Lens in the First World War

Lens, a town in the Pas-de-Calais department, was before the war the capital of one of France’s most important coalfields. The Germans took it in October 1914 and held it for four years, and all that time the front ran a few kilometres from its houses. The Battle of Loos in 1915 and the Battle of Hill 70 in 1917 were fought below the town. When the Germans left in October 1918, nothing was left of Lens but rubble and flooded mines.

October 1914

In 1914 Lens had about 35,000 inhabitants (36,000 according to municipal studies), mostly mining families. At the end of September refugees from around Douai streamed through the town, and fewer than half of the population stayed in Lens. The Race to the Sea was under way, and the French Tenth Army was fighting the Germans for Arras and the hills of Artois.

At dawn on Sunday 4 October the Germans attacked from the direction of Douai. A company of French cyclist infantry and a squadron of dragoons held out along the canal, but before noon they were ordered to retreat, and in the evening the Germans marched into the town. The mayor, Émile Basly, a former miner and deputy, was held hostage for a day. The First Battle of Artois ended with the French holding Arras and the Germans keeping Lens with its coal mines and the Vimy and Lorette heights, from which they could see the French rear.

Behind the front line (1915–1916)

Lens became an important supply centre for the Germans, and with it France lost mines that mattered to its industry. On 25 September 1915 the British First Army of General Douglas Haig attacked in the coalfield north of the town, releasing a cloud of chlorine on a large scale for the first time. In the Battle of Loos the British took the village of Loos and broke onto Hill 70 on the first day, but did not break the second German position and never reached the town. The same day, south of Lens, the French Tenth Army began the Third Battle of Artois.

The town lay under constant shellfire. On 18 January 1916 the church of Saint-Léger on the main square collapsed. On 18 June 1916, over the area around Lens, Max Immelmann was killed, the first great ace of the German air service.

1917

On 9 April 1917 the Canadians attacked Vimy Ridge, from which Lens and the Douai plain could be seen. After losing it the Germans fell back to a position around the western suburbs of the town, and on 11 April they deported the inhabitants of Lens. The houses still standing were blown up and burned, and the cellars and mines were turned into fortified strongpoints.

In the summer the First Army ordered the Canadian Corps to take Lens. The corps’ new commander, General Arthur Currie, persuaded his superiors that it was better to seize Hill 70, which dominated the town, and wait for the Germans to try to retake it under the fire of the Canadian artillery. On 15 August the Canadians took the summit and within three days, according to Currie, beat off 21 counter-attacks. The attacks on Lens itself between 21 and 25 August, among the ruins and cellars, brought heavy losses and few gains. The town remained in a German salient, surrounded by the British on three sides.

Liberation and ruins (1918)

The Germans were forced to withdraw by defeats elsewhere: the breaking of the Drocourt–Quéant Line at the beginning of September and the attacks on the Hindenburg Line at the end of the month. On the night of 1–2 October the German Sixth Army began to fall back between Armentières and Lens. On 3 October patrols of the British First Army found that Lens was empty. French sources often give the date as 4 October.

Before leaving, the Germans flooded and wrecked the mines, and the streets were full of unexploded shells. A teacher at the mining company’s school described a town in which not a single wall was left standing. According to municipal studies Lens was more than 90 per cent destroyed. Mayor Basly led the rebuilding, and a new town plan was approved in 1924. Reconstruction lasted until the end of the 1920s, and the town hall was rebuilt to its pre-war plans.