were to attack Bancourt and Frémicourt. Bapaume, the objective of the Battle of the Somme of 1916, was, however, once again in Allied hands, and was to remain in them until the end of the war.